CANADIAN BAR ASSOCIATION -- ONTARIO
CONTENTS
Thursday 5 December 1996
Family Responsibility and Support Arrears Enforcement Act, 1996, Bill 82, Mr Harnick /
Loi de 1996 sur les obligations familiales et l'exécution des arriérés d'aliments, projet de loi 82, M. Harnick
Ms Del Weale
Mr Kenneth Perry; Mrs Darla Perry
Ms Jai Mills
Mrs Joan Field
Ms Hyla Fox
Ms Denise Ashby; Ms Judith Killoran
Ms Leslie Hutchinson-Westlock
Mrs Tamera-Lynn Beaulieu
Ms Susan Irwin
Ms Jenny McKay
Canadian Bar Association -- Ontario
Ms Judith Huddart
Mr Thomas MacLennan
Mr Robert Reimneitz
Ms Jo-Ann Tambeau
Mr Marius Frederick
STANDING COMMITTEE ON ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE
Chair / Président: Mr Gerry Martiniuk (Cambridge PC)
Vice-Chair / Vice-Président: Mr Ron Johnson (Brantford PC)
*Mrs MarionBoyd (London Centre / -Centre ND)
Mr RobertChiarelli (Ottawa West / -Ouest L)
Mr Sean G. Conway (Renfrew North / -Nord L)
Mr EdDoyle (Wentworth East / -Est PC)
*Mr Garry J. Guzzo (Ottawa-Rideau PC)
Mr TimHudak (Niagara South / -Sud PC)
*Mr RonJohnson (Brantford PC)
*Mr FrankKlees (York-Mackenzie PC)
*Mr Gary L. Leadston (Kitchener-Wilmot PC)
*Mr GerryMartiniuk (Cambridge PC)
Mr John L. Parker (York East / -Est PC)
*Mr DavidRamsay (Timiskaming L)
*Mr DavidTilson (Dufferin-Peel PC)
Mr BudWildman (Algoma ND)
*In attendance /présents
Substitutions present /Membres remplaçants présents:
Mrs BrendaElliott (Guelph PC) for Mr Parker
Ms ShelleyMartel (Sudbury East / -Est ND) for Mr Wildman
Mrs JuliaMunro (Durham-York PC) for Mr Hudak
Mrs LillianRoss (Hamilton West / -Ouest PC) for Mr Doyle
Also taking part /Autres participants et participantes:
Mr JimBrown (Scarborough West / -Ouest PC)
Mrs ElinorCaplan (Oriole L)
Mr DavidChristopherson (Hamilton Centre / -Centre ND)
Mr BruceCrozier (Essex South / -Sud L)
Mr KenGoodman, legal counsel, Ministry of the Attorney General
Clerk / Greffier: Mr Douglas Arnott
Staff / Personnel: Ms Susan Swift, research officer, Legislative Research Service
J-1583
The committee met at 1549 in committee room 1.
FAMILY RESPONSIBILITY AND SUPPORT ARREARS ENFORCEMENT ACT, 1996 / LOI DE 1996 SUR LES OBLIGATIONS FAMILIALES ET L'EXÉCUTION DES ARRIÉRÉS D'ALIMENTS
Consideration of Bill 82, An Act to establish the Family Responsibility Office, protect the interests of children and spouses through the strict enforcement of support orders while offering flexibility to responsible payors and make consequential amendments to certain statutes / Projet de loi 82, Loi créant le Bureau des obligations familiales, visant à protéger les intérêts des enfants et des conjoints grâce à l'exécution rigoureuse des ordonnances alimentaires tout en offrant une certaine souplesse aux payeurs responsables, et apportant des modifications corrélatives à des lois.
DEL WEALE
The Chair (Mr Gerry Martiniuk): Our first presenter today is Ms Del Weale, who has given us a written submission. Please proceed.
Ms Del Weale: I have been with the family support plan since 1992. My ex-husband claims he is self-employed; therefore, his salary is not garnisheed. The family support plan relies on him to send in his cheques as requested by the court. Unfortunately for my children, my ex-husband arbitrarily makes deductions from his payments. Since there has been no penalty or enforcement from the family support plan, he continues to do this and now is in arrears to an amount of over $1,700. I personally feel that if Bill 82 is passed, the biggest benefit to my case is the connection to the driver's licence. This is the enforcement that will keep these payments up to date.
There are good fathers out there who willingly make their child support payments regardless of the family support plan. They should be allowed to opt out of the system. They don't need the embarrassment of the garnishee of their salary. This would remove some of the workload the family support plan has to deal with and enable it to concentrate on the people who cause a need for the system. Children of divorce should not be penalized.
I'm sure there are hundreds of women with arrears greater than mine, but without enforcement, I myself and other women are nowhere and our children suffer. To return to court would be very costly for me as well as time-consuming and stressful. Please pass this bill, not for me, but for my children. Thank you.
Mr David Ramsay (Timiskaming): Thank you very much for your presentation. I want to let you know that all three parties are working very hard to pass this legislation. We want to see it through as quickly as possible. What we've been doing is, after our first day of hearings yesterday, picking up some of the ideas we've been hearing as to how to improve the bill. Today we've been working on our amendments and have already submitted some to legislative counsel. I know the minister wants to review those, and I think many of them he will see as friendly amendments and might incorporate some of those things. Monday afternoon, I guess by about 8 o'clock in the evening, we will have completed all the clause-by-clause study and any consideration of amendments that are there, so that we should be ready to pass this bill next week. All the parties are supportive of that.
I am very pleased with some of the mechanisms in this bill that are particularly going to affect your case, especially in regard to self-employed people, where a garnishment is not possible. I'm very pleased with the flexibility the bill has in going after other types of monetary draws, commissions, other types or forms of payments that a business could forward. I think we've got most of it covered and we're always going to keep our ears open for any new ideas or new angles or ways deadbeat dads have been finding to circumvent their duty and further develop those amendments over the next few days so we're ready Monday to get the clause-by-clause completed to get it in the House and get it passed next week.
Mrs Marion Boyd (London Centre): Thank you for coming today. I know it's always difficult, and when you have to tell your own personal story it makes it really tough. I would just echo what Mr Ramsay has said. There are many, many good things in this bill and certainly the enforcement processes are ones that our party agrees with entirely. We have some problems in other parts of the bill, but we've made an agreement that we will complete discussion of possible amendments soon.
I think your fear -- and you've expressed it before rather forcefully -- that it might not be passed is groundless; that was never an issue. The minister was certainly told by me, and I assume by my Liberal colleagues, that while we had concerns about the form of the bill when it was introduced on October 2, we were anxious to discuss it and get it through. You can rest assured we will do that.
You're quite right, there are many women who are owed a great deal more money than you are, and that's one of the concerns we have because the director could refuse to enforce an order where there is a large amount of arrears owing under the bill. That's one of the issues we want to deal with.
Mrs Lillian Ross (Hamilton West): I would just like to make a statement as well. Thank you very much for coming forward. We really do appreciate it. We are all very supportive of doing what we can to help women and children.
I just wanted to address the issue of arrears and tell you a story that might interest you. I raised a question in the House where a woman was owed support payments in the amount of $4,000, which I thought was horrendous. After I asked that question in the House, another lady called me and said, "I want to know if that was me you were talking about because you had the number wrong; it was $24,000." I think that's astonishing. I just want to say that we're very much in favour of doing what we can to help you.
Mr Garry J. Guzzo (Ottawa-Rideau): I too would like to thank you for your presentation, but let me throw some cold water on some of the ideas that have been presented. I have not the same confidence that people like you will meet with the positive results that others think this act will bring about. In your case, the driver's licence might be the answer, and if it is, good. In many cases it will be, but one of the members of the third party, Mr Kormos, made a very sound observation on opening day in this committee when he said it's a question of attitude.
There has to be a change in attitude and it has to start with the judiciary, it has to start with the judicial operation of the court that administers and will administer this particular plan, because you see, the issue of default and the issue of arrears is not taken seriously. Last night, in a discussion with a former Attorney General employee I asked her if she had ever, in her time, heard of a case of perjury resulting from a matrimonial matter or a default matter. She told me she had heard of one. I've practised law; I've been in the legal profession as a practitioner and as a judge for 22 years. I've seen perjury cases from accident cases, from contract cases, but not from matrimonial cases.
If people don't take it seriously, and until we start to see this for what it is, a form of child abuse, and punish people in exactly the same manner, until that change in attitude takes place, we will not see the positive results that we should see and hope to see. It is a step in the right direction. There will be changes to this bill and we will support some of them, I hope; I will, individually, and I think as a party. But that's the change, the same attitude, the same change that Mr Kormos referred to when he talked about the incidence and acceptability of impaired driving 20 years ago and the lack of that acceptability today. Until we see that we will not see the positive results we're hoping for, but again, I commend you for coming here today. We appreciate your attendance.
The Chair: Ms Weale, what is the age group of your children?
Ms Weale: Ages 10 and 12.
The Chair: Does your husband avail himself of regular access?
Ms Weale: Yes, he does. I never withheld access because of child support payments.
The Chair: Thank you very much for your assistance here today.
KENNETH PERRY DARLA PERRY
The Chair: Our next presentation is from Kenneth Perry and Darla Perry. Mr and Mrs Perry have driven down from Windsor today, I understand. How was the traffic and the weather on the way here?
Mr Kenneth Perry: Driving's not bad until you get to Toronto.
The Chair: Yes, it's usually like that. Please proceed.
Mr Perry: I'm on the opposite side of the coin is about the only way to put this. I am being garnisheed over and above what my support payment is for. They're claiming that I'm in arrears, whereas now I have payroll deduction so I cannot be in arrears, even prepaid from my vacation so they would have this, but we cannot get any answers. You can't get through to anybody.
I don't like the idea of some of these things they're going to be coming up with, for instance, taking your driver's licence away. Would they come and take mine away even though I'm not in arrears? Even though Sandra Pupatello's office called down, and when they finally got through they said I was not in arrears, but they have been taking away for nine weeks this extra $25 and you can't get anything to be stopped about it.
My concern is when I'm coming to these things. At vacation time, invariably, they always take off five weeks' support even though we're only going to be off for two weeks. When we had an office in Windsor you could go down and explain to them and they would have a form which they filled out and you would eventually get your money back. Another thing is, last year again they took my income tax. I was not in arrears, but they took it anyway. I guess they have a five-year standing order or whatever. But at least you could go down and talk to somebody and they would fill out the proper forms and have your money sent back, but the big thing is that there's nothing I can do about this. There's nobody you can talk to. You try to call through down there and nothing is being done. I'm just concerned. Like, would I lose my driver's licence and who can I see about getting my money back?
Another point is that my daughter, who is 24, will be done school in April. How do I get this stopped for her and how do I go to the next step? My next daughter will probably be done next January. How do I stop this and how do I get this back that they have?
I guess the biggest problem I have is I work with Chrysler Canada in Windsor. I guess Chrysler does not send the money weekly, so they keep saying you're always in arrears. But I have all my pay stubs for the last two years. There's never been a missed payment. That's basically what I want to say.
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Mrs Darla Perry: I'm nervous, so excuse me for a minute. The other thing we want to know about is that since they took 50% of his income tax last year for no reason at all, he didn't get the interest on his money. So when they do take his money, where is the interest going? Right now, with the garnishment against him, who's making the interest on his money? Will we get that interest back? This is supposed to help the children. You're also messing up some people's lives.
You have to go after the deadbeat dads. Leave the dads who are paying every week, on time, alone. These are the ones who are starting to hurt, not the deadbeat dads. You're not going after them. People at the Big Three are an easy target, especially somebody like my husband who has got 32 years in. He's not going to quit his job. He's been paying for nine years but he's getting nothing in return. He keeps getting stepped on.
Now that the office is closed, we have no recourse. How do we go about it? The office isn't even open here in Toronto. So how are we supposed to get this garnishment stopped in the first place when there's nobody you can turn to? There's no sense going to a lawyer, because she can't get through either. There are so many different things. Everything's supposed to be for the children, and those are the ones who are suffering, as well as the people who are maintaining support payments.
I've got a whole list of stuff here, but I won't go over everything. Let me just run really quick through it. Do you know when the office will be set up in Toronto? Because if I have to come down here and make an appearance again, I will drive the four hours.
The Chair: Excuse me. The assistant to the minister, Mr Tilson, has just suggested that once you finish your presentation, he's going to take you out in the hall and attempt to solve your problem.
