Debates of Feb. 4th, 2003

Divorce Act

[Jay Hill, Canadian Alliance, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I will endeavour to be brief because I see that some of my colleagues would also like to ask the minister questions.

I appreciate her comments and listened very intently. I do not think anyone could doubt the minister's sincerity in what she was saying. I am a bit disappointed that she limited her comments to the enforcement aspects of Bill C-22, because of course there is so much more to the legislation.

Enforcement is important and I do not think anybody questions that parents who do not live up to their obligations when it comes to financial support for their children should be held accountable, but it is a very small minority of cases where it actually has to go to garnishment in order to collect the money. Research I have done over the years since I have been a member of Parliament indicates that because of Canada's adversarial justice system, unfortunately in some cases non-custodial parents, primarily fathers, feel that they have no other choice but to hold back money because they do not have access to their children. That is why our party, the Canadian Alliance, is such a strong supporter of the joint committee's report “For the Sake of the Children”.

Would the minister agree with what my research has shown, that increased access results in increased compliance of support and therefore would detract from the need for greater enforcement?

[Jean Augustine, Liberal, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

Mr. Speaker, whenever we get into this discussion there are two words that are very important: “where appropriate”. There are times when “where appropriate” needs to be part of the discussion. Indeed the legislation and what we are all working toward is the whole business of not just money, but the attention, love, nurturing, shared parenting, and areas of responsibility that we all must take and have toward our children.

Again, it is the issue of “where appropriate”. There are times that “where appropriate” may come down on one side or the other. It is part of what this legislation is attempting to do.

I focused my attention on the issue of enforcement because I followed a lot of the discussion that has taken place and I know that much has been covered in the back and forth of debate in the House. Much has been said, but the bottom line is that we are talking about the best interests of our children. We are talking about how and when this would occur, the issue of visitation and time spent with the different parent. The two words “where appropriate” must be kept in mind as we deal with that issue.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I was pleased to hear the minister's comments and connections validating the relevancy of child poverty in this issue. It is very important and the minister did a good job of detailing some of the issues and the connections that are happening here.

I would like to ask a question with regard to child poverty. We know that in the year 1989 the House of Commons passed a unanimous resolution to eliminate child poverty by the year 2000. Since then it has gone up 21%. Fortunately we have seen some improvements over the last couple of years, but it is still up 21% since that vote happened in this chamber. That is unacceptable.

What happened during that timeframe when we had billions of dollars of surpluses? We have no affordable housing program and we know from the facts that affordable housing is a key element to ending child poverty. Will the minister agree to support $1 billion per year to create new units as campaign 2000 as many people have advocated in this country to help eliminate child poverty and put action where it really matters?

[Jean Augustine, Liberal, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would say to the member that much has been happening. I hope he followed the Speech from the Throne on the direction what we ought take and must take.

I can delineate for him, as the Minister of Human Resources Development has done time and time again in the House, dollars that have been accessible to parents and the different ways in which we have made the system in some way responsive to the needs that are before us.

At the same time, I agree with the member that we have poverty in our midst. We have some issues with which we have to deal. My colleague has been dealing with homelessness and people who are on the street. We know that families at minimum wage should have opportunities for low cost affordable housing units that can meet their needs.

Again, those are all issues that are before all of us. As we have faced the difficult fiscal years, we are in a position now where all of us need to come together and work for the best quality of life for everyone in our communities.

There are programs and policies which we can delineate. However, at the same time the member knows that we are moving in the direction where we hope we can meet the needs of everyone in our community and provide them with that quality of life.

[Diane Bourgeois, Bloc, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

Mr. Speaker, we know that, since the meeting in Beijing, Canada has made the commitment to make recommendations to each department in relation to the gender-based analysis. The government spends $10 million a year on this type of gender-based analysis.

In the context of the changes to the Divorce Act, can the secretary of state tell us whether Status of Women Canada has done a gender-based analysis and whether it would be possible to obtain a copy of the report that Status of Women Canada presented to the committee responsible for studying the changes to the Divorce Act?

[Jean Augustine, Liberal, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

Mr. Speaker, that is a very important issue and I thank my colleague for bringing it to the floor.

It is important that whatever we do and in whatever policy deliberation, we should always approach it with the perspective of gender based analysis, in which we believe. We agreed at the United Nations conference on women and with other countries around the world that we will do a gender based analysis. That is, we will look at all our programs, all our policies to see whether they differentially affect men and women.

