Justice committee  The best interests of the child are still the paramount principle to guide our courts. However, it has to be connected to the equal shared parenting principle. That's what we look at, the best interests of the child, not an individual, because we know that the courts already deci

Justice committee  Absolutely, because we still have to determine the issues of the interests of the child in terms of the equality itself. We cannot put parents on the side and say we're going to pick and choose which interest fits that particular parent because we have already seen judges moving

Justice committee  Equal shared parenting takes into consideration, at its utmost, the best interests of the child. The best interests of the child include that both parents remain fully involved in the life of the child all along. Divorce and separation do not mean a reduction in the best interest

Justice committee  Yes, of course. I mean, we presented to the joint committee at the time. The recommendation, the central focal point, was to have equality in parenting. Now, the Divorce Act, with the current proposed amendments, if it's not in there, what's going to happen is a continuation of

Justice committee  We already have in the current Divorce Act a section that talks about the maximum contact with the parents. What we're seeing is that, when a parent obtains custody of the child, basically they start excommunicating the other parent, removing the other parent completely from the

Justice committee  By the way, we participated in this particular approach for the Australian government. We submitted a brief on all these issues, and we were pleased that the Australian government introduced the concept of what they call “shared parental responsibility”. We already know there ar

Justice committee  Okay. Thank you. We would ask the committee in its final recommendations to recommend that equal-share parenting become the main issue to solve the divorce issues, because where parents don't have to fight, they understand that they are equal at both levels, and they sit down an

Justice committee  Thank you, Alan. About 25 years ago, one good person began the process of changing and raising awareness about the issues of divorce. Senator Anne Cools helped put together the Special Joint Committee on Child Custody and Access. During those times, discrimination against father