Mrs Perry: This has been going on for almost 10 weeks now.
The Chair: I'm not justifying what has occurred to you. I'm just stating the facts, that's all.
Mrs Perry: If we can get some answers, fine.
Mrs Boyd: How many minutes left?
The Chair: We have at least five minutes per caucus.
Mrs Boyd: Thank you very much for coming. I really appreciate your frustration, because I think the intention, obviously, of all of this would be to make sure that we're rewarding people who are faithful payors, rather than the other way around. You've been paying for nine years, so you would have started off long before there was really any system, I guess.
Mrs Perry: No, there was a support system. SCOE was in place when we started.
Mrs Boyd: Okay, so it's not quite nine years then. But the problems that you're talking about now, this business of being deemed to be in arrears because your company, following the law, remits your deductions at the end of the month in which they're deducted -- that's what's happening. The law permits them to do that. They only have to remit at the end of the month in which the deduction is made. You're saying that you've been counted to be in arrears because of that?
Mrs Perry: Yes.
Mrs Boyd: When did that start?
Mr Perry: Nine weeks ago they deducted it; then they sent us a letter stating that they were going to deduct it.
Mrs Perry: We were sent the letter after the fact of being garnished. There was no correspondence prior to that to give us a chance to go into the office before it closed and say, "Hey, what's going on?"
Mrs Boyd: So your problems really started with the change in the system. That's really what you're trying to talk about.
Mrs Perry: Yes, that's the major change. Just as one office was closing and the other one was supposed to be opening up, that's when everything happened, and that's when you can't get answers.
Mrs Boyd: I know in London, because I had a lot of experience with the office there, the workers in the London office often said it was the payors who needed a local office more than the recipients, because often those kinds of issues that you raise can be straightened out right away. One of the issues around drivers' licences, for example, is that you get 30 days' notice and you have to have either paid or made arrangements to pay. When you could go to the local office, it would be easy to make the arrangements to pay. When you don't have that local office, it creates a problem.
Mrs Perry: A big problem.
Mrs Boyd: One of our concerns about the vision here of the plan is that you couldn't even see anybody if you drove four hours under the plan as it exists. This is not to be a walk-in office. So it's very dependent on making sure that people can actually get an answer by telephone or in a written form. It certainly has shaken people's faith in the system, what's happened in the last little while.
Mr Perry: But in the case of not being in arrears, how can you get to somebody and say, "I have proof right here that I have paid," if there's no walk-in office or somebody you can sit down and talk to?
Mrs Boyd: I understand your problem and I share your concern. Can you tell me one thing: Do you know whether your ex-partner has been receiving the support money?
Mr Perry: I have no idea. I asked my daughter just last weekend, prior to coming up, and as far as she knows, yes, she's having no problem.
Mrs Boyd: That's good, because that isn't so in some cases. We've heard of cases, for example, with Inco and with Hydro and with some of the other big employers that although they've been remitting the money, the money hasn't been flowed to the partners. So I'm glad you didn't have that problem, because for payors who are frustrated about the process and who then are getting calls from their children that they don't have any money, it's been really quite horrendous.
Mrs Ross: Thanks very much for coming forward today. I'd like to ask you a couple of questions. The first one is, as in anything you try to do where you're changing things, there's a transition period and it causes some problems, and no doubt you've experienced those problems. But I'd like to ask you: If you could solve your problems through a telephone call instead of driving four hours or whatever it is, would that not make it easier for you?
Mrs Perry: It would, but I think I'd get further ahead if I made the drive myself, because you keep getting put on hold; you get interruptions. When I talk to somebody, I want to see their eyes and I want to show proof that we're not in arrears. How can I show proof on the telephone? We fax things down and get no answer. So unless you can show actual proof and then fill out the proper forms right then and there, rather than waiting for the mail to come through -- you're just better off in person, especially when you're dealing with trying to get your money back. If you wanted our money: boom, like that. But to get our money back is going to take forever.
Mrs Ross: Let me ask you then: For nine years you've been paying support and you have never been in arrears. Correct?
Mr Perry: No.
Mrs Ross: They say you're in arrears, but --
Mr Perry: One time at the beginning there was a missed one. I guess somebody just didn't understand the legal writing about psychiatric help. They said I owed so much money. I went back to the lawyers and they sent the letters, but they garnished anyways. But that is the only time, other than the one more dispute when my daughter left for seven weeks and I refused to pay because I was actually supporting her. My lawyer said it was cheaper to pay it. That was the second time I was in arrears. Then we opted to go on to payroll deduction. It's easier for me to go on payroll deduction than to go down every week and give them a cheque. But I'm sorry now.
Mrs Ross: I guess my question then is, if your payments are up to date and they're being taken off through payroll deduction, would this not be a case where you and your former spouse could opt out of the plan?
Mrs Perry: Not likely.
Mr Perry: I won't have anything to do with that.
Mrs Perry: She wouldn't agree to it anyways.
Mrs Ross: She wouldn't agree to it?
Mr Perry: This has got to be something that's going to be handled so it's done bang, bang, bang. That's why I liked the idea of SCOE or what it's called now: because it's all done legally, bang. She can't come back and say this and say that.
Mrs Perry: She would never agree to it in the first place.
Mr Perry: I don't want to opt out.
Mrs Perry: He has to pay the rest of his life.
Mr Perry: When they had the office downtown, you'd go down and explain to them, even if I didn't agree with their findings. When they took my income tax, they kept back one week because they said, "You're a week in arrears." I said, "Here's today's paycheque." They said, "We don't have that." So I said, "Okay, fine, keep the week." So then when they came and took my vacation, they took five weeks out instead of two. So we went down, filled out the forms. They said, "How much do you want back?" I said, "Keep a week." Now I'm prepaid for my vacation. So I didn't mind that, but at least you could talk to someone. But now --
Mrs Ross: You have no recourse.
Mr Perry: But they're still taking my money. It's only $25 a week, but they're still doing it.
Mrs Perry: It adds up.
Mr Perry: To me, they're not supposed to be doing that.
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Mr David Tilson (Dufferin-Peel): Thank you, Mr Perry. Perhaps I could just make a couple of comments and then, as the Chairman indicated, I am the parliamentary assistant and I will be prepared to step outside the committee room with you, because some of the matters you're talking about are personal and this is all on public Hansard. You may not wish to reveal all of these things, but we will do our best to assist you.
You spoke of problems with your income tax rebate being seized. That took place, what, last year? So it sounds like there's been a combination. It sounds like you've had bad luck with the plan for some time. I understand that; that's part of the problem. There have been problems with the plan as it was; there have been problems with the transition stage. We're trying to create a new plan that we believe will be more efficient.
If you've listened to the debate on television, you've heard both sides of the arguments and I don't think we need to tell you any more about that. What you're here for is some solutions to your problem. That appears to be one of the reasons you're here. It's unfortunate that you had to come all this way to do that.
The Liberal opposition may have some questions. If not, I'm prepared to speak to you outside the committee room and provide whatever assistance the Attorney General's office can give to you.
Mr Perry: Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr and Mrs Perry, for attending here today and assisting us all the way from Windsor. As I said, Mr Tilson will accompany you outside and hopefully solve the problem once and for all.
JAI MILLS
The Chair: Our next presenter is Jai Mills. There is a written presentation, which is being handed out. Welcome to the committee.
Ms Jai Mills: I'd like to thank the committee for this opportunity to present my views on Bill 82. I'd like to provide you with some personal comments in terms of what my background has been and what brings me here today and the background for the comments that I'm about to present to you.
I've been working as a social worker in this province for the last 20 years. Most of my experience has been with people with mental health issues and with women who have been assaulted in the context of a marital relationship.
At the present time I'm employed on a full-time basis by a small community mental health program. I continue to work on a relief basis at a shelter in the greater Toronto area and have done so for the last 10 years.
I was separated in 1991 after nine years of a very abusive marriage. I obtained a divorce in 1993 and am the custodial parent of two children, ages 9 and 14, from this relationship. In 1994 I chose to register my support and custody agreement with the family support plan because I was not able to successfully recover my support funds from my ex-partner. In fact, it put me in a very dangerous situation to persist in doing that. So it was my feeling that in order to ensure my and my children's personal safety, it was advisable to file the agreement.
I'm here today to represent my personal interest and also my professional interest, because I have met hundreds of women over the years who will be affected by the changes you are proposing here today. I think we all have the same goal, and that is to ensure the welfare of the children of Ontario. This was the premise, certainly, behind the formation of SCOE and later the family support plan. Parents need these funds to adequately care for their children and to ensure their overall health and wellbeing. The intermediary family support plan is there to ensure that this happens, that they receive these funds. These funds are intended for the welfare of children and not for anyone else.
In order to establish this goal, the family support plan must be re-established and it must be established as effective, flexible and responsive to the needs of the people it is serving, namely, the children of this province. The current operation of the plan falls very short of this and there are many children in this province tonight who are going to go to bed hungry because their parents have not received their child support payments on time or at all.
There was a contingent of women from Barrie who were going to accompany me here today and were unable to do so because they could not afford to get here and because there was no provision for the coverage of their expenses.
I personally have had to resort to sending a continuous fax to the family support plan in order to receive my support funds. The emotional cost of this has been great for me and for my children. It's my hope that this bill will address some of these concerns and that the plan will be returned to a more effective mode of operation as quickly as possible.
I see Bill 82 as a positive document in that it recognizes the importance of providing child support funds and clearly sees that the purpose of these funds is for the upkeep of children. But there are some questions that came to my mind as I read through the bill, and these are the things that I would like to raise with you today.
The portion around the assignment of the director's powers: I really don't see how this would improve the plan, since new costs would be introduced in the form of fees. Would these fees not detract from the funds intended for the support of children? What assurance would there be of confidentiality or quality control? How would this measure improve the plan by contracting outside of the public sector?
The domestic custody enforcement provision, I believe, is very important. Ontario's legal aid plan is in crisis and many of its services have been pared to the bone. After an application fee has been paid and the application processed, only then is someone able to access these services. By that time, children could be beyond the point of being able to be recovered.
In cases where the legal aid plan would not be used, this would create a great deal of expense to custodial parents who do not qualify for or choose to use the legal aid system. Again, the result would be that many children would not be returned to their parents in any kind of timely manner. I believe this is a safeguard that must be retained in the new family support plan and in fact strengthened.
Impractical enforcement: I wonder what criteria will be used to determine a file as unenforceable and uncollectible. There may be files that are able to be classified in this manner, but I think this determination should be made with clear criteria and with a court order that makes these criteria clear on record.
Enforcement against estates provision: this is a reasonable premise but it does create an additional responsibility for the support recipient in terms of legal remedies. Will legal aid resources be made available for those who choose to seek dependant relief under the Succession Law Reform Act?
The parties' ability to withdraw concerns me to a great extent. Those of us who have advocated on behalf of abused women and who have been abused ourselves in the context of personal relationships are very aware of the economic abuse that goes on and the kind of strong-arm tactics that can take place, as well as the cycle of abuse which is far too social-worky for me to get into here now, but it is a factor. I'm concerned that if people are allowed to withdraw from the plan, either they will not receive their funds at all or in a timely manner, or perhaps they may be more subject to abuse, physical, emotional or otherwise.
I think if this provision is to remain in the new bill, there must be a stipulation there that those who have been convicted of spousal assault should not be permitted to withdraw from the plan. Certainly if someone has withdrawn from the plan and subsequent to that there is a conviction of criminal harassment or abuse or assault, I think they should be required as part of a court order to return their child support collection to the plan. I also think it's important to look at the arguments for why someone is withdrawing from the plan, and it is important to include that in support and custody agreements.
The suspension of licences is a measure that I very much support. However, I must ask if the judicial system will be modified in order to accommodate the petitions to vary orders or the legal remedies that will be required in those circumstances. Certainly it's conceivable that someone's application to have their driver's licence reinstated in the case of a mistake could take a very long time and cause them to lose their livelihood and, subsequent to that, the support payments that they are supposed to be paying, or on the other hand that inordinate delays will cause great suffering to the children these funds are supposed to help.
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Ability To charge fees: If it is the aim of the family support plan to ensure that child support funds are used for the care of children, how can user fees be justified? The fees would only divert funds away from children to the coffers of the provincial government.