We have been working on the gender based analysis of this specific issue. There is documentation that is not complete and I do not have at hand right now. However, we will provide it. The committee looking at the bill at the present time will also have the opportunity to use the gender based analysis to ensure that women are not disadvantaged and that men are not disadvantaged. The analysis is supposed to ensure that neither one nor the other gender is differentially affected.

The gender based analysis will be done, has to be done and ought to be done to ensure that this is good policy.

[Val Meredith, Canadian Alliance, South Surrey—White Rock—Langley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak to Bill C-22, an act to amend the Divorce Act, the Family Orders and Agreements Enforcement Assistance Act, the Garnishment, Attachment and Pension Diversion Act and the Judges Act and to amend other acts in consequence. The amendments pertain to child custody arrangements between parents following separation or divorce and are to provide a greater emphasis on parental responsibilities versus parental rights.

I do not think there is anybody who has found themselves in a situation with regard to divorce who does not feel that there is a need for major change in this legislation.

In the year 2000 there were 70,000 divorces in Canada. Although people would say that yes, in a perfect world everybody finds the right partner and ends up married for life, reality says something completely different. I know I join the ranks of one of the divorced persons in the House. I know for a fact that I am not alone. There are many of us.

It is not because the two players in the marriage did not try. It is not because we did not feel that when we made a commitment that it was for life. It is just the reality of the situation of what happened in the period of time we were married that a decision came that, for the sake of the children and each other, it was better to go separate ways.

That kind of decision is made daily by Canadians. It is nice to believe that when this decision is made, the parties coming to that kind of arrangement or agreement always put children first. However I know, not from my own experience but from others whom I have had come into my office, that is not always the case.

Unfortunately in our legal system, our legislation, the acts that pertain to divorce and the courts themselves have not encouraged a more amenable separation of a relationship, of assets and of child custody. Our courts have for whatever reasons increased the adversarial nature of marriage breakdown.

Over the almost 10 years that I have represented my constituents in the House, the saddest tales are those of individuals who find themselves at loggerheads because of the court system, with either an inability to use the courts because they cannot afford the process or an inability to get court orders enforced because nobody really cares and considers it to be civil.

What I perceive as a female is the biases of the courts toward females in any kind of child custody decisions and biases of the courts toward females against the males in a lot of situations that come out of a breakdown of a marriage. Although I have seen how it has happened, I do not think it is right. There has to be a complete overhaul of how our court system deals with the breakdown of marriage and all that occurs from that point forward.

To be quite honest, I do not think a band-aid solution, as I see in this bill, will really help. There is a lot more to it than the bill addresses.

Until we change the whole attitude of our court system when dealing with these kinds of family matters and until there is a change in the attitude of the judiciary which presides over these decisions, I do not think the minor changes or these band-aid solutions before us really will help.

There has to be a major overhaul and the primary focus of any legislation dealing with the breakdown of a marriage, the breakdown of a family unit, has to put the interest of the children before all else. They have to come to grips with the reality that a child needs not one parent, but two.

I go back to my earlier adult years when I lived in a community that had a lot of contact with aboriginal communities. At the time my husband of the day was a social worker. They would go into aboriginal communities and remove these kids because from the outsider's perspective the kids were in peril. From an outsider's perspective, the community was not looking after these children.

I remember one case when a well-meaning social worker went in with a school bus, after the payment for the firefighting was received and the party was going full blow, and picked up all the kids and took them out of the community because the kids needed protection.

What she did not understand was the community, knowing that this was going to happen, had its own resources. While it was not the parents looking after the children, they had the grandmothers, aunts and uncles looking after them. It was a lack of understanding in that the kids were far better off being dealt with in a different way. The kids were removed from what they knew and from what they were secure. They were put in a strange environment, a process that terrified them. One could even probably question whether they ever overcame the harm that was done to them.

Although we seem to be well-meaning and it seems to be logical thing to do at the time, there are many times when decisions are made because the interests of the children are not put first. It is the conscience of the adult, or the conflict of the adult, or who can afford the best lawyer or who can stay the fight longer than the other person. It is not what is best for the children.

I know from my own experience that the relationship between children and their father is equally important in the long run as it is with the mother, and I say that as a mother of four boys. I know that I have a special relationship with my boys that they do not have with their father. I also know that for their complete development, they have to have a relationship with their father. Whether it is a strong and prideful relationship or whether it is a different kind of relationship, that relationship is fundamental to who they are as an adult.

