Madam Speaker, I rise today in support of Bill C-223, the keeping children safe act, introduced by my friend and colleague the member for Hamilton Mountain. I will begin by acknowledging the courage of the many survivors, advocates, legal experts and organizations who have spent years bringing these issues forward, often at great personal cost. I also want to acknowledge the work of the hundreds of organizations across Canada that have called for this reform.
This is an important bill. It would protect children and families as they navigate through the court system. The bill's central purpose is protection for the survivors of intimate-partner violence and their children as they go through the already complex and emotional process of separation and divorce.
This bill allows us to believe survivors and prevent them from being revictimized during the legal process.
At its core, the bill asks whether we are truly centring the best interests of the child or whether we are allowing outdated assumptions and systemic blind spots to put children at risk. The answer matters, because family law decisions are not abstract; in fact they shape children's daily lives, determine whom they live with, whom they see and whether they grow up safe.
Bill C-223 places the best interests of the child at the heart of all decisions. It specifies that there should be no presumption of shared custody and that decisions must be based on the safety, well-being and lived reality of the child.
The bill would require legal advisers to screen for family violence, including coercive control. It would strengthen the court's ability to assess the impact of coercive control on the parent-child relationship. This is critical because coercive control is not always visible in bruises or police reports, but its effects on children are profound and long-lasting.
The bill would ensure that children's views and preferences are meaningfully considered, and that they are not automatically dismissed as the product of manipulation. Bill C-223 would give children the opportunity to be heard in an age-appropriate way, with proper safeguards, and it would make safety a paramount consideration in custody decisions.
Finally, Bill C-223 would prevent courts from issuing orders that retraumatize children, including forced reunification therapies or sudden reversals of primary residence in the absence of evidence that such measures are safe or necessary.
In 2024, Statistics Canada reported that there were only 25,000 child and youth victims of police-reported family violence. We know that these figures only tell part of the story. Many cases of family violence are never reported.
Children who have experienced or witnessed family violence carry trauma that shapes their development, their sense of security and their ability to form healthy relationships. When our family courts fail to take their fears seriously, when courts dismiss their disclosures as manipulation, or when children are forced into the care of parents who have harmed them or who have harmed the other parent, we compound that trauma. We teach them that their voices do not matter, that adults will not protect them and that the system designed to serve their best interests has in fact failed them.
When I served on the status of women committee, we studied coercive control. We heard testimony from survivors, lawyers, psychologists and frontline workers. Again and again we heard how violence does not end when a relationship ends. In fact in many cases it intensifies, through the courts, through custody disputes and through the manipulation of legal processes themselves.
We heard how coercive control operates not only through physical violence but also through fear, surveillance, intimidation and the erosion of autonomy. We heard repeatedly how children are drawn into that control, used as leverage, silenced or forced into situations that are unsafe, in the name of parental rights.
During committee testimony, we heard heart-wrenching stories about the harm that forced reunification had on children. For example, we heard from a 17-year-old girl who told us that she was ordered by the court to go to a reunification camp in New York after her father claimed parental alienation. She told us it felt like she had been “judicially trafficked”. Those are her words.
Among other things, she and her younger brother were told that their negative memories of their father were not real. They were forced to smile in photos, tell their father that they loved him and show physical affection toward their father under the threat that, if they did not, they would not be allowed to see their mother. When this witness was 16, she ran away to try to go to her mom's house. Her father had the police bring her back. She was ultimately under a no-contact order with her mother for over 500 days.
Sadly, this is not an isolated incident. We heard of a young woman who, at age 15, was forced into the custody of her father, who sexually abused her. Children told us over and over again that they felt that they had no voice, that nobody believed them and that there was nobody to talk to, especially when, after they finally told someone, their disclosures of abuse were repeated to the abusive parent, who would then use that to further intimidate and victimize them.
Under this bill, children would be able to tell their story confidentially to the court without fear. This bill treats children as people with agency, not as property to be divided.
Too often, decisions are still influenced by myths and stereotypes, such as the notion that co-parenting is always the best solution, that children who refuse contact have been manipulated, or that a parent, often the mother, who raises safety concerns should be considered unreasonable or uncooperative.
Research shows that mothers are twice as likely as fathers to face allegations of parental alienation, even in cases where violence is documented. Protective actions taken to keep a child safe are reframed as hostility. Fear is reframed as non-cooperation, and children's voices are too often dismissed on the assumption that they cannot be trusted.
Bill C-223 does not remove discretion from judges; it actually guides it with evidence. The bill does not diminish the importance of parental relationships. In fact, it recognizes that a relationship that is unsafe is not a relationship that is in the best interests of the child.
The Standing Committee on the Status of Women heard clearly that if the courts do not understand coercive control, they may repeat it. If they prioritize formal equality over actual safety, they put children at risk.
Canada has committed internationally to protecting women and children from violence. The keeping children safe act would build on that commitment by aligning our domestic framework with evidence-based best practices and international human rights obligations. We cannot meet those commitments if our laws remain out of step with what we know.
Bill C-223 asks us to listen to children; take violence seriously, even when it is subtle; and ensure that the justice system does not become another tool of harm.
This bill seeks to ensure that, if families experience violence, they are not revictimized by the very system that should be protecting them.
For these reasons, I am proud to support the keeping children safe act, and I urge all members to do the same.