User fees would prohibit parents from using the services of the plan to their full extent in order to avoid these fees. For example, a woman who's been assaulted and on a limited income may think twice about registering with the plan if she's expected to pay a user fee. Referring again to the Succession Law Reform Act, would those people be charged a user fee if they were to reapply to the family support plan? To be honest with you, when I call the family support plan on a daily basis to find out that my cheque which is three weeks late has not been paid, I would not appreciate paying a $2 charge to learn that information. I fail to see how user fees would improve the services that the plan offers to Ontario's children.
Thank you very much for considering my comments. That's all I have to say.
The Chair: Thank you, Ms Mills. If I just could clarify something on behalf of the committee, there was a considerable time restraint put on this committee in scheduling these meetings, but this committee did authorize the subcommittee to prepay expenditures of witnesses in advance in the event that they were in need. In fact we did that on two occasions. Unfortunately the word did not get to the Barrie group soon enough for them to attend. We regret that, but there was accommodation made.
We have the government. Are there any questions?
Mr Guzzo: First of all, thank you for coming. It's helpful to have your professional views as well as your own personal situation. It's very difficult for people who have not been involved in the circumstances to appreciate the extent of coercion that can be exhibited even after a separation or a divorce is completed.
I'd like you to just tell me, if you wouldn't mind, the nature of the work your husband does. Is he self-employed?
Ms Mills: My ex-husband?
Mr Guzzo: Your ex-husband. I'm sorry.
Ms Mills: Thank you for using that term. No, he's not. He works for a local lumber company as a salesperson.
Mr Guzzo: Is he a commission salesperson?
Ms Mills: No, he has a salary plus a commission.
Mr Bruce Crozier (Essex South): Thank you for coming. I agree with your statement, and I'm pleased that you made it, that we are all here for the same goal and that is to improve what has happened in the past and/or make improvements in the proposed bill. Can you give me some idea what your experience has been in the past with the family support plan the way it is now, ie, the more distant past and more recent past.
Ms Mills: In the distant past my payments were occasionally one or two days late but I could count on getting them in two-week intervals, which is what my court order stipulates. However, since August they have been completely unreliable. I have no idea when they're going to come. At one point my payments were about two months behind. I had to go to my bank and ask to be excused from paying my mortgage in order to provide for other expenses. To tell you the truth, the patience of the bank is wearing very thin. Financial institutions don't understand that the plan is in a state of flux and that while the funds are supposed to be flowed, they're not being flowed. It's been very difficult for me to maintain my economic integrity through all of this.
I know that the payments are being made and that they are somewhere in the system, but they are not reaching me. I received one phone call from someone about two months ago who informed me that while they had settled my account for two of the payments that I was missing, they couldn't understand how I could have spent all that money at once and why I needed the next payment, which was in fact a week late.
I find that in this transition there doesn't really seem to be any understanding of how difficult this is, and I have been made to feel in my contact with the staff at the plan that I am somehow some really annoying woman who obviously is just begging for money. It's not looked at as my right to have this money, and that concerns me very much.
Mr Crozier: That's an unfortunate comment from a faceless person on the other end of the line.
Ms Mills: Yes, it was.
Mrs Boyd: Thank you for coming, Ms Mills, and I want you to know that I really appreciate the comments you've made about particular pieces of the bill. Our concerns are very similar to the concerns that you have, although our solutions aren't always the same. It's very good to get the view from someone who is working daily with people who are in this circumstance as well as has experienced it herself.
I know the disruption in the plan has really created a lot of problems for service providers, as well as the service providers themselves when they're in your position. This business about what people are being told on the phone I think is really disturbing because there had been a real effort in the family support plan to train people with expertise and sensitivity into the issues. When the bombshell dropped on August 15, those experienced people went and we understand the phones were being answered by temporary people hired by a number of different temporary help firms. They had no training. They were very insensitive, and your experience is not unique unfortunately.
What that has caused is a lot of concern about the integrity of the plan, and our concern is that because this disruption has now gone on for four months and there's no end in sight, it may encourage people to opt out of the plan. Do you share that concern?
Ms Mills: I seriously considered opting out of the plan, and the only reason I have not is for my personal safety and the safety of my children. If that was not a consideration, quite frankly, I would opt out. I know a few other people, one of them being the clerk in my lawyer's office, who told me that she had "had it with the plan" and she had in fact opted out. I think that's happening all over the place and people probably, without quite a concerned eye to their safety, are choosing to opt out. It will be to their detriment I think in the long run because this plan needs to exist.
Mrs Boyd: And to our cost in the long run, because obviously if it creates more hostility, we're going to see people back in court more often, we're going to see problems around custody, we're going to see problems around assault, and that's going to be a major issue, isn't it?
Ms Mills: That's right. Yes, it is. It's very dangerous. In the shelter I hear the same thing: "I'd like to be able to pay the rent on my apartment but I got kicked out because I didn't have the support funds there to pay." People are frightened too that if they go and advocate with the plan that somehow, because the attitude of staff has been so rude, they'll actually hold their payments up on purpose. It's very difficult for people to take on the powers that be and object to what's going on.
Mrs Boyd: I think there's a real concern that people will assume there's some kind of conspiracy to destroy the plan. Certainly that is what we've heard from many women whom we've been dealing with in our offices. They really believe that the government wants to divest itself of this responsibility, and one of the best ways to do that is to destroy the confidence that the plan has built up over many years.
Ms Mills: Women in Ontario have lost a lot over the last year. We've lost pay equity and we have lost the family support plan and we have lost battered women's shelters and second-stage housing funding. That's very scary. It's not a nice thing to be a woman in Ontario these days.
The Chair: Ms Mills, thanks for assisting us here today.
JOAN FIELD
The Chair: Our next presentation will be by Joan Field, the past president of the Emergency Shelter Foundation of Hamilton-Wentworth, second-stage housing and counselling program. Welcome, Ms Field. I'd ask you to proceed.
Mrs Joan Field: Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to come and speak to the public hearings of this committee.
I would like to say, before I start on what I'd planned to say, that Mr Tilson's remarks have made me aware that -- I don't know whether you have the written copy of what I'm going to say, but I have mentioned the names of two women in our program. I am not going to mention them verbally, and I would like you to cross them out on your slips because I didn't realize that this was going into Hansard.
The Chair: Would all members please try to cross out any names of individuals that appear that Ms Field might be referring to.
Mrs Field: I have entered three cases, and in two of those cases I do mention the names.
We were informed of the hearings last Friday, and then on Monday we were told there wasn't enough time because the demand had been so great, so we didn't start preparing anything. Tuesday afternoon we were offered this 4:30 time today. We took up the offer and here I am, but I'm much less well prepared than I could have been if we had had more notice as presenters. I was not able to get a copy of Bill 82 anywhere in Hamilton; otherwise, my critique of the bill itself would have been more detailed.
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My message to you, in short, is: Think about the repercussions before introducing some of the changes that are being proposed.
I will tell you about how a particular group of women and children have been affected by the changes that the Attorney General's ministry has made in the past four months. I'm speaking of the second-stage housing program of the Emergency Shelter Foundation of Hamilton-Wentworth.
Case 1, a current user of our program, has had one family support cheque in the past four months. She has had to resort to food banks for herself and her children for three months.
Case 2, a former user of our program and now a member of our board of directors, did not know that she had a problem last September until Hydro called to say her cheque was NSF. Normally, money from her ex-husband went directly into her bank account, but when the reorganization of the family support plan started in August and the Hamilton office was closed, her cheques were stuck in limbo along with thousands of others.
Case 3 is a former user of our program. In September, when two support cheques failed to arrive, she tried to phone the ministry and finally got through after two weeks of trying. She was told to fax the particulars of her case to the ministry office. It took more than 10 days to get a response to a fax which cost her money she could ill-afford.
To me, this illustrates a lack of understanding on the part of the justice ministry of the situation in which these women find themselves. I'm speaking particularly of women who are victims of spousal abuse or spousal assault, people the former presenter was talking about and has personal experience of. In this case, the woman had to finally apply for welfare to support her two children.
I wrote to Premier Harris on September 24 about these matters and had a reply from him on November 29. In his reply, Premier Harris said, "I know there have been delays in service in the first stages of these changes and we apologize for any inconvenience that has arisen." Just the use of the word "inconvenience" leads me to believe it is hardly a word to describe the devastating effect on victims of violence of finding themselves without money to buy food, pay bills and to care for themselves and their children in a dignified way. It's another blow to a life where the person has had repeated blows of different kinds.
The Attorney General said in the Legislature in September, "I am now taking steps to reorganize the plan" to make sure women and children get their money. As you all know, the problems being experienced concern cases where payments have already been made by garnishee or by cheque and the payments are stuck in the Attorney General's offices. The reorganization has failed to make sure that women and children get the money owed to them and get it on time.
I'd just like to mention certain aspects of the bill. As I say, I have not read the bill. I can't give you the details. I know of some of the changes that are proposed, and many appear to give more clout to the enforcement of support payments. Some of these are measures that we believe should be enacted, for example, the suspension of the drivers' licences of those in arrears of support payments, application of foreign orders to permit automatic support deductions -- this, we believe, is a good thing -- and garnishment of joint accounts when support payments are in arrears, another good thing.
However, there are other changes which appear to threaten the position of the women and children rather than make it easier for them to get their support cheques. The first example is the voluntary withdrawal. I think the previous presenter put this position very well. It's the threat to women who are so easily intimidated.
Legislation should avoid, at all costs, putting women in a position where they could be intimidated by a violent partner. Victims of domestic violence or any abused women are extremely vulnerable and easily intimidated. This opting-out proposal undermines the plan's intentions to help them. I reiterate Ms Mills's suggestion that persons convicted of spousal abuse or spousal assault should not be allowed to opt out of the plan if this measure goes through.
User fees: To me, this is a preposterous suggestion. In many instances, you would be asking the poorest of the poor in our society to support the government with money they need to buy food for themselves and their children. None of the women in second-stage housing and counselling programs have money for faxing documents, filing reports, paying fees, paying government administration costs etc. Don't put a heavier burden on those who can least afford it.
The loss of person-to-person contact is another issue which I think should be looked at very carefully. Closing of the regional offices will, in the long run, prove detrimental to the efficiency of the family support plan. Communication by telephone is not a substitute for face-to-face discussion of extremely personal problems. The cost of communicating at a distance is an emotional as well as a financial burden to the person whose support payments are not forthcoming. Providing personal service is part of the job, and if you take on the job, you should do it right.
In summary, before implementation I urge you to consider carefully the effect of the changes that you propose on all participants in the plan, including the children. I appreciate you hearing what I have to say and thank you.
Mr Crozier: Welcome, Mrs Field, and thank you for your presentation. When it comes to methods of encouraging those who owe money to former spouses through the plan, one of the ones that you think should be enacted is the suspension of drivers' licences of those in arrears of support payments. I'm questioning whether that does anything to effectively collect the money owing. In other words, it doesn't prevent anyone from driving a vehicle, simply not to have their licence, because we have lots of them that do it on the road today. My concern is that if, for example, the person needs their driver's licence in a professional way, what do you think this would do? Would it help solve the problem or would it perhaps compound the problem if they then couldn't earn any money to possibly collect? Do you see a problem there?
Mrs Field: Yes, I do. The main thrust of that particular proposal, for me, would be that it is a very strong threat. Certainly for a person who earns their living driving a truck and has to make payments, I can see the problems there.
Mr Crozier: So it would be perhaps more, as you say, in the way of a threat, a signal, a way to get them in.
Mrs Field: To get them not to start holding back the payments.
Mr Crozier: Oh, okay. That's fine. That's a valid point. Thank you.
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Mrs Boyd: Thank you very much for coming, and I must say we appreciate hearing of instances where the problems you're dealing with are causing immediate difficulty, because it helps us to get a feel for what it's like out there. I guess that's what worries me with this new system. You point out that there doesn't seem to be an understanding that women and children in this position don't necessarily have access to a fax, much less a phone, in many cases if they're not getting their support money. Many women are beginning to say, "I can't afford a phone." When they are in abusive situations, that's very dangerous, isn't it, because they don't have immediate contact with the police if problems arise, and they arise only too often.
Mrs Field: There are some women in our program who don't have a phone.
Mrs Boyd: The assumption that this great, one-stop scheme is going to make things a lot easier and a lot faster for people is really based on a notion of what technology people have access to, and it's quite far from realistic when we're talking about people actually needing every dollar that comes through family support to just keep them feeding and clothing their children.