Any time the courts feel that they are in a position to choose one or the other, they are ultimately denying that child the ability to have a relationship with both parents, and that is fundamentally what the bill fails to do. It fails to recognize that for the well-being of children, they must have that relationship. It may be a relationship based on anger or disappointment but they need to have some relationship with both parents.

Without that lack of appreciation by our courts, courts pick sides and winners which is wrong. I appreciate there is sometimes abuse by a parent but our courts for the past number of years have accepted testimony, particularly from mothers, that the abuse is one-sided.

I know that the abuse can also be from mothers. I think there have been some instances where we have infanticide and other convicted felons, if we can call them that, of mothers who have abused their children. However for a long period of time courts automatically assumed that if the mother came in and said that the father was either sexually or physically abusing that child, they would take her word for it.

I have a situation where a father has not only made that complaint in the courts but he has substantiated it with professional psychologists, psychiatrists, others in the medical community and God knows who else who have dealt with the children. He has not only been denied access to the children but they have been left in a perilous situation with the mother simply because the courts have assumed the mother is the best caregiver.

I would not for a moment say that the mother is not important in the raising of a child. There is a special relationship between a mother and a child. Sometimes the kids may not realize it, but it is there. A mother, for the most part but not always, is the one who is most likely to give unconditional love, who is quite easily, because of her compassionate nature, and I am not saying that men are not compassionate, more willing to perhaps look beyond the slight and feel the pain, but not always. It is equally important that a child who might use the mother for the compassion, softness, forgiveness, and the warm and fuzzy stuff would have access to a father who will say to the son or daughter, “You should have known better and you could have done better”, and bring in a different approach to parenting.

Any time children are denied that parenting perspective, they are being denied part of who they are. I would suggest that there comes a time when children are old enough and mature enough to decide what kind of relationship they want with their parents. It may be a more hands-off relationship or it may be a much closer relationship, but unless they have been allowed over a period of time to continue a relationship, they are not going to be in a position to make those kinds of decisions when they are a little more mature.

I want to reinforce the seriousness of the government ignoring a report that put children first and said that one of the most important things for children to have is equal parenting, and that when a divorce happens, unless there is proof beyond proof that there is physical or emotional abuse that is not healthy for the child, there should be dual parenting.

I want to go back to this report. The government in plural, because it was a joint Senate-Commons committee, sat for a couple of years, I think, well beyond a year. It heard testimony after testimony and came up with what I thought was a very sensible report. It certainly was not a small report. I remember trying to find the recommendations. It was a very large report, with 48 recommendations of what the committee saw that needed to happen in order to put children first and to make sure that children did not become victims of a divorce. It is amazing to me that the government can for the most part completely ignore the work of that joint Senate-Commons committee, because it went through the effort that I have not seen the ministry go through, quite frankly, in order to properly understand what needs to happen.

It is one of these things whereby the government puts a lot of money into having committees set up to investigate, hear testimony and make recommendations, and then we completely put it aside. Again as a female person, I would suggest it is largely because of the lobby of the women's groups. The women's groups were quite concerned with the direction that this report was going to take. I remember one occasion when women's groups were not going to even show up at a hearing because a men's representative group was going to be there at the same time and they would not be seen in the same room. That is precisely what we need to get away from.

There is nothing that distresses me more than a guy coming into my office and telling me that he has court access to his children, that he moved from Ontario to British Columbia so that he could be close enough to see his kids, that he gave up a very well paying job in the aerospace industry in order to be close to his kids and see them, and that his ex-wife will not allow him to see his kids. A man gives up his career and moves 2,000 miles away so that he can have a relationship with his children and some female person puts a blight on all of us by refusing him access to his children.

If it were only one case, perhaps I could say that it is only one case, but I hear this over and over again. Not only do I hear it from people coming into my office, I hear it from friends and family members. The anger against the ex-spouse is so strong that it overrides any thought of what is best for the children. Whether it is a man or a female who does it, I do not care; it is wrong. The anger between two individuals about the breakup of a family, a fight over assets, or a fight over who got more out of the marriage should never come down to fighting over the kids.

That we would allow, through legislation before the House or through our court system, adults to make kids victims through a legal proceeding is shameful. We as legislators need to address the reality that one-third of marriages end up in divorce. That will not change. It would be nice if it did. It would be nice if everybody could live happily ever after, but it is not reality. We continue to allow the courts to follow through and allow our children to become victimized. Are we paying a price for it? Yes, we are. Is it because of divorce? No, not really. We allow the divorce proceeding to victimize the kids. We allow a judge to select a winner and to pick a loser. We allow our court system to allow an adversarial situation in which adults fight with each other and the kids get ripped apart as a result. We allow that.

