QUESTION PERIOD — Justice
Changes to the Divorce Act
June 16, 2020
Honourable senators, my question is for the Government Representative in the Senate, Senator Gold. The Minister of Justice announced on June 5 that changes to the Divorce Act, which received Royal Assent last year on June 21 and were supposed to come into effect this year on July 1, will now be delayed for yet another year to March 1, 2021.
That bill made the first substantive changes to family law at the federal level in more than 20 years, and those changes were already long overdue. More Canadians use the Divorce Act than any other federal statute. The changes to the act last year focused on the best interests of the child in divorce proceedings and for the first time addressed the issue of family violence with an expansive definition, including definitions of economic and psychological abuse.
Here is the problem: We know that family violence is deeply gendered, and we are learning that the effects of the pandemic are also gendered. Family law experts are bracing for a surge of women and mothers seeking divorces after months of social isolation with abusive partners. How can we reconcile this reality with your government’s decision to push back the coming into force of this bill to next year?
If I might add, given all we have heard about the increases in abuse and family violence during the pandemic, did the Department of Justice conduct a gender-based analysis of their decision to delay the legislation? Did they do any research into the impact of the delay on women and children across Canada?
Senator, thank you for the question. It touches upon fundamentally important issues — issues with which too many of us are familiar. It touches everybody here in one way or another. It doesn’t take too many degrees of separation. My wife is deeply engaged with a women’s shelter in Montreal. We know, sadly, that forced isolation and other aspects of this crisis have aggravated what is already a horrible problem of domestic and family violence.
The government recognizes that, and has invested significant monies to help bolster the infrastructure that supports women and their families who are the victims of violence and sexual assault. The government remains committed to doing so to protect families, and particularly children.
I should add that, as a member of the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee, I am very familiar with the important measures that the changes to the Divorce Act introduced.
However, the challenges associated with COVID-19 resulted in the provincial and territorial governments asking the federal government for more time to implement the changes passed by Parliament last year to the Divorce Act. As such, the government agreed to delay the coming-into-force of those changes until March 2021.
So it was not a decision that was taken happily or unilaterally; it was in response to a request by the provincial and territorial governments, which are responsible for the administration of justice, to give them time to properly implement it.