Mrs Field: Here we're talking about women who have left their home -- they could be upper middle class, and we have had some -- with all the amenities that a good income can provide, and they leave with nothing. They go to a shelter for six weeks. They have to leave the shelter after six weeks, and they come into second-stage housing.
We provide, through donations that we're given, the furnishings, everything in the house, including bedding etc. So they do not have money to do anything except buy food and try to get their life together and look after their children.
Mrs Boyd: Of course, an abusive spouse knows that, and so it becomes part of the abusive cycle, doesn't it, because they know that if they don't get their money on time, they in fact are very vulnerable and very weak.
Mrs Field: It's another blow.
Mrs Boyd: It goes into that power cycle that is such an issue. Thank you for coming. I share many of your concerns.
The Chair: Mr Klees and Mrs Ross.
Mr Frank Klees (York-Mackenzie): I'll defer to Mrs Ross.
Mrs Ross: Joan, thank you very much for coming today. We've had discussions on services provided in Hamilton, and I appreciate all the work you do on behalf of abused women.
I'd like to address two of the issues that you raised; one is the driver's licence. I'm pleased to hear you say that you feel it's a very strong threat. As a matter of fact, yesterday when I sat in for a couple of the presentations, one of the women made that very clear, that her husband had not paid her $17,000, I believe, owing, and all of a sudden last week she received a call from her lawyer that he was ready to start looking at how he could make up those payments. She felt it was because of that threat that that was happening, that it was coincidental that it was happening, but I believe that it is a strong threat. So, I'm pleased to hear you say that as well.
I'd like to talk about the voluntary withdrawal, the opting-out provision. There are some cases where there are separations and divorces where in fact there are amicable agreements, where people separate and the spouse does maintain the support payments. Those are the cases that we're really saying can opt out.
I know you haven't read the bill, so I just wanted to point out that under subsection 9(2) where there is abusive behaviour a judge can order that the parties cannot be permitted to opt out. So, in fact, we have looked at that, because we do want to protect women. In cases where men have been convicted of abusive behaviour or assault, they will not be allowed to opt out of the plan. I just wanted to point that out.
Mrs Field: Lillian, from what you're saying, it's the judge's responsibility to make the decision whether the person can opt in or out. Why can't that be put right into the bill? Why can't that be made a provision of the withdrawal section? There's no reason it couldn't be right in the bill, to say that if a person has been convicted of abuse or assault they would not be allowed to opt out.
Mrs Ross: Right, but that's what I'm saying. According to what I read anyway, that gives the judge the authority, I think, but perhaps staff can clarify that.
Mrs Field: Isn't it the judge --
Mrs Ross: I was just going to ask staff if they could clarify that.
Mr Ken Goodman: You're referring to subsection 9(2) of the legislation, which allows a judge to make an order, in the appropriate circumstances, that the parties cannot withdraw from the program for enforcement.
Mrs Boyd: That's what it says.
Mr Goodman: It doesn't make it mandatory if there is a history of abuse, but the discretion is in the court's hands to make that order.
Mrs Ross: I think, and I think you'll agree, that this bill does go a long way to helping women and children. It's a good step -- a great step, I think -- in the right direction. I hope you agree with that. There are perhaps some amendments that will be coming forward. I think probably all of us will be looking at some things that can be changed in it, but I hope you'll agree that this is a step in the right direction.
Thank you very much for coming. I do appreciate it.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Mrs Field, for coming here and assisting us today.
HYLA FOX
The Chair: Our next presentation is Hyla Fox. You have received the written presentation filed by Ms Fox. Just for the purpose of the record, we'll have a subcommittee report, but the subcommittee has directed the clerk to remove any case numbers and things of that kind that could be misused so that does not become part of the public record.
Welcome, Ms Fox. I'd ask you to proceed.
Ms Hyla Fox: Thank you for this opportunity. I have been waiting 13 1/2 years for this, so I hope I don't blow it.
I'm a mom. I'm an elementary school teacher and a freelance writer. When I need money for my daughter and don't get it, I answer telephones for a telephone survey company, I work in a flea market and I babysit.
Bill 82 has to go forward to prevent any more children or moms from suffering at the hands of controlling, emotionally abusive, self-employed men. I filed for divorce in December 1983, he left in 1984, we were divorced in 1986, and I am still in court fighting for child support.
My former husband is a practising criminal lawyer in downtown Toronto. He knows how to abuse and manipulate this system. He knows that court orders have absolutely no meaning, no worth. He knows there are no consequences for those who choose to ignore them. He knows the family support plan has no enforcement powers. He knows how to stall the case once it gets to court. Currently he is $15,000 in arrears. Almost two years have gone by since we've seen any money.
In the package that I have submitted for your consideration I've enclosed a copy of our court order, which indicates that although my daughter is now 23 years old, she is still entitled to child support because there isn't a limit on it on her age. As long as she is in attendance at school full-time and, when not on vacation, resides at home with me, she has complied with all these restrictions.
Just to give you a little feeling for my daughter, she graduated from high school as an Ontario scholar. She won an award for academic excellence and outstanding achievement. To put a name to her face or a face to her name, I've enclosed a photograph of her that was taken at the school for the arts where she attends. It was on the front page of the Nelson Daily Herald.
I want to tell you that my ex-husband has, since 1983, consistently bounced cheques on me, on my daughter and on the family support plan itself. I've enclosed those for you to see. He never signs them; it's always his current wife or someone else. The first one is typical of the one that has gone bouncing. Many more prior to 1991 bounced, but I didn't want to go into that Pandora's box particularly. The one on the bottom half of the first page was written directly to my daughter and it went NSF. All kinds of chicanery have been played on us in our relationship with this man.
We went to court and got a variation in the court order in 1991. The deal was we opted out of the family support plan because of mail strikes, we weren't getting our money, there was no one to talk to -- all the things you've already heard. His agreement was that he was to supply my lawyer with a year's worth of post-dated cheques to my daughter and a year's worth of post-dated cheques to me. When we opened the envelopes, they were signed by somebody I had never heard of before. My lawyer said, "Don't cash them," but that meant paying more money to go back to court again to get this solved. I thought: "I can't deal with this. I will accept them."
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When they started to bounce, as I knew they were going to eventually, I had to find out who this man was. I looked through the phone book, did my research, found that he was a rabbi, phoned his wife. He's also left his wife and is not paying child support. I went to his place of employment and they wouldn't do anything to help us. The family support plan took about eight or nine months to straighten out this whole mess, until we got our money.
I've also enclosed in the package a fax from the family support plan that his cheque bounced, because I wondered how come I wasn't getting a cheque. They didn't send me the cheque because they took the money that came that particular month in lieu of the funds that had bounced the previous month. That was in January 1993. Of course, nobody ever phoned to tell me this was going to happen.
There was no food. We found out that popcorn is very filling. Yes, I am an elementary school teacher. I only make $49,000 a year. I have a little house. The mortgage is $1,000; the land tax is $150. I have taken loan upon loan to help us out, and so to pay the loans it's $450. Once a month I get a cheque from my pay, from my work, and it's only $600. I can't send a child to university on $600 and pay all the utilities and look after my car and the insurance and the house.
We went to court on May 31, 1995, and my daughter wrote a letter when she came home from school for me to take to the judge. I have enclosed that in the document that I've given you. She's outlined here very clearly another set of circumstances that have really set all of us aback:
"In September 1993, I began my post-secondary education at the University of British Columbia. I spent an entire year there and returned to Toronto in the summer to work. I had intended on returning to school again in the fall of 1994 but found myself in an unforeseen state of mind and life after a lengthy and terribly messy legal court case in which I was sued by and accused of conspiracy by my father....
"I stayed in Toronto and worked that fall and returned to school in January. Covering my own tuition and other expenses, I soon found that my meagre savings would surely not stretch as far as needed or expected. I hadn't applied for a Canada student loan because I had personally been denied aid due to my parents' incomes," and also because she assumed support payments would resume.
"While a full-time student, I was able only to work minimally. I did however have to turn to UBC's student-run Alma Mater Society for an emergency loan of $700 which I must return before August 31 of this summer. Also my mother sent me whatever funds that she could. Without the support payments that I was expecting to resume, things were more difficult for me."
I sent her what I could, but at that particular time I was very ill and was a full-time patient at Princess Margaret. I couldn't work at any other jobs. I couldn't get any of my friends to loan me any more money because they didn't have any more to lend. So the only thing that I could tell my daughter was to go to welfare. This child of a criminal lawyer in downtown Toronto with a swishy office, with a Cadillac, with jewellery and a full-length fur coat had a daughter on welfare in British Columbia and he couldn't pay her child support.
"My father has chosen to deny me, my life and my happiness. Whether he realizes it or not, a father is always obligated to their child emotionally or financially. Not only has he defaulted on these responsibilities, but he seems also to take pride and pleasure in lying publicly about me with the single aim of clearing his name and soiling mine."
The Globe and Mail did an article about this situation and I've included that in your papers. This man, this criminal lawyer, said to Margaret Philp of the Globe and Mail, "What court in the world is going to make me pay for a 22-year-old who's got this kind of money?" She has no money. He sued her for $500,000. He lost; he appealed to a lower court. He appealed in the upper court, where he won, and the children are seeking leave to the Supreme Court of Canada to reverse that decision.
In January 1995 -- and I have included this with your material -- the family support plan resumed enforcement of my order in light of the fact that my daughter returned to school. We initiated federal garnishment action and requested a writ of seizure and sale to be filed in the sheriff's office. In February we initiated a garnishment against the Ontario legal aid plan. Well, they did file a writ of seizure and sale; I went and looked it up. But it was for one month and it wasn't effective because nobody at the family support plan did anything about it. It was filed, but this man just kept right on trucking and it didn't mean anything.
I've enclosed an article that appeared in the Toronto Star so you can see what he looks like. It's about this court case that he won. He won all this money, he says, but still he couldn't afford to pay child support.
I've also enclosed an article that was in the Toronto Sun by Ian Harvey quoting a judge who heard a small portion of this case saying, "`I'm not going to put someone in jail on a legal technicality,' said Bean, who also refused to order Fox to resume monthly payments of $741." How come?
Tracey Tyler in the Toronto Star quoted this particular deadbeat dad when he said, "I'm prepared to make my payments, but I want to confirm that she's really at school."
All these confirmations have been completely fulfilled.
Many months ago, this same criminal lawyer served papers seeking an amendment to the child support. That meant I had to hire a lawyer. So far, I'm into legal fees again for $3,500 on top of all the money I spent in the past to get a workable court order that doesn't mean anything, and that cost me $30,000.
Then this lawyer sued Ron Hurren, the head of the legal department at the family support plan, for $6,000 personally in Small Claims Court, so he wouldn't attend any of my court hearings. The family support plan sent another lawyer one day. She was afraid to come back. The third day we were in court last week, no lawyer from the family support plan would come, so the family support plan had to hire an outside lawyer who came all the way from Whitby.
My ex-spouse has hired an expensive, well-known lawyer as discussed in Toronto Life's "Divorce from Hell" article. He has a law student who appears at every hearing that we go to. He supplies his own court reporter. He has hired a detective to follow my daughter around the province of British Columbia. He has found a way to get information on her bank accounts, but he can't afford to pay child support and no one is going after him and we continue to suffer all the time.
I want to close with some conclusions. Bill 82 is a really good beginning. It's a first step towards being able to immobilize these self-employed men who, as you have just heard, are the most difficult to control. You should be able to attach all legal aid bills for those who do take legal aid, OHIP for women whose spouses are dentists, insurance policies for women who are ex-wives of dentists. And for these worst offenders, like my ex-husband, who are determined not to honour their obligations, you should be able to get at their pensions. This abuse of the system has to stop.
In addition, I really believe that professional governing bodies like the law society should be held accountable. They should be called in to examine how perpetually delinquent payors like this man are allowed to abuse the situation. The law society should be held responsible for the professional image their members have. Not obeying court orders, bouncing cheques on children, bouncing cheques on the Attorney General, shouldn't be brushed off as merely a family matter. Now I'm all emotionally charged, and I'm sorry. That's it.
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The Chair: Thank you, Ms Fox. We only have about two minutes per caucus, starting with Mrs Boyd.
Mrs Boyd: Thank you for coming. We do attach OHIP billings, just so you know; I think that has gone through.
There's no question that lawyers are the hardest. As you probably know, largely in response to your case, we spent about 18 months trying to get the law society to do exactly the kinds of things you're talking about. We were not successful and, unfortunately, did that at the expense of doing some of these other things.