We are allowing it again with this legislation, because we are not dealing with the fact that in a divorce proceeding the children should be granted equal parenting. The children should be granted that, not the father or the mother, but the kids. The kids should be allowed from the very beginning to have free access to both parents, and then it needs to be supported by the community and by the establishment. If any parents take it upon themselves to use their child as a pawn, to use their child to get even, to use their child to get back at or send a message to their ex-spouse, they should be punished for doing that. I do not care if it is a female or a male. Any adult who uses a child to attack another adult does not deserve to be a parent, because a parent who is legitimately concerned about a child and the child's development and wants to ensure that the child does not end up with problems as an adult would not want to use that child as a tool or a vehicle for attacking another individual.

I do not know how much time I have left, but I have made it pretty clear what I think of the government's legislation. It has missed the essence of what needs to be done, which is to put our children first, to protect our children's right to have both a mother and a father involved in their raising. Let the child decide what kind of relationship that will be. We should not let the courts or the angry parent decide that. Let the children decide whether they will have a close warm relationship with both parents or whether one parent will end up with a more distant relationship. Let the children decide that. They are capable of it. It is up to us to make sure that they get the opportunity to grow up knowing both parents.

[Jay Hill, Canadian Alliance, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened attentively to my hon. colleague's comments about Bill C-22. I note that one thing we share as well as being Canadian Alliance MPs is that we both have been divorced. I do not take any pride in saying that and I am sure she does not as well, but we are both lucky in that our ex-partners believe that both mothers and fathers deserve an ongoing, loving relationship with their children. Thank goodness for that. Unfortunately, many others are not that fortunate, as we have noted during this debate.

I note as well that the member has hit on what is really the greatest deficiency in Bill C-22, which is that the government failed to enact the very basic fundamental principle of the report “For the Sake of the Children”. It was all enshrined around the concept of shared parenting: that both parents were equal, that if both parents were deemed good parents before the marriage ended then we must presume they would be good parents, given the opportunity, after the marriage ended and they were divorced.

Without this, how does my colleague believe that we can really send the message that we must send to the courts and to the judges, the message that shared parenting, except in proven cases of abuse or neglect, should become the norm? It should be automatic that the courts in their rulings, if the parents cannot come to an amicable decision whereby they both have an equal share in their parenting chores, must assume that. I wonder about that.

[Val Meredith, Canadian Alliance, South Surrey—White Rock—Langley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for that question and statement, because this goes back to the attitudes of the courts. I do not know how we can change the focus of divorce and child custody to a less adversarial situation and to a fairer situation for children unless it is legislated. The courts need a clear message that the direction they have been taking in the past is not acceptable for the direction that they will be taking in the future.

The only way we can deliver that message is through legislation. I am at a loss to say how we are going to make that happen unless the government sees fit to put in legislation in which it is assumed that both parents will share in the parenting. It would be so easy to do. It would be so easy to change it from an adversarial to a mediated situation, but the leadership has to come from the government in this legislation to give the courts a clear message that what they are looking for is mediation, for both parties to get together to determine what is best for the children, and that shared parenting should be the norm, not the exception.

[Jay Hill, Canadian Alliance, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

Mr. Speaker, further to that point, I do not know whether this will be a question so much as a statement. My hon. colleague probably did not have the opportunity to be in the House this morning when the minister introduced the bill. One of the statements he made, and I wrote it down, is that he was opposed to this fundamental principle of the report “For the Sake of the Children”, put together by the joint House of Commons and Senate committee my colleague referred to. He was opposed to that because, he said, use of the term shared parenting in the Divorce Act would have led to confusion. That is what the minister said this morning.

It absolutely blew me away because the very fundamental principle that all of us have been looking for is to see this dramatic shift in the attitudes of the courts and judges when they deal with these important issues of custody, access, shared parenting, responsibilities and obligations to children. It was all blown away by a minister who said that it would be too confusing. I wonder if my colleague would like to comment on that.

[Val Meredith, Canadian Alliance, South Surrey—White Rock—Langley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, my gut reaction is why should we find it confusing that the minister finds it confusing. It is to be expected.

A comment from another colleague was that he is a lawyer. As a lawyer and as a minister he should be aware that at the beginning of every bill is a list of definitions. If it is confusing to him and he feels it needs to be clarified, we could sure put a definition in the front of the bill that makes it clear what we are talking about. By making it clear does not mean we tie it down so that there is no flexibility. There has to be flexibility.

