| What’s the Issue? | Current Bad Policy | Best Practice (reforms) |
|---|---|---|
| Parents losing custody in family courts | Court costs are higher than even upper middle class parents can afford. | Both parents keep responsibility for parenting children unless proven unfit. Parents stay out of courts whenever possible) |
| No action on overdue reforms, which are supported by the public | Conservative Party has a policy on shared parenting but PM Harper forced cabinet to vote against this policy as implemented in bill C560 | Insist that your Conservative candidate support Conservative policy rather than interests of lawyer donors |
| Liberal Party opposes interests of middle class parents and children | Liberal MPs forced to vote against equal parenting by leader Trudeau | Ask your Liberal candidate to support equal parenting and to ask party for a free vote. |
| NDP MPs forced to vote against equal parenting by leader Mulcair | NDP MPs met only with legal profession lobbyists and refuse to hear from middle class parents | Ask your NDP candidate to support equal parenting and ask party to hear both sides on issues |
| Green Party on equal parenting | Green Party has a good policy on equal parenting but half their MPs voted against it in Parliament. | Ask your Green candidate to support equal parenting and the Green Party policy |
| Legal monopoly interests blocking fair treatment of parents | Legal industry has preferential access to government and ministers while parent advocates are blocked by special interests | Legal profession should be subject to the same lobbying rules and access as ordinary citizens. Ban lawyer donations from business (trust) accounts |
| Government funding and services strongly biased against both parents | Federal funding for legal education/ court support only for women, only for sole custody | Either fund both sides equally or neither side. End gender apartheid in funding |
| Child support guidelines consider income of only one parent | Child support formula presumes only one parent cares for child | Child support based on both incomes and on shared parenting |
| Federal Minister of Justice announces “parents have no rights” and changes federal laws to remove existing rights | Non-custodial parents relegated to “bystanders”,(no status) Non-custodial (NCP) parents (mostly dads) not recognized as “family” | Parents should have a balance of rights and responsibilities. Every parent of a child should be recognized as a “family” |
| Undefined “best interests of child” | No due process, decisions by biased courts and judicial discretion with no responsibility | “best interests of child” defined from the view of the child and settled social science |
| Government promises all families benefit from family tax cuts and child care benefit, but no benefits for divorced dads | All cuts and benefits are reserved for the custodial parent, while NCP (dads) are not recognized as family | Both parents should be eligible for tax benefits for child rearing, income splitting, parental status |
| Tax system and other incentives punish marriage and incentivize conflict. | Marriage breakup incentivized, lawyers profit from conflict, federal government makes money from GST on legal fees | Reform tax system so deductions and benefits are available to both parents; reform courts to encourage consensual decisions |
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