I'm very hopeful that some of the changes in Bill 82 may make a difference, but you are in the position that many women who have been married to lawyers are in. They know the system well, they know the players in the system and they milk the system for all it's worth. In your group but also in the SCOPE group, the most heart-rending cases are very often those cases. I'm hopeful this will make some difference, but I think the lack of representation and the difficulty you have unfortunately are not going to be entirely solved by the bill.
Ms Fox: No, but if you get his licence, that will help. I think we also have to look at the judges too. They have to show some accountability.
Mrs Boyd: I couldn't agree with you more.
Ms Shelley Martel (Sudbury East): I'd ask a question on the provision for opting out. You would know that that is also part of the bill. I listened to you say that you opted out in 1991, and I assume at some point you opted back in, but I missed that, so I apologize for that. What do you think about that provision? For your own personal case, I understand the reasons you did it in the first place. Certainly this is part of the concern we have raised about where people will end up. Is there ability for someone to coerce someone into opting out, make a few payments and then stop? I wonder if you've got any insights for us on that part of it, as you went through it.
Ms Fox: For a case like mine, you can't opt out. There is no choice; you have to stay in. But there are lots and lots of people who have no trouble. My case, I think, is really unusual.
I would like to see the time devoted to pushing paper for people who have no problem with the system eliminated so that there will be more people to sit on cases like mine -- mine isn't the only awful one -- and to answer questions.
The family support plan in the last six months has been terrific for me, just the opposite; it's been a flip. They've been very supportive all the time, and I'm sorry that Ron Hurren has been sued. I hope he's getting support.
Mr Guzzo: I want to thank you for coming. Let me say to you that self-employed people are a difficulty for the people trying to enforce these matters, but a self-employed lawyer is the worst possible scenario. I thank you for bringing it. I think it's important that we make note of the fact that it's not as unusual a case as some people might think. The law society, in refusing to become involved in matters such as this -- and we had the situation of a former wife of a dentist last time. The governing bodies of the professions have to become involved. I gave an example of where a person doing business with an individual actually became involved and cooperated, as opposed to the governing body of a professional organization refusing to.
Ms Fox: There are some people who are holding this man up as a role model and emulating him because he's been allowed to go so far.
Mr Guzzo: I'm aware of that. Again I thank you for coming.
Ms Fox: Thank you very much for listening. After 13 years, it was worth it.
The Chair: You have one minute, Mr Klees.
Mr Klees: Ms Fox, thank you indeed. In some of the information you've presented, I read from an article: "MAFIA's message in targeting an élite group of fathers is to publicize the shortcomings of Ontario's family support plan," and this goes back to March 1995. When did MAFIA get established?
Ms Fox: I think about two and a half, three years ago.
Mr Klees: So the fact that there are problems with the family support plan is nothing new.
Ms Fox: Oh, goodness no. It was much worse before.
Mr Klees: Certainly it goes beyond the term of this government.
Ms Fox: Oh, yes. It's an ongoing problem, even before it was the family support plan.
Mr Klees: Your opinion is that the provisions of this bill at least are taking some steps towards addressing some of the concerns you've had. I'm particularly pleased about the comment you made with reference to the professions. I hold the view that not only should we be able to suspend driver's licences but there should in fact be an implication on professional licences. There should not be any way in which professionals can continue to practise in this province, not living up to their responsibilities in their homes.
Mr Ramsay: Ms Fox, thank you very much for making a presentation. I'd like to continue with the comment Mr Klees made. I'd be prepared to support you if you want to move an amendment right now because I agree, that's exactly what we should do, and I hope Mr Guzzo would be with me also. If you really want to stop the self-employed professionals, and we've heard a number of their ex-spouses coming before us, we should be able to suspend their professional licences also.
I would be prepared to move an amendment on Monday for that, and I see now that maybe at least one government member would support me. I hope the government members would think about that, that the staff would pass that on to the Attorney General and that he would think about that so we could give some serious consideration to that. I'm sorry, but guys like your ex-partner are getting away with it, and they know more than anyone else how to do it. He's got the education and the training. He's paid to do that for other people.
Ms Fox: Worse yet, he's teaching others how to do it now.
Mr Ramsay: That's right, and I think --
Mr Guzzo: Ninety percent of his billings are coming from us, the legal aid plan. If he's doing criminal law, guaranteed: 90% of his billings are coming from the legal aid plan.
Ms Fox: He doesn't take legal aid, I don't think, so they couldn't zap it.
Mr Ramsay: I think this is important, and I would hope that all members of the committee would think about this over the weekend and that we could maybe come together on this. It might just send enough shock waves through the system that ex-partners such as yours would stop this abuse.
Ms Fox: That would be exciting.
The Chair: Ms Fox, thank you for assisting this committee in its deliberations.
Ms Fox: Thank you for this opportunity. I hope I never have to do it again.
The Chair: Melody-Lynn Corchis? I understand she may not be present.
DENISE ASHBY JUDITH KILLORAN
The Chair: We'll proceed to Denise Ashby and Judith Killoran. Welcome. You have provided us with a written submission, which the committee has. I'd ask you to proceed.
Ms Denise Ashby: I'd like to thank the Chair and the clerk of the committee, Mr Arnott, and the committee for permitting us this opportunity to speak to you. We are here today to raise our concerns regarding the proposed legislation to restructure the family support plan. We are both lawyers who have had personal experience with the family support plan, or FSP.
The family support plan was introduced as a successor to SCOE, as I'm sure you're all aware. The FSP required that all orders for support be registered with the plan. It was, therefore, a universal enforcement program. It was intended to remove the stigma of garnishment orders against a payor's wages. It was hoped by many of us that eventually support payments would become just another deduction, not unlike CPP. The opting-out provisions in Bill 82 destroy any opportunity for uniform and consistent enforcement of support orders, which surely all children are entitled to.
The thrust of our submission is to focus on the illusory nature of the positive aspects of Bill 82. Many of the new provisions would require an increased allocation of resources to ensure effective implementation.
We are confident that the statistics available a year following the passage of this bill may indicate a significant improvement in the percentage of cases defined as "in compliance" and as having "funds flowing on a regular basis." However, that percentage increase will be nothing more than a numbers game. It will not represent more money in the hands of children and their mothers, as the gains will have been achieved by the directors or some agent exercising his or her discretion to close unenforceable files and the use of the opting-out provisions.
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Similarly, it is illusory to expand the definition of an income source if there is no adequate enforcement process to ensure that the new definition is applied to fathers in arrears. The recent 40% reduction in FSP staffing is the real amendment to the enforcement process, which will have the most profound consequences on the flow of funds to mothers and children. The proof is in the débâcle of the past four months, which has been reported on a daily basis by members of the opposition parties and has consistently been denied by the government of the day. The government has successfully created a crisis and we expect will remain committed to sustaining that crisis.
Its strategy will result in massive numbers of mothers succumbing to pressure from their former spouses to opt out on the pretence that the system is broken and they should trust their former spouses. We have seen what that history of trust has accomplished in the past: child poverty.
Ms Judith Killoran: I'd like to deal with some of the enforcement issues. The first is that of resources. Every attempt has been made to remove the human face from this issue. The best example of this is the removal of counter service throughout the province. In this way, files remain a collection of documents and the dehumanizing aspects of a bureaucracy minimize the pain and suffering of the women and children who are the victims of support arrears.
Recipients were sent pamphlets extolling the improvements in the system and the ease with which the system could be accessed. It was touted as a new, user-friendly FSP. In reality, the numbers were the same old numbers and it was even more difficult to obtain information and personal assistance was not available.
It was not until the Kormos-Martel tapes that the reasons for the crisis became apparent. There was no staff to reach. The files were in disarray. The images of the most intimate personal information of the lives of Ontario residents in cheap packing boxes was shocking. It is an indication of the real agenda that this legislation seeks to serve.
In light of the decision to reduce staff by such an extraordinary degree, it is outrageous to suggest that payors in arrears will have their driving licence suspended, assets sheltered by a third party attached, support orders registered against personal property, garnishment of joint bank accounts, lottery winnings intercepted and credit bureaus informed. Such amendments are meaningless in the face of gutted resources. All those amendments, on the face, sound like wonderful improvements. If there's no method to enforce, they mean nothing, they're nothing but words on paper.
The second issue is so-called impractical enforcement. This bill proposes to lump a large number of files under the heading "impractical enforcement" and allow the director or some assigned agent to refuse to register an order or to close a file wherever it is unreasonable or impractical to enforce. Those files affected are where the meaning of the order is ambiguous; where the amount is nominal; where there are long-standing arrears; where the payor's location is unknown; or the payor is incarcerated for five years or longer.
The ability to define as "unenforceable" orders which are deemed ambiguous or nominal will sacrifice many historical orders which do not fit the new requirements. What you may consider nominal is not nominal for many children in this province. Many women who hope to benefit from the expanded income definition will be surprised when their files are closed because their order is deemed ambiguous or nominal.
Similarly, COLA clauses which are presently being enforced will not be enforced any longer if they do not meet the new drafting requirements of Bill 82.
Experience in family law teaches one that persistence is everything. A payor's circumstances change. It is foolhardy to write off a father in arrears as a bad debt. It is morally offensive that parents who have successfully evaded their obligations would be rewarded for their efforts, and that is what this bill is proposing to do.
The third issue is that of assignment of the director's powers. Again, the government's spin doctors suggest that this is a positive element, permitting the delegation of collections to experts in the private sector. Although it may be personally satisfying to picture deadbeat dads being pursued by collection agencies, the assignment of powers provisions are somewhat horrifying in their implications.
Subsection 4(2) provides that such an assignment, "may include powers, duties or functions that are not purely administrative in nature, including statutory powers of decision and discretionary powers given to the director under this act, and may provide that an assignee may be a party in any action or proceeding instead of the director."
This provision would permit the so-called private sector experts to determine what orders of our courts are impractical to enforce. This is a clear abdication of responsibility on the part of the government. It erodes the statutory and procedural protections afforded to the citizens of Ontario; in this case, its most vulnerable citizens, its children. It is reprehensible that those who would profit from enforcing only the easy cases while divesting themselves of the labour- and thought-intensive cases could determine which files should be closed, not the director.
The government should have, as its motivation, the enforcement of children's rights to support and not private sector profit margins. Clearly this government prefers the business interests of the private sector to the needs of the province's children, who should benefit from support orders.
This is just a brief overview of the most glaring flaws evident in Bill 82. We believe that the present bill requires substantial amendments and a commitment by the government to the proper allocation of resources to the plan to ensure enforcement of support orders.
We particularly object to the hoax which is being perpetrated on the province which suggests that this bill will guarantee new, improved enforcement procedures. Our analysis leads us to a contrary result.
In summary, we urge this committee and the Legislature to remove the assignment of powers and the opting out and discretionary closure of files provisions. Thank you.
The Chair: We have approximately three minutes per caucus. Mr Tilson.
Mr Tilson: Thank you very much for coming and offering your suggestions with respect to the bill. One of the options which you have felt very strongly about, as have members of the opposition, in particular the New Democrat caucus, is the issue of opting out. I gather you both practise family law?
Ms Ashby: No.
Ms Killoran: We have at various times.
Mr Tilson: Okay. I can say to you that I have talked to not just constituents but members of the bar who practise family law and they have told me that, yes, there are a number of deadbeat dads, there are a number of people who have a complete disregard for their obligations to support their ex-wives and their children, but there are a number out there who have worked out their arrangements, the husband and the wife have worked out their arrangements. They have an amicable arrangement for the payment of funds, one has custody, one has access. There's no question we hear some bad stories, but they've all said that they don't want the government to interfere in their lives.
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I've spoken to lawyers who have had a complete dissatisfaction with the existing system because in fact they say if they had a separation agreement with certain provisions in the separation agreement and no order dealing with that, they could garnishee wages just like that, whereas the existing plan -- well, you smiled, but I'm just telling you what lawyers have told me and that they have in fact done it.
Ms Ashby: I'd like to have their names.
Mr Tilson: I'm not going to give you names here; I'll give you names privately. But there's no question that they have done that, whereas the system isn't as successful. The parties in small communities feel that it's very important that they retain their privacy. I don't know where you are solicitors, but I can tell you that in the small communities matrimonial dissolutions, for the husbands, for the wives, for the children, are very difficult things in those communities. Many of them, if they work out their differences, don't want the employers to know certain things about them. My point is that these constituents and lawyers have told me they don't want to be part of the system, that they can handle things themselves. Could you respond to that?