Shared parenting could mean that the child goes from one parent to the other on an equal basis. It could mean that the child lives with one parent but the other parent has full and easy access to the child. It could mean that when important decisions on things such as education and health care are made that both parents are involved in a dialogue.

There has to be some flexibility, but shared parenting means that both parents have access to the child's upbringing in a meaningful way. I do not think it is too hard to write a definition in the bill that could be used by the courts.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. Bélair)]

It is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the question to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment is as follows: the hon. member for Skeena, Aboriginal affairs.

[Jim Karygiannis, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we are discussing a very important piece of legislation, family law amendments and how they relate to the Divorce Act.

I will not endeavour to bring in more facts and figures on the present bill, the proposed amendments and how they will work. I am sure all of us in the House are quite informed of how the present as well as the proposed amendments will work in the future.

I want to travel down a path that very few of us have dared to explore. That path is why parents arrive at the conclusion that a divorce is required. What drives a couple to divorce? What can we as parliamentarians do in order to avoid family breakups?

Many years ago married couples stayed together until, as the preacher said, death did they part. This has changed with the evolution of knowledge and higher education. People have become more self-assured and confident and decide which way they want to go in their own future. Women are achieving higher education, so men cannot overpower them any longer. The female partner cannot be threatened and told, “You stay at home or I will not look after the children”.

Higher education as well as the ability of women to achieve higher mobility in the workforce are things that we should support, welcome and enhance. They make the female partner more self-reliant, more self-supportive and able to make decisions that are a positive contribution to family growth and enhancement.

Gone are the days that the man of the house came home and ordered his wife around. Gone are the days when a wife would have to put up with all the whims of her husband and shut up and take the abuse and stay in an abusive relationship.

There are a few concerns and we as politicians, community leaders and community partners must work to ensure that families do not separate.

Economics is a major factor in separation. A lack of monetary support to keep the family together drives people to divorce. Husbands and wives both work to pay the bills, the mortgages and to survive day to day. A couple's desire to provide a better standard of living drives both spouses to work. Sometimes a person has two jobs in order to keep the family afloat and make ends meet.

The government has steadily done much needed work in the family field through successive budgets and initiatives to provide more support to fight poverty and provide support for families. We have successfully tackled some of the important issues.

One example is the length of time that a spouse can stay at home after giving birth. Maternity leave has been extended to one year. A spouse can now stay at home with the little ones and collect EI. The government has increased maternity leave, making it possible to watch the little one grow, take his or her first steps and say his or her first words.

From time to time there has been talk about increasing the period from a year to a year and one-half or even two years. If we endeavour to go down this path, we must make sure, perhaps through community consultations, that it is something Canadians want.

Next comes the issue of daycare. Often we hear of universal daycare and our support for families that need daycare spots. Many of us receive calls from constituents who ask us to assist them with this dilemma of placing their child in a healthy daycare.

Why not have universal daycare? We should look at the cost of such an endeavour and the return it would have on our overall quality of life, the better growth and higher education of our children, as well as the end result of better citizens.

What is the trade-off on such a suggestion to our everyday way of life? Better citizens, higher educated citizens, children seeking a better and more fulfilled life. Would this result in citizens being more law abiding, citizens being focused on the quality of family life? Some people say yes.

How would this translate into the cost and the way we do our budgets now, police budgets, education budgets as well as the overall quality of life? We will be faced with budget deliberations at the end of the month. Maybe we could start a discussion along these lines and develop it over the years.

Another very important issue that we must look at is the length of time it takes to reunite families. Canada is a country of immigrants, people who have come from all walks of life from all corners of the world. It can take up to two or three years to reunite families.

For example, if a mother and her child were to come to this country, fleeing their situation at home, they could be stranded here for three or four years until the husband, spouse or partner were to join them. In the first steps of life a young adolescent of 14, 15 or 16 needs the mother and the father but we are not assisting to bring these families together. We are hindering them by keeping them apart for three or four years. That translates into dollars and cents. Do we need more resources at the tail end or at the front end in order to reunite those families? Yes, we do.

The new immigrants who come to this country want to make a better way of life for themselves. Mothers and fathers work double shifts and sometimes even work on the weekends in order to survive, make some money, make a down payment and carry a mortgage. Sometimes the families are very limited in their knowledge of the Canadian way of life. They are very limited in speaking the language. We must provide new Canadians with more money for settlement arrangements.

