Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate the member for St. John's East on his presentation to the House on this topic and in particular, for zeroing in on the topic of dispute resolution.
As a legal representative, my question is: Is one of the problems the lawyers? Litigation is very adversarial in family law matters. Dispute resolution already exists. Currently, a lawyer acting for one of the parties or indeed both lawyers could say they are not interested in dispute resolution and that the matter should go to the courts. This causes a problem because generally speaking, one of the parties does not have the resources to go all the way to the courts. The party has the resources to go to dispute resolution but not to the courts. That creates unfairness and more adversarial attitudes.
Would the proposed legislation correct this discrepancy? Is there something in the bill that would force the legal representatives to encourage dispute resolution?