Ms Ashby: Yes, I'd like to very much. I had the privilege of practising in small-town Ontario, and my experience is quite different than that which you expressed. I think it's apparent that the family support plan has had problems, and certainly SCOE, its antecedent, had problems. I'm not denying that. What I am suggesting is that universality has a place; that the type of stigma that you are suggesting exists becomes less a stigma as time goes on and just becomes a natural fact of life. You separate, you go to court, you get a support order and it gets registered. You start your payments, it's deducted.
The Chair: Excuse me, thank you. We've got to move to the next caucus.
Mr Crozier: Thank you, Chair, and good afternoon. I understand what you're commenting to with regard to Mr Tilson. Most often I agree with Mr Tilson, but I have lived in a small town for more years than I'd like to think, and I think that's so much baloney. Small-town divorces are just as amicable. They are also just as -- pardon me?
Ms Ashby: Fractious.
Mr Crozier: -- fractious as they are in the big city. The problems are the same. The stigma? If anything, I think the stigma isn't there as it used to be. Unfortunately, divorce is a fact of life today. I know many divorced couples in our small town, and they continue to live in the same community. The fact that we're any different in a small town than in a large town, I beg to differ on.
We don't have much time, so if you would like to make any further comment on the assignment of director's powers -- you've covered it very well. That's a part of the bill that I'm uncomfortable with, when the government begins to move towards what I call, and perhaps you did in here, abdicating its responsibility.
Ms Ashby: I suggest that this committee is the administration of justice committee. I believe that this section is a total erosion and reflects badly on the administration of justice and the access to justice. To think that some head of a bill-collecting firm could decide that a child has no rights to their support, I think is anathema.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr Crozier. Ms Martel?
Ms Martel: I'll start. Actually, I don't have questions; my colleagues do. I want to thank you for raising the fact of the resources, because in my second reading debate on this piece of legislation, there were some who took offence when I said that the government is holding out false promise to people about what the measures will achieve.
We agree with the enforcement measures, but the measures may not work when people realize that the family support plan has been cut by 35% and 290 experienced staff are laid off and you have the awful situation right now where you have staff who are just being hired, who are just being trained, who will take months to be trained. You have the fact that the Downsview office is not anywhere near up and operating and won't be, and you have the additional problem that the computer system and the technology that these enforcement mechanisms rely on has just gone out to tender, and it will be months and months and months before it will be up and running and people will be trained on it.
I found that really offensive, that the government suggested we get this legislation done and over with so people could get money when in fact people who have waited a long time are going to wait a whole hell of a lot longer before some of these provisions can even go into effect because of the cuts the government has already made.
Ms Killoran: That reinforces our opinion that the crisis has been created by the government and that it's being perpetuated by the government and it will be perpetuated for some time now with the hope that more and more people will opt out of a system that they see as being broken.
The Chair: You have one minute.
Mrs Boyd: That's better than none. You certainly state that very powerfully, and your argument around the administration of justice and the assignment of powers, that's the first time we've heard it from that angle. It's very helpful for us to hear about it from that angle, because that is in fact what this bill allows to be done. It says that a judge makes an order but someone else gets to say whether or not that order will be honoured.
Ms Killoran: We're talking about increasing the discretionary powers that are initially vested in the director. The director can then turn around and pass on those broader powers to someone else, a bill collection agency, for example. A bill collection agency could decide that the amount is nominal.
Mrs Boyd: That's right.
Ms Killoran: It may not be nominal in anyone else's eyes.
Ms Ashby: A $5,000-a-month support order or $1,000-a-month support order, where is their bottom line going to be? In a cost-effective way when you do your cost-benefit analysis, what's a businessperson going to do? A businessperson could say: "Hey, $1,000 a month? I'm not going to pay 12 grand to go after this guy."
The Chair: Thank you very much for your presentation here today.
Ms Ashby: Thank you very much to the committee for hearing us.
The Chair: I'll call Melody-Lynn Corchis. No?
LESLIE HUTCHINSON-WESTLOCK
The Chair: We are now proceeding to our 5:50 appointment, Leslie Hutchinson-Westlock. Welcome. Did you have a written presentation?
Ms Leslie Hutchinson-Westlock: No, I don't. No paperwork this time. You can relax.
The Chair: I was just asking because I had a number of them here. Please proceed. You have 20 minutes.
Ms Hutchinson-Westlock: I just want to be brief. I'm a Canadian citizen. I've lived in the United States for the last 23 years, and through going through a divorce, I have moved back to Canada. I'm happy to be back and getting to know my country again. I have been very concerned about the new bill and so on, and I have familiarized myself with it.
First of all, as I go around the table, every one of you knows somebody who has been involved with a deadbeat parent. It could be a sister, a mother, cousin, employee, various people. But you really don't know what it's like. You can sympathize with these people, but you have no idea what it's like. I never had an idea of what it was like until I went through it. You don't know what it's like to go through it.
You don't know from one day to the next, especially with women, because it happens to a majority of women. Some women are a lot stronger than other women, just like some men are a lot stronger than other men. You've got to be very tenacious. You've just got to stick with it. In the old days and up till just recently, it was always swept under the table, "Oh, they'll get on with it," nobody really got involved. Today we're getting involved. Why we're getting involved is because money talks, and this problem is escalating where parents are not even showing up for court, are defying court orders. If they show up for court, if they're self-employed they're saying that they're bankrupt.
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I would like to see aiding and abetting laws here for transfer of money. That happens all the time. It happens not only here, it happens everywhere in the world. It's so easy to say that you're bankrupt by just transferring money to a sister or a good friend. You can still operate a company and go on the payroll for $300 a week.
In the old days, probably none of you will remember the old used car salesman and what a reputation that used car salesman had. Here in Toronto and here in Ontario we had to bring in laws and enforce those laws to get rid of those used car salesmen. So to me the used car salesman of the 1950s has become the deadbeat dad or deadbeat parent of the 1990s. It's the same thing.
Mr Guzzo: I thought you were going to say politicians of the 1990s.
Ms Hutchinson-Westlock: Not yet.
Mr Guzzo: Give us a chance. We're working on it.
Ms Hutchinson-Westlock: We still make jokes about the used car salesman today, and I relate that to the deadbeat parent of today. It's the same thing.
The only way we can do it is bring in enforcement laws and tighten them up and take away licences, professional licences too, because the taxpayers cannot, quite frankly, afford it any more. There's no way. You read the newspapers every day. Sure, inflation's stable, interest rates are down and so on, but the average person is not seeing the same net income as they used to see. That does make a big difference, especially if you're a single mother.
It's funny how life leads you from one path to another, but anyway I'm a very good friend of Marilyn Nichols of deadbeat dad fame. I met Marilyn Nichols before I decided to serve my husband with papers for a divorce. I must say that Marilyn was a great inspiration, I think, to the world of women in this situation. There's no question. She was very tenacious and she has been a force. She's very strong, very articulate, a very nice person. Anyway, Marilyn has been referring me because there's no place for women to go, or men, so we do it sort of networking.
Every night I am on the phone, I am getting calls all across Canada, all across the United States, trying to find out what group, who can help us. "I have no money to pay for a lawyer. My husband has decided to go bankrupt and he's refusing to pay child support. I'm sitting in a house that's for sale because the bank has foreclosed. Where do I go? Leslie, can you help me?" I'm trying to help these people by networking to somebody who can help them.
In fact, even in New York City there is a group I got to know. There's a coalition that is trying to change legislation there, and they have this group called The Sanctuary, and I think it's very good, whereby a group of women have gotten together and have gotten a lot of lawyers involved where they'll do some pro bono work. That's helping a lot and that's something I would like to get started here, because I really believe if a lawyer can be justified legal fees of $300 an hour -- I don't care if he makes $300 or $500 -- in order to justify those fees, why don't we have him or her take two cases a year pro bono? I think that would be a big help.
I've just made a few notes here. I'm coming from the behaviour aspect. I want this behaviour to change whereby when somebody's getting a divorce and they're giving their spouse or their children a heck of a bad time, I want their peers, their neighbours, their business associates to say: "That's got to stop. We do not want that behaviour. That behaviour is condemned. It's not like it used to be in the old days."
Our society is changing and I must say, with children, when they see their deadbeat parent is getting away without paying and not even being thrown in jail, so to speak, they figure he must be an okay guy. I hope they would think that way, but they must say, "Society really doesn't condemn these people." Again, I would like to have those attitudes changed.
Just another note. As I said, I'm very familiar with the new Bill 82 and I think it's a beginning. I think there's a lot more to be involved with, but you've got to start somewhere and we've got to move on it. We're living in a democracy, so I would like to feel that if somebody wanted to opt out of the plan they can, and I feel very strongly about that.
Basically again I'm going through this. It's very difficult on women. As I said earlier, I have women calling me and these women say to me: "You know, Leslie, I can't even get out of bed. I don't know how I'm going to face the day. I've got three kids I've got to look after. I've got debts. I have no food. I go to the bathroom and I just throw up. Every morning I just throw up and throw up." That's hard, that's very hard, not only on the woman, but it's hard on kids, it really is. Because they feel maybe they caused it or "What can I do?" and that's a lot of pressure on a kid when he or she's going to school.
I feel very strongly about Bill 82. It's time to move on into the 1990s and have some sort of proper attitudes towards this case. As you know, every day it has become a very hot issue because every time you pick up a newspaper it's always about family support. You turn on the TV, Oprah Winfrey's having a deadbeat father show again, or a mother show. It's a hot topic and I think while everybody's talking about it it's time to move on it. I feel society is now being educated and willing to move on it.
Basically, that's all I have to say.
The Chair: Thank you very much. We have two minutes per caucus.
Mr Ramsay: Leslie, thank you very much for making your presentation. It was great and very informative. I wanted to ask you, because I agree with you about the opting-out provisions, but then as I think more and more about it I'm wondering, what about a woman who had suffered from physical abuse in the past?
Ms Hutchinson-Westlock: I can relate to that. Oh, there is a gal here who spoke earlier who felt very threatened. I think in certain cases, yes, but every case is different. You can't just uniform every case. What she was saying about herself, I agree. I'm a battered wife too. It's hard to believe. It was hard for me to believe this young lady over here. As I say, you don't know until you've been there. You don't know it.
Mr Ramsay: That's what I'm getting at, so that we'd still have an opting-out provision but then you would say except for people where there has been a known history, a documented history of abuse as a protection to that woman in case there is some coercion going on at this time. I'm just wondering about a safety measure there.
Ms Hutchinson-Westlock: Well, yes, I think there definitely has to be a safety measure. There's no question. I worry about my case. Right now, I have nothing. My husband has defied all court orders. He hasn't shown up for court, nothing. I don't worry about my safety now, but I'm going to worry about when I get the money and when I get him. I'm like the RCMP; I always get my man.
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Mr Peter Kormos (Welland-Thorold): Thank you kindly for your comments. I want to speak to this business of opting out too. I hear what you say, and other people have said the same or similar things. Mr Tilson referred to it just a few moments ago. It seems to me, though, that in situations where there truly is that high level of cooperation, there isn't a court order or maybe not even a separation agreement, because there is the high level of cooperation. People have made their own arrangements. They wouldn't even come close to the family support plan, in any event.
Ms Hutchinson-Westlock: Yes, but those are so unusual.
Mr Kormos: Exactly. I don't have data, but --
Ms Hutchinson-Westlock: They are unusual. Look, you've heard of divorces where two people didn't even use a lawyer; they just sat down, "You take this and I'll take that and so long," but those are very, very unusual.
Mr Kormos: I agree, which is what --
Ms Hutchinson-Westlock: But when it comes to abuse, then that's a different story.
Mr Kormos: Also, what about the phenomenon, because it seems to me that this happens in more than a few marriage breakdowns, you go through stages and there seem to be patterns, not always the same, but one stage is, "Oh, you can have anything you want." The next --
Ms Hutchinson-Westlock: That's because the one who wants out probably feels guilty because they've been running around.
Mr Kormos: But at the end of the day, when all is said and done, people circle their wagons and, all of a sudden, become far less cooperative than they might have been.
Ms Hutchinson-Westlock: That's because they get with the lawyers and the lawyers say, "Hey, look" -- you know how many lawyers are not making a buck today, who are going out of business? There are plenty of them.