As an aside, not long ago we saw the statistics on new immigrants who come to Canada. The majority of the people who come to my riding are from mainland China. When we look at the way the funding for settlement arrangements is being done, the people who want to speak and have services in their own native language, the Mandarin language, we hear that there is not much support for it. We hear that there is no group that wants to speak it, but it is quite the opposite.

We have to look at how we keep families together, especially new families that come to Canada and want to make it their home. They are new families with children who will be the taxpayers of tomorrow supporting our Canada pension plan.

It all comes down to dollars and cents. We are waiting to see how the budget will address keeping families together. More support means better families, a better standard of living as well as healthier children.

I chose to travel down this path in order to bring an alternative to the discussion in the House on how we keep families together versus discussions on how we deal with the issues after the family separates. A healthy family is positive for our community and the country and costs us less than the cost of having to deal with all the things that come from broken families. More support, more dollars at the front end keep families together and costs us less than the issues at the tail end.

I want to touch on one other item that a constituent has raised with me. What happens to access for grandparents once the parents decide they want to separate? There was a discussion in the House previously that grandparents should be given access to their grandchildren. This is something we have to look at. We must ask grandparents, whether they are on the mother's side or the father's side, on their access needs to their grandchildren.

[Reed Elley, Canadian Alliance, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I must say that I am quite astonished that the member was dealing with immigration matters. I had no idea that this bill dealt with immigration matters to such great extent. I guess I will have to go back and take a further look a the bill.

In any case, I do agree with one thing that my colleague said when he talked about bringing families together. Of course the bill deals with what happens when families are split asunder. In fact, if the government were truly interested in keeping families together, even after a divorce, as best it can, I would ask my hon. colleague a question.

I will preface my question by saying that I had a constituent visit me just recently who had gone through a very terrible divorce. The judge in the situation gave his orders in terms of custody and access. There was a certain access agreement that could take place but, unfortunately, the mother had moved the children 2,000 miles away. The access orders have never been carried out and there is no hope that this gentleman will ever see his children. There is no way that there are any teeth in the law for the court to enforce that access order.

The bill says a lot about support enforcement but it says nothing about access enforcement. Would the member agree that the bill is deficit in this area by not addressing that very important subject?

[Jim Karygiannis, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague across the way for his question but he did not dare travel the path that I went down, which was, how do we avoid divorces. My colleague across the way just let my thoughts, my feelings and my words sort of fly over his head.

I am more concerned about the front end, which is how to keep families together, versus the tail end. Once people get to the tail end, there are bitter divorces, bitter fights, and two parents going at each other. It is incumbent upon us as parliamentarians to make sure that we support our families at the front end so they do not end up at the tail end, in the controversy as well as the feuding.

[Roy H. Bailey, Canadian Alliance, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Mr. Speaker, it has been absolutely years since I have heard what the hon. gentleman had to say. I have been in the business of being around children since probably before he was born, but to hear him say that somebody else can raise our children better than we can, through daycare or whatever, I do not believe that and I do not think Canadians believe that. Sometimes it is necessary, but please do not tell me that pops and moms across Canada who raise their children, and the mothers who gave birth to those children, are not capable of raising them. I disagree totally.

[Jim Karygiannis, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am the father of five daughters. If I accumulate the ages of my daughters together they come close to 100. I can speak with some experience on raising children, on being at home and on being a responsible parent. The comments across the way reflect what the Alliance thinks.

I said very clearly that it was incumbent upon us to support families. Sometimes, because parents cannot afford it, they need to go out to work. I am not saying that the Government of Canada should go to every household and say “Here is the money for your mortgage”, but why not have universal daycare? Why not discuss the issue? Why not provide support for the parents who choose to go out and work?

The thoughts of the gentleman across the way are that the father goes out to work and the mother stays at home, or the mother goes out to work and the father stays home. The idea of both parents working is not something that appears on his radar screen.

I am quite the opposite. I certainly think that my daughters can be good mothers as well as work. Therefore, when they are out in the workplace why should they not have the support they need in order to raise their children?

If the gentleman across the way ever wants to tell me how to raise children, I have news for him. I raised five of them and I am very proud of the way in which I have raised them.

[Jay Hill, Canadian Alliance, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I have a revelation for the hon. member across the way. The reason that both the mother and father in most Canadian families are forced to work outside the home today is because his government continues to put taxes up to a level where families cannot make it on one income. The government is taking away the choice for Canadians so they are forced out of their homes. We support mothers who want to work outside the home but they should not be forced to do so because of excessive high taxation, and that is what is happening.

