Item from the Smart Marriages Archive, reproduced in the Divorce Statistics Collection
Speedy reforms to divorce act requested Shared parenting wanted
July 20, 1999

Chris Cobb Southam News

OTTAWA - Advocates of changes to Canada's divorce law will ask the
federal government today to fast-track reforms that would give divorcing
parents an equal say in the raising of their children.

Representatives of the National Shared Parenting Association (NSPA) will
be in Ottawa to challenge Anne McLellan, the Justice Minister, to
participate in a town hall-style debate over the issue.

Groups pushing for change want the federal government to implement the
recommendations of a special joint Senate-Commons committee that
recommended radical change to the 30-year-old Divorce Act. The committee
recommended that the terms custody and access be replaced by a new
concept called shared parenting which would prevent one parent from
locking another out of a child's life.

Ms. McLellan announced in early spring that she had accepted the
recommendations but the government would need another three years to
study them. The NSPA, grandparents groups and others have angrily
denounced Ms. McLellan's delay as a ploy to shelve the committee's
report.

Danny Guspie, NSPA director, said public opinion polls show that
Canadians are overwhelmingly in favour of changing the law to allow
children access to both their parents. One survey by the polling firm
Compas indicated about 90% of Canadians support change.

"Nobody in the government wants to take a leadership role," said Mr.
Guspie. "So people will continue to lose all their assets fighting in the
court system and still not solve their problem. There is no healing. Kids
are walking on egg shells, scared of saying the wrong thing and their
parents are running out of money in the process. How is any of that
benefitting children?"

Mr. Guspie and his group have been unable to get a meeting with Ms.
McLellan. They will hold a news conference today and if she refuses to
take part in the town-hall debate they're proposing, added Mr. Guspie,
the NSPA will turn its attention to Jean Chretien, the Prime Minister.

"Why can't the prime minister come out and say, 'I like being a dad and a
grandfather so let's get on with it?' It's a pity Pierre Trudeau isn't
prime minister today. As a divorced father, he would know that these
changes should happen."

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