Mr Ron Johnson (Brantford): You're talking to one of them.
Ms Hutchinson-Westlock: You should know. There are plenty of them.
Mr Kormos: I don't earn a penny practising law.
Ms Hutchinson-Westlock: You know what? I'm amazed today that lawyers will take these deadbeat father cases such as my husband. They know this guy is a creep and everything else, but they'll do it because of the almighty dollar.
Mr Kormos: But then why shouldn't people, the minute there's a court order --
Ms Hutchinson-Westlock: I know the flip edge of it too.
Mr Kormos: Hold on. Why shouldn't people, the minute there's a court order, get into the system of processing the money from the payor to the payee so that everybody's on a level playing field, everybody's on an even plane?
Ms Hutchinson-Westlock: No, as I say, and everything is different, I think it should be ones who opt out -- if two people get along, why do they need to go through this other stupid system?
Mr Kormos: I'm worried that things change six months down the road.
Ms Hutchinson-Westlock: Then they should be able to get back into it. Yes, that's simple enough.
Mr Kormos: You've got a bill here that contemplates charging fees for people to get back into the system.
Ms Hutchinson-Westlock: They're charging fees?
Mr Kormos: Yes.
Ms Hutchinson-Westlock: Well, all right, you know what? Our main issue is passing this Bill 82 and then we can worry about that other stuff and it'll all come together anyway. It's basically there, but you can fine-tune it.
Mr Kormos: That's why we're glad you're here. We've got to fine-tune it now.
Ms Hutchinson-Westlock: But I think --
Interjections.
The Chair: Order. I can't hear what's going on.
Ms Hutchinson-Westlock: -- you've got to make it a little broad rather than be precise. I think you've got to leave a little --
Mr Kormos: Leeway.
Ms Hutchinson-Westlock: Leeway, absolutely.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr Kormos. We'll now move to the government caucus and we have Mr Guzzo and Mr Klees with whatever order you wish to take it in.
Mr Guzzo: I want to thank you too, Leslie, for coming in. I wanted to zero in on that pro bono group. I thought you had the first volunteer. I honestly thought Mr Kormos was going to be the first volunteer for that.
Ms Hutchinson-Westlock: I don't know. I thought he was sliding under the desk.
Mr Guzzo: No. I want to tell you, if you were successful in getting him -- I've watched him in court and he is excellent, a very, very good --
Ms Hutchinson-Westlock: You would recommend him.
The Chair: Excuse me, Mr Guzzo. We have a point of order.
Mr Kormos: On a point of order, Mr Chair: In terms of what Mr Guzzo has raised, there's been so much interest as of late in how much money I earn practising law. Granted, my 1995 Chev pickup doesn't come free, but it's not an expensive car.
The Chair: Excuse me, Mr Kormos, that is not a proper point of order.
Mr Kormos: I really would rather people would pay more attention to their own personal --
The Chair: The point is taken. Mr Guzzo.
Mr Guzzo: I want to explain to you what happened. We used to have exactly that type of pro bono group here. It was called free legal aid, and then somebody around about 1969 or 1970 got the bright idea that the government would provide the legal aid. The lawyers no longer contributed free cases.
But what I want to zero in on -- and I'm not suggesting that your idea is not worthwhile and I commend you for it. But when it comes to people in your case, women or men in that situation, I want to know why you are not arguing that they qualify for legal aid. My point is that tonight there will be 50 or 75 people picked up for anything from armed robbery to murder to rape who automatically tomorrow morning will qualify because they're criminal charges. Some of these people have never paid a nickel in taxes and never will pay a nickel in taxes.
In the case of the destitute mother, she has contributed to the tax bill and she will again in most cases, but we are denying legal aid. I want to know why you're not pounding home the idea that the legal aid money should be directed more to civil cases than to the criminal.
Ms Martel: So why doesn't your government do that?
Mr Guzzo: Because you gave the power to the law society.
Ms Hutchinson-Westlock: Correct me if I'm wrong, but I understand if you do decide to go with legal aid, you have to pay it back. Is that correct?
Mr Guzzo: Some do and some don't. Let me tell you, the people who are doing five and 10 years in Warkworth aren't paying it back, and the people with the immigration files who get deported don't pay it back.
Ms Hutchinson-Westlock: But I mean in family law cases.
Mr Guzzo: Some will and some won't. Anyway, Mr Kormos now wants to be number one on the pro bono list, and I want to highly commend him to you.
Ms Hutchinson-Westlock: Listen: I'm a great believer that you've got to give back to society.
Mr Guzzo: Peter agrees with that.
Ms Hutchinson-Westlock: For so many years we've taken. We've got to give back.
The Chair: Thank you very much for your presentation.
I'll call on Ms Corchis. No? Sandra Patterson? No?
TAMERA-LYNN BEAULIEU
The Chair: Then I call Tamera-Lynn Beaulieu. Welcome. I realize you're a bit early. Are you ready to proceed?
Mrs Tamera-Lynn Beaulieu: Sure. I'll tell you about my personal part of this and how it affected me.
In 1992 I received my divorce. At that time my ex-husband agreed to pay $140 a month child support for all three of my children. This averaged out to $46.66 a month per child.
In 1994 my ex-husband was either fired or quit his job. Even before he was unemployed he was already in arrears of his child support. He decided to take me to court to have the arrears of his child support erased. He was able to obtain legal aid to do so. I had to sign a lien on a home that my new husband and I had just purchased. By this time my ex-husband was over $2,000 in arrears. The judge suspended the arrears and decreased the child support to $100 a month, which was $33.33 per child. The judge believed my ex-husband would not have been so far behind if he had paid the child support all along. The arrears were only to be suspended until my ex-husband obtained employment.
My ex-husband also wanted to be able to take the children out of the SD&G county region. He wanted to take them to places like Toronto's Wonderland and Santa's Workshop. We couldn't understand how he could afford to take the children to such places when he couldn't afford to pay $140 a month support, and because he was on social assistance. Because of this last proceeding, my husband and I have a lien of over $3,000 on our home. After that, my ex-husband returned to his old job. I received a couple of support payments shortly after, and then nothing. This year I have received three payments which total about $250. My ex-husband is now $4,311 in arrears.
I spoke not only to Mr Cleary's office but to the family support plan several times. It was then that the family support plan told me that they repeatedly sent forms to my ex-husband's employer, with no results. They also told me that they were unable to reach the employer by phone. My ex-husband and his lawyer are now saying that the child support was deducted from his pay and they believe the employer is withholding the support payments.
I notified the family support plan of this. A gentleman from the enforcement division of the family support plan called me and suggested that I call my ex-husband's employer. I found out that I could be charged with harassment for doing so. The family support plan is still unable to explain how my ex-husband has been able to become so far in arrears, nor are they able to do anything about it.
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The Chair: Thank you. I don't know whether you mentioned, is your ex-husband self-employed?
Mrs Beaulieu: No. He works for a courier service.
The Chair: We'll start with the third party, and we have approximately five minutes per caucus.
Ms Martel: Chair, there was also a written submission. I just wondered if the presenter wants to read that.
Mrs Beaulieu: I figured I would just leave this with everyone.
Mr Tilson: Mr Chairman, could I speak as the parliamentary assistant? I'm the parliamentary assistant for the Attorney General. Most of your presentation has been of a personal nature. For some of the deputants who have been coming with the type of problems you have had -- it's unfortunate you've had to come to a hearing to do that. Nevertheless, I am prepared, if you wish -- and if you don't wish, that's fine -- to go outside the committee room with you and try and resolve some of those difficulties. Some members may still have questions, but if you don't wish to personalize it, because all this is on the public record, you don't have to do that. But if you have direct comments as far as the system or the proposed legislation are concerned, we'd be pleased to hear from you. I offer that to you at the end of the presentation; I could go outside with you.
Mrs Beaulieu: Okay.
Ms Martel: Thank you for your presentation here today, and I hope the parliamentary assistant is able to help you with your case.
Let me ask you a little about some of your comments which I've just read. Some of them touch on the bill itself and changes you'd like to see, and some have to do with the organization of the plan.
Point 8 particularly speaks to the ability of case workers to deal with the same people all the time. I assume you've had all kinds of problems where you've had to respond to questions you've already answered time and time again.
Mrs Beaulieu: Constantly.
Ms Martel: I wonder if you can describe what your experience has been in the last number of months. Certainly, while there was a problem before, that problem just got a whole heck of a lot worse in mid-August when the Ottawa office closed, and I assume you would have dealt with the Ottawa office if your member's in Cornwall.
Mrs Beaulieu: We have to call Toronto now to speak to people and you can never get the same person you were speaking to before. You're answering all the same things, you're always giving your number, you're always answering the same questions; they're always asking where your ex-husband worked and your address and they're not getting to the things that are important. It's wasting a lot of time.
Ms Martel: If you were to make a suggestion to the government about how they reorganize the family support plan, which is also what's under way along with this bill, it would be that there actually be case workers assigned to your case?
Mrs Beaulieu: To certain cities or to deal with certain cases, because there are a lot of cities it affects.
Ms Martel: That's not the plan right now. The Attorney General has decided that there won't be case workers and there won't be case files, and a number of us have said in terms of the reorganization that that's probably going to be a problem, particularly where enforcement issues are very difficult to deal with.
Mrs Beaulieu: And it's very hard to get hold of the enforcement people. You have what I guess you'd call operators who take what's going on, but it takes ages to get hold of somebody who actually enforces it. That's another problem as well.
Ms Martel: Your other problem is that there's going to be 40% less staff in the office by the time the reorganization finishes, so how many people will be left to do enforcement is another concern we have. The bill, in terms of the enforcement mechanisms being put forward -- the 10 changes that have been put forward are good ones, but they only are going to work if there is the staff there to make sure they go into effect. We have a concern that if you're operating with 40% less in a plan that was probably already understaffed, some of the important enforcement mechanisms the government talks about aren't going to be able to go into effect because there just aren't going to be the people to put them into place.
I assume you've read the bill. There are some changes around drivers' licences, credit agencies -- I would assume that all of those things you agree with, you think those are good measures.
Mrs Beaulieu: Pretty good. For some people the driver's licence works, but for others it doesn't because those people don't care if they're working or not. If they're not working, they don't have to pay support, so they don't care.
Ms Martel: And they might drive without a driver's licence anyway because they don't care.
The bill also talks about fees that would be charged to both recipients and payors now, fees if you opt in and get in and get out of the plan on a repeat basis or fees for administrative items. They're not terribly clearly defined in the bill, but it talks about fees for getting photocopies etc. Do you think you should have to pay a fee --
Mrs Beaulieu: For photocopies and stuff? No. For in and out, if you're constantly back and forth, maybe, but I've been in it since 1992 and I haven't seen any results.
Ms Martel: The opting-out provision is another one that we have expressed some concerns about. The legislation will let people opt out of the plan and they can come in later, or a judge might have to get involved if there's some coercion. Do you have any comments about people's ability to either opt in or out of the plan and whether the plan should automatically be a plan for everyone who is filing?
Mrs Beaulieu: I think people should try to go with the plan, simply because if they don't they don't have a chance of enforcing the support to begin with. But there definitely needs to be something done so that it's enforced either way.
Ms Martel: Your concern would be that they should at least get some enforcement measures because outside they run the risk of not having that at all, or they run a risk of, as the bill shows, ending up back in court to try to get a judge to say that things should change.
Mrs Beaulieu: Right.
The Chair: We'll move to the Conservative caucus.
Mr Klees: Thank you for being here today. Could I ask when your problems with the family support plan started?
Mrs Beaulieu: I think it started at the beginning.
Mr Klees: And where was the beginning?
Mrs Beaulieu: In 1992.
Mr Klees: That was certainly long before this government.
Mrs Beaulieu: Yes, so it's not just now, it's problems from before.
Mr Klees: With the fact that we're discussing a bill to improve the family support plan, a bill introduced by this government, would you agree that that is a step in the right direction?
Mrs Beaulieu: Yes.
Mr Klees: I'd like to address an issue that was raised by a number of presenters to this committee, and that's the issue of attitude. Unfortunately, a lot of times in this committee or in this government we deal with symptoms. What we're trying to do with this legislation is really to try to patch up a problem that's developed in our society that is a symptom, a very difficult symptom to deal with. It's families, parents, not being willing to assume their responsibility with the children for whom they have responsibility.