I question whether the hon. member has even read Bill C-22. Hansard will show that at the end of his comments he made reference to grandparents. Grandparents are mentioned in the bill but not sufficiently enough, and I will be the first to agree with that. However they are mentioned under the criteria in clause 16.2. As one of the criteria for deciding access and custody and parenting, judges should consider:

the nature, strength and stability of the relationship between the child and each sibling, grandparent and any other significant person in the child's life.

I wanted to enlighten the member about that because he mentioned it at the end of his speech.

When the Canadian Alliance brings forward a motion amending the bill to ensure that grandparents do not have to apply to the courts and throw themselves on its mercy to get access to their grandchildren, will he support that amendment? I assume he will.

[Jim Karygiannis, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will go back to my comments again. The front end versus the tail end. I do not think my comments were heard by that side of the House.

[Roy H. Bailey, Canadian Alliance, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I want to ask the member a very direct question to be fair to parents across Canada.

The hon. member mentioned that there should be universal day care and that government money should be put in to support it. That is what I understood.

However, in order for the parents who choose to stay at home and raise their children to receive the same equality they must get the same amount of money to raise their children at home as those parents who put their children into day care. Would he not agree to that, in all fairness?

[Jim Karygiannis, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Mr. Speaker, finally my words are starting to make sense to members on that side of the House.

Should they? This is a matter of consultation. It is a process on which we must start speaking and one on which we must consult with our community partners. It is a great idea and food for thought.

[Roy H. Bailey, Canadian Alliance, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I cannot say too much about divorce but I can sure say a lot about marriage, having been in a relationship for probably longer than anyone in the House. Therefore I know a great deal about it.

As an educator for well over 40 years, I know a great deal about the harm from what I have seen on children's faces. I know firsthand what divorce does to the family. For over 50 years I have watched families disintegrate because of divorce.

We have people in the House who have been justifying such things as pornography. In all my working years in the profession I have never seen one child emerge from a sexual situation who has not been harmed, and yet we have people in the House who think that as long as it does not harm the child it is all right.

I cannot believe that the same thing is happening here. There is a correlation in that. The time for divorce is during the courtship. I expect most divorces do get started there. I am not saying that divorces are not part of society, they are, but what should never be part of society is to have a bill that pits one of the parents against the other. That is what the bill would do.

I have seen people go through a divorce where they lose a farm over the haggling as to who gets what. I have seen grandparents denied the right to see their own grandchildren. On more occasions than I would have liked, I saw kids who came to school and I knew very well what had happened at home. They could not learn as well and were upset. What we need is a bill that gives protection to the children.

If we have a mother who loves her children and a father who loves his children, they surely will put aside their individual differences in favour of the children and, in doing so, they will see all the benefits the children could get through shared parenting. We do not see that.

I have really seen a lot of the idea that when the court brings down the decision the father must contribute x amount of dollars. In the constituency where I live there is an oil patch. Sometimes the fathers are on big salaries and sometimes they have very little. The court orders that one father must pay x amount of dollars but then there is a drop in the activity and the father goes unemployed for a period of time. He cannot meet the payments for his children and wife and he has no recourse.

Now we hear a whole lot about deadbeat dads. There are no more deadbeat dads out there than there are deadbeat moms. I think we should quit using that expression. I personally know of three young men who destroyed themselves because they had no money left to live on because they were tied down to the court. They could never live and try to make the payments and had no place to go. I think we have to review this.

There was a time 20 or 25 years ago when a mother was always right and the father was always wrong. It still leans that way. For the sake of the kids, we need a better arrangement. Child custody arrangements are made in the court. These arrangements should have some humanitarian end results. That is not happening. We have nothing but an adversarial approach.

Recently a young father came into my office. He said that he had a right to see his children. However the only time he saw them was on weekends or to look after them while the ex-wife was doing something else. He said that he was unable to get to know them and that they really did not want to see him because they did not know him, even though it was shared custody.

There is no working arrangement. This whole thing is not working. This winner take all approach in the courts has to come to an end.

Children never gain in a divorce unless both parents can set aside their differences, put the kids above themselves and make life as pleasant as possible for them. That does not take place. Unfortunately, if we go into a classroom, we will see the troubles that the kids are having, even in grades 5 and 6. They are so psychologically disturbed because one or the other or both parents have put themselves ahead of the kids because they want to be the winner. Parents should make the kids the winners. They should let them grow up as closely as possible. Kids need some order. They need love. That can be passed from the father and the mother even though they are apart. Children cannot live properly without love.

