Justice committee  Unfortunately, I can't comment on any advice we have given to our minister. We haven't seen any constitutional issues.

Justice committee  It's very difficult to predict any impact that legislative change will have on litigation. We know that many good pieces of legislation lead to litigation because you need to interpret new terminology that is in a statute. In some cases, clarifying certain things may lead to less

Justice committee  Just to clarify, do you mean in terms of ordering one of the parents to pay for the costs of the exercise of access?

Justice committee  If the court orders access and there's this issue, again it's more in terms of what evidence is before the court. If the lawyer representing the parent who doesn't have means makes the case for the child to see the parent before the parent passes away, then it's important that pr

Justice committee  That may be a question of going beyond our area of jurisdiction. The provinces are responsible for enforcing orders, so I can't see how we could legislate that. Federally, there is a fund that provides money to provinces and territories to offer services to families. It might be

Justice committee  —child-centered.

Justice committee  I'm just trying to see how, in the Divorce Act context, that would work if a child is in care, because that would probably be more under a family relations act or a provincial family law act.

Justice committee  I hope I have the correct name, which i believe is the Child-centered Family Justice Fund.

Justice committee  Yes, it will be very short. Basically, the court has the right to put any terms or conditions in an order, and they could put in that order a limit on how much time the people have to exercise the access. If it's not done, they can still require that.

Justice committee  That really is an issue that I would say is just province by province. Of course the provinces administer justice, and there are different rules in each province on how long a motion can take before it can get to court. Even within the provinces, there are jurisdictional issues.

Justice committee  Let us take for example how the word ensure is used in the following expression: "shall ensure that the former spouse is granted access". It is even more strongly worded in the English version, which reads: “shall then ensure that the former spouse is granted access”. The impre

Justice committee  As my colleague indicated, saying that the court shall ensure that the former spouse is granted access may be problematic because that's very strong language. As for possibly suggesting a different wording, what's difficult is suggesting something that wouldn't change Mr. Casson'

Justice committee  Maybe, if it went through the minister's office.

Justice committee  Exactly. That's where it gets trickier.

Justice committee  We have a research branch at the Department of Justice that might be able to find the information, perhaps through Health Canada, on how many people are in the terminal stage. But as for the number of parents in that situation, that could be very difficult, as there may be no way