Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin my remarks this evening by really thanking the member of Parliament for Hamilton Mountain. She has taken on this important private member's bill and taken on this important issue to protect children, to protect families and to protect parents. I cannot express my gratitude enough to her, but I think what is telling is that there are 300 women's organizations across this country that lend their support to this private member's bill. That is an indication of just how important this piece of legislation is to protect children in our country.
I want to share those thanks a bit broader because, as my Bloc colleague raised earlier, this began with a study at FEWO, at the status of women committee. It was also the courage of our members, from all parties, who began the study on coercive control and learned about the issue of parental alienation.
I want to take that a step back even, because this builds on important measures that the House has passed over the last years, notably the changes to the Divorce Act in Bill C-78 and then, more recently, Keira's law. For those colleagues who do not know about Keira's law, it was the first time that judges would be required to study and understand intimate partner violence and coercive control. Keira's law came about because of a little girl in my community who died tragically while on a hike with her estranged father. Jennifer Kagan, her mother, believes strongly that if the judge had learned and understood about intimate partner violence, had learned and understood about coercive control, Keira, who was four years old at the time, would still be alive today.
I want to thank someone else, Pam Damoff, who is no longer here in the House but who served as a former colleague. She really spearheaded this work and made sure that Keira's law became reality and that Keira's legacy would live on.
The member for Hamilton Mountain is taking another step. I first became aware of this when a constituent of mine approached me to ask if we could have a meeting to talk about her situation. She shared with me that her children had recently been taken from her while she was going through divorce proceedings with a former abuser. When the spectre of intimate partner violence was raised, the judge interrupted and said it was parental alienation. What ended up happening was that she lost, entirely, the custody of her children.
What is really important here is recognizing that this is a phenomenon that is growing in Canada. When I spoke to my constituent about this, I was shocked because I thought the courts were there to protect people from these kinds of things. If someone is a survivor of domestic violence with the courage to leave, to speak up and to try to protect themselves and their children, the system is supposed to be there to support them. She thought the same thing. That is why she shared her story. That is why she was trying to leave and protect her children. Instead, she was punished for that. When we spoke about this, she said that she was not alone, and that she could get a call together of women across the country for whom this was happening.
A couple of weeks later, I sat in on a Zoom call with over 50 women across the country who shared their stories with me. They talked about how their children had been taken from them by police, how their children were scared, how they were not able to have the kind of protection and support that they thought they were entitled to and they thought they would receive, and that they were in utter disbelief that this was happening. They told me stories like the one that the member for Hamilton Mountain shared of children being taken across the border to receive reunification therapy, that they had no idea where their children were because they were not allowed to have contact with them and how desperate, alone and abandoned they felt by the system that was supposed to be there to protect them.
The bill would provide important measures to ensure that the rights of the child, the agency of the child and the well-being of the child are placed at the centre of divorce proceedings. That is something I think all of us, as parents, hope would be the case.
I listened to my Conservative colleague's speech. The bill has nothing that is against the institution of marriage. The bill is trying to centre the rights of children in what is often a really awful situation for them, to give them a voice, to give them agency and to protect their well-being. What the bill would do is exactly that. It would clarify that there is no presumption of shared parenting, with each decision based on the best interests of the child.
It would prevent the courts from blaming women who are victims of domestic violence for not actively working to improve their children's relationship with their abuser. It would stop the practice of disregarding children's views and preferences under the pretense that they have been manipulated or alienated by a parent. It would prevent judges from issuing orders that restrict parenting time with the parent to whom the child is bonded in order to improve the child's relationship with the other parent, and it would prohibit courts from forcing a child to attend reunification therapy.
As my colleague, the hon. member of Parliament for Hamilton Mountain, said, it is not opposed to rebuilding relationships with parents. That is not what the bill is about. It is about ensuring that a child can make active decisions in what is going to happen to them and to their future. That is what we should be focused on in the bill.
I understand that the government has a number of amendments it wants to make. What we should be focused on in the House, and I implore and I encourage members from all parties in this, is that when we are studying the bill, we should always think about what the objective is. I hope the bill makes it to committee. The objective is to ensure the rights and the well-being of the children, who find themselves in a place that was not their decision and in a situation that was not of their making but that has a huge ramification and impact on their now and on their future.
When we speak to children who have gone through and who have been survivors of reunification therapy, as my colleague said, we find that some of it is fine, but some of it is really worrying. If we think about a child being sent across a border to be in some stranger's apartment and to receive some unprofessional therapy about what they think has happened and what the therapist is telling them has actually happened, we can imagine what that does to them. We can imagine the fear, uncertainty and loneliness they feel.
I am asking the House to support the legislation. I think that what all of us want and what we care about is the well-being of the child. That is what we put front and centre here.
My colleague spoke about the fact that there is a cottage industry that is building up, a cottage industry that is preying on vulnerable children. The fact that there are judges who have decided that, when they hear a child mention potential abuse, their first instinct is to reverse custody, to take a child away from a parent and put them towards another one, is actually quite mind-boggling.
What we want is to have confidence in the courts. The bill would enable that. The bill would give us the confidence to know that the decisions being made about the now and the future of our children in situations beyond their control are being made in their best interest and that they have a voice and a vote in their future.
I thank my colleague from Hamilton Mountain for bringing forward this important legislation.