Adolf Hitler was going to have a superior race of children. He was going to raise them in a very proper way, in a proper environment. They grew up total misfits because they lacked what children need and children deserve, and that is love.

The bill does not deal with maintaining meaningful relationships or acting in the best interests of the children. We are wrong again in this field.

Sometimes grandmas, who have had more experience, are needed in the worst way but oftentimes they are not appreciated. I have a grandfather who continues to phone my office. He is broken-hearted because he cannot see the grandchildren. That is not right. Mothers who deny children the right to see their own grandfathers are putting themselves ahead of their children.

After all the years of trying to deal and cope with this, surely after the court has made a decision, there must be some easier way for the adversaries to come together, for the sake of the children. This could be led by one or both grandparents before a family counsellor. Then maybe we would be on the right path. I do not think we are now. This is totally adversarial. I do not think it will be any better and millions of children will be hurt by this type of arrangement.

[Jay Hill, Canadian Alliance, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

Madam Speaker, I listened with great interest to my hon. colleague's speech. He brought up many important and relevant points about the need to change the adversarial system.

The one thing I found of great interest in the debate today is that almost every speaker has talked about the best interests of the child and the children. I take that at face value. I believe that every member, regardless of political affiliation, whether they sit on the government benches or those of any one of the four opposition parties, are very sincere when they say that they want to see change that is in the best interests of our children.

I do not see how that can happen and how there can be a substantive shift in the way in which courts treat those disputes between parents, which are a minority, that end up in court. We can only wish that all the parents would join the majority and settle their issues, especially where it concerns the children, before they go before the court to battle over the children. As many speakers today have pointed out, they end up using children in many cases as pawns in this tug of war between the mother and the father.

We hear that everybody wants to keep the best interests of the children close at heart, but I do not see it in Bill C-22. As I have said repeatedly today, the minister and the Department of Justice have missed the fundamental building block of the report “For the Sake of the Children”. The report calls for a dynamic shift from the focus being on parents, whether it is the mother versus father rights to see their children or someone wronged someone or someone is a better parent, to the focus being on shared parenting. We need to recognize that both parents, both mother and father, not only have rights to see their children and to participate in parenting their children, but they have obligations to their children. When I heard the minister this morning say that he chose not to put into Bill C-22 the term “shared parenting” because he thought it would be too confusing, I knew the battle had been lost.

I will try again to bring forward amendments at committee stage to get that inserted into the legislation. Without it I fear we will not see any shift in the thinking and in the way in which courts rule on these cases where they pit one parent against another, or they reinforce a parent being against another, or they exclude grandparents or siblings. There are all too many cases. Every MP, regardless of political stripe, has people coming into their constituency offices, if not every day, I am sure every week, with tales of horror of how lawyers, judges and the justice system have wronged them in this important and critical area of parenting.

Could my colleague comment on this? How will we ever send the message to the courts that it is not acceptable to try to view the mother or the father as a better parent? No matter what we call it, it is still custody and access. We can change the wording, but it is still the same. Unless there are proven cases of abuse or neglect, which are few and far between, in the vast majority of cases parents should have equal rights, responsibilities and obligations. The only way to do that is by enacting shared parenting.

[Roy H. Bailey, Canadian Alliance, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Madam Speaker, to answer that question I must tell members about an incident. At one time I lived beside a family that used to constantly fight. It was terrible. Pretty soon they would come over and I would hear a little knock at the door. One would be on one end of the chesterfield and the other on the other end so they could get a bit of sleep.

The bill should recognize the equal rights of parents and equal responsibilities. There used to be a time in society that before people got married they had to spend so much time in counselling. Perhaps before people get divorced, there should be a requirement that they spend some time in counselling for the children's sake. They could be advised that if they went a certain route, this is what could happen to the children. They could be advised not to be adversarial because it may ruin the lives of their children. They could be advised that getting a divorce and having the lawyers walk in behind them was not the route to go.

The route to take is to ensure parents know through proper counselling that they are responsible for the lives of their children. They need to know what is best for the children to guarantee them some success in life so they are not socially damaged. However we do not do that. We generally pit one against the other and let the poor kids take the brunt of it. The bill does not solve that. It is just a continuation of what we have now.

[Diane Bourgeois, Bloc, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

Madam Speaker, it seems to me that on several occasions today, I heard members, particularly the Alliance member who just spoke, talk about the fact that when couples divorce, both spouses should have equal rights.

Unless I misunderstood, and he can correct me if I am wrong, does he think that, right now, men and women have equal rights in a divorce? Right now, in Canada, do women and men have equal rights when they divorce?