Justice committee  I think it's making great movements in its current form, but it still needs more revision to address family violence appropriately. There are a few briefs out there that are very strong, from NAWL and UNICEF, and the Canadian Coalition for the Rights of Children. I have also put

Justice committee  Yes. Well, I have 12 pages of a brief. I didn't want to go through all of those things. We need to bring in integrated services and, as I mentioned, data analytics. We need to have information about judgments and the errors they're making. We need to collect data about the gend

Justice committee  It just started as a pilot in December in British Columbia under the Society for Children and Youth. It's called the Child and Youth Legal Centre. Again, law, politics and family violence are not my area of research. Any child in British Columbia can access a lawyer confidentia

Justice committee  Again, given that I'm not a researcher in family violence, I can't produce statistics for you, but the impact on children is severe. Post-traumatic stress disorder can present itself as anxiety issues in the schools, for example. Again, I'll point to the increase in shared parent

Justice committee  I'll speak to the point raised earlier about children maybe having a risk to voice and needing health professionals to become involved. That is a type of voice that can be elevated to also represent the view of the child. In terms of conflict, let's say that the best interests—

Justice committee  I don't know what the issue is. We had shared parenting at 13% in 1995. It's gone up to 70%, so I don't see the crisis that's being carved out at the moment. In fact, the crisis I see being carved out is that the stats on child anxiety are going extremely high—one in five with di

Justice committee  I support the Convention on the Rights of the Child as primacy in this, too.

Justice committee  It provides fidelity in child voice and child interests. Currently, we don't have that. We often have a litigious he-said-she-said back and forth. You can have people motivated over other interests than actually recognizing the child's best interests. Getting fidelity for that i

Justice committee  My name is Dr. Valerie Irvine. I want to thank you very much for inviting me to speak with you today. I am a professor in the faculty of education at the University of Victoria. I have a Ph.D. in educational psychology from the University of Alberta and bachelor's degrees in bo