One of the things we can do as individuals around this table, as the public has an opportunity as we go through this process to investigate seriously, is to challenge each other to go beneath the surface and ask ourselves: Why are we dealing with these symptoms today? What is it about attitudes that have been allowed to develop in this province that actually allow parents, be they fathers or mothers, to feel in good conscience that they can walk away from their responsibility to their children?
I introduced a bill in the House last week that deals with the issue of parental responsibility, albeit it's somewhat different; it deals with the issue of responsibility of parents when it comes to their medical treatment. But what I am surprised at is that we're spending a great deal of time -- and rightfully so, we should be spending a great deal of time on this bill, dealing with how we can bring parents and mothers to the table to ensure that their children are looked after properly.
But there's something about the way government has brought legislation in over time that has been driven by the philosophy that the village is the family. I fundamentally disagree with that philosophy, because the village has become the family. The truth of the matter is that we are now at the point where, when individual parents refuse to be responsible, it falls on the village, it falls on the rest of the state, to provide the kind of support that individual parents should be providing.
I think we're reaping what we've sown over years. I think that governments of the past have sown the seeds that we've reaping today. The message of parental responsibility has been displaced by the state, and governments have felt in the past that it's much more important for the state to intervene rather than place obligations on individual parents.
I think this bill is a step in the right direction, and I think you agree, where once again we're bringing parents back into the equation and we're saying, "Hey, live up to your responsibility." I as a member of this government am particularly proud of the fact that we are bringing this forward. I think there is some room for improvement and we'll be bringing some amendments forward, but I think it's a step in the right direction. I appreciate the struggles you're going through, and together we're going to do what we can over the next number of years to try to bring the focus of the family back to the forefront in this province.
Mr Ramsay: Thank you very much for making your presentation. I'm not going to preach to you. I just want to reassure you that all three parties are working very hard to bring this bill into law as soon as possible and we really appreciate people like you -- I know how difficult it is -- coming forward, because through these presentation we're developing some amendments to make it better. There seems to be good all-party cooperation in doing that, and by about Monday at 8 o'clock we should have the bill in its final form to be voted on later on next week. I very much appreciate your coming before us.
The Chair: Thank you, Ms Beaulieu. The committee realizes how difficult it is for persons such as yourself to bare your soul in public, but it is valuable to this committee, I can assure of that. Thank you for attending.
I believe we have reached a place where we have two persons who have not appeared. Our next presenter is Susan Irwin at 6:50, so I would adjourn until that time.
Mr Ramsay: But Mr Chair, Sandra Patterson -- I don't know her, but just looking at the time -- is not scheduled to come until 6:10, so what would happen if we now adjourned?
The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr Ramsay. You're right. We'll adjourn for 10 minutes and then we'll have to reassemble. We will adjourn till 6:15.
The committee recessed from 1803 to 1811.
The Chair: I see a quorum. Since the witness scheduled for 6:10 has not arrived, we are adjourning till 6:50.
The committee recessed from 1811 to 1854.
SUSAN IRWIN
The Chair: I see a quorum, so I'll call this meeting to order. Our next presentation is by Susan Irwin. Welcome to these hearings. Ms Irwin has provided the clerk a written presentation, which has been distributed. Please proceed.
Ms Susan Irwin: Good evening. Just before I start -- this is new for me and I'm nervous, so bear with me -- I'm going to use "she" to refer to a recipient and "he" to refer to a payor, only because that is the typical scenario, not for any gender-biased reason. I just thought I would explain that.
I represent approximately 30 to 35 recipients under the family support plan from the Kitchener-Waterloo area. We recently started a group, some time in October, because we became aware that there were many recipients who had been getting their support regularly and were running into problems and not receiving it, and this was causing some problems.
We have been meeting over the last several months and discussing this proposed legislation. I personally have been a recipient under first SCOE and now the FSP, and I guess soon under this family responsibility act, since 1989. I am also a graduate student in social work at Wilfrid Laurier University.
While I and the recipients I represent support an overhaul to the existing family support plan and recognize the problems that have existed over the last number of years, we have some concerns with this new, proposed legislation. Many of the changes that are in this legislation are excellent changes, long overdue, and they will go a long way towards alleviating some of the stress of single parents who have a problem maintaining expenses for their children. We're also hoping that they will have some teeth for those parents who have struggled over the last number of years, not having received any support, and who have amassed large sums of arrears. These people have gone through undue hardship and a lot of stress and deserve a lot of credit for raising their children on their own, and we are hoping that these women will get their money.
The concerns that we have deal mainly with three areas. One is the director's ability to refuse to enforce an order for various reasons, and that deals with section 7; another is the ability to close files and to wipe out arrears; and the third one is to allow the parties to opt out of the plan.
Section 7 deals with the director being able to "refuse to enforce an order...if, in his or her opinion,..." and then there's a set of different circumstances. The first one deals with the amount of the order being nominal. I'm not quite sure what that means, and I'm not sure whether there are any other guidelines that direct the director to decide what nominal is, but I would want to know that nominal is determined somehow.
To somebody making $40,000 a year and sitting in a salaried job, nominal may be $200 a month. To a single parent who has no other source of income, an order for $25 a month may mean the difference between her child having hot dog days and pizza days at school or going on a school trip, so I want to be really sure that somebody making that decision is going to know what "nominal" means, not only to him but to that recipient, and I would hope that the recipient would have some feedback. If an order is made for $1 a month, we could all argue that it is a waste of money to enforce that order. On the other hand, I don't understand why a judge would make an order for $1 a month, but I have heard that there are some out there.
The meaning of the order being unclear or ambiguous: While I recognize the problems in enforcing an unclear or ambiguous order, I also really feel that it is not the recipient's fault that the order is ambiguous or unclear. I'm not sure what the solution is, but obviously two lawyers and a judge were involved in that order being made and for it to be unclear or ambiguous is not serving the needs of that recipient. Whether there is some way that the FSP, or whatever the new body will be, can -- maybe they can call both offices and say, "What do you understand this to mean?" and "What do you understand it to mean?" and if there's agreement upon what it means, go ahead and enforce it. If there isn't agreement, then it goes back. I just want to be sure that because it's unclear to the person who is supposed to enforce it, it's not put on a shelf and sent back. The recipient has paid a lot of money to get this order and really needs it to be enforced in a timely fashion.
The one that really bothers me the most is being able to close a file with arrears of long standing. I never got on-time, full support until the support deduction orders came into effect. I just can't tell you what a relief and how wonderful it is to know that on the first of every month -- or to have known previously, up to the last four months -- my money is going to come, that it is being deducted off somebody's wages and that it's coming to me.
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Those women who have not had the privilege of experiencing that type of system and who have struggled and coped and borrowed money and extended their credit cards and done whatever they can to scrape by, and probably have debts to every person they know, I really worry that somebody's going to come in and say: "This file has been open for six years. We haven't been able to collect. Let's trash it. Let's get rid of it."
That is the one that bothers me the most, that somebody would have the ability to do that. I wouldn't have gone back to graduate school not knowing that I was going to be getting my money. I think that people who have put off doing things and put off being able to afford things and put off making decisions because they don't have a regular cash flow want to know that some day they will get that money, even if their kids are 18 or 20. Maybe they can use it for university. Just because the kids are grown and everybody has survived, there's still been great hardship there.
The money needs to come even just as -- I think you encourage further anger when you say to somebody, "Now that they're grown and Mom survived, there's no need to pay." I think we have to be really aware of the struggles that have gone on. That money was owed, that money was court-ordered by a judge and that money needs to be paid, if at all possible, whether it's 10 or 20 years from now.
The whereabouts of the payor or the recipient cannot be determined after reasonable efforts have been made: Is there somewhere that says what "reasonable efforts" are? You go to the guy's house four times and somebody says he doesn't live there, which is fairly common practice. Is that the end of it? I don't work there, I don't know what the process is, but again it's a court-ordered thing. The guy showed up in court. Somebody found him to go to court, so somehow somebody can find him to pay.
That reason sounds very simple to me and there may be much more teeth behind it. There may be a policy set out that determines reasonable efforts. I don't know.
The payor is receiving benefits under the FBA or GWA and has no assets or income, so you close the file. What happens when he gets off welfare? What happens two months from now when he gets a job? If you've closed the file, how will you know that? How will the recipient know that? Is that the end of it? The file gets closed because he's on welfare or because he has no assets and it's shelved. Does anybody check up on him three months from now, six months from now? I think that needs to be detailed. If that is left in there, is that an opening to a payor to make some agreement with somebody to be laid off, to go on welfare, to have his file closed and then go back to work three months later? I don't know. I'm just throwing that out.
We all know the great efforts that are made to dodge child support, so I want to make sure there are no loopholes here, that there are no openings for somebody to dodge the system, as we have seen that there are some experts out there who know how to do this very well.
Enforcement of the order is otherwise unreasonable or impractical: I don't know what that means. I want to be sure that somebody else knows what that means, that the people enforcing the orders at the plan know what "impractical" or "unreasonable" is.
My whole point in this whole section is I would like to know that the recipient has some involvement in this process. If it's my file, I want to know what's going on. I've had two calls from somebody at the plan in eight years. In eight years, I have spoken to live people on two occasions. One of them was to call and tell me that they had got this new, wonderful information. Lo and behold, I was the one who sent it to them.
That was my one contact, and my other contact was I moved to Waterloo in September to go to school and I called my local MPP. Not knowing how to get hold of anybody at the plan myself, I said, "Could you somehow tell them that I have moved and that I want my bank account changed?" I knew all the offices had been closed. I didn't have any number for a new one. I heard it wasn't open, so I didn't want to fax something to an unopened office. This message got through and a week later somebody called me and said, "Well, don't you know you just have to fill out the form?" I said: "But, how would I get the form? How do I call and speak to somebody to get the form? It's not possible to get hold of anybody. I don't know how to communicate that."
I forget why I was making that point. Anyway, I want to be clear that the recipient should have some input into this whole process and should be able to say, "Yes, I agree, it's time to close my file," or, "Have you tried this or have you tried that?" or "If you close my file, what are my options? Where can I go from here?" and be able to receive some feedback from somebody who's knowledgeable and is going to tell them what their other avenues are now and where they can go.
I'm assuming that in all of these cases a judge has made these orders. A judge obviously is an educated person who, at the time when this was worked out, deemed this money payable, reasonable and collectible or he or she would not have made the order.
Usually these orders have been obtained at great cost. I know I've paid over $10,000 in legal fees and I've been to court numerous times and represented myself to save money. I can imagine what my costs would have been if I hadn't done that. I think people pay good money and hire what they believe is good expertise in order to get an enforceable order. Great care has to be taken before these files are closed or wiped out.
Subsection 7(3) says, "If the director refuses to enforce an order...it shall be deemed to be withdrawn from the director's office on the date set out in the notice." Does that mean that I'm going to get a piece of paper in the mail that says "Your file is closed," and that's the first I'm going to hear about it, or will I be involved in this process? Will I know in advance that, say, 30 or 60 days from now, if this doesn't happen, my file will be closed? Will I then be able to make preparations to go some other route or to do something else?
Personally, I would like some notice that this is going to happen so I can make other arrangements, even if it's to call somebody and say, "Listen, I'm not going to be getting my support for a little while. Can I borrow some money?" It's just to have some plan in place.
The withdrawal of orders: I can see why somebody would propose to withdraw orders that are functioning, being paid and all the rest of it. If the money is coming in and it's being paid out and there appears to be no problem, why should we not let those parties opt out?
On the one hand, I say if the money is coming in -- it's all being done electronically -- it's being deposited, it's being paid out, then nobody's working in the file anyway. So what added pressure is it to the system other than a couple of seconds on punching something in and it going out?
While I can see why one might get rid of 25% of the caseload that doesn't need to be there, my other point is, in my own circumstances, I did not get paid regularly until it was deducted automatically, and now I do. We don't know what will happen if those people are allowed to opt out. We're really not clear on what will happen, but statistics show that people do not pay unless they're forced to do so.
The National Council of Welfare, in a 1990 publication entitled Women and Poverty Revisited, provides the following information: "Among mothers with dependent children, only 58% had obtained a support order for their children. The other 42% bore the burden of bringing up their children all by themselves."
We don't know why that 42% of women did not go and obtain an order. We don't know whether there was persuasion there, whether there were threats. We don't know that, and I think until we do know that, until we know why some women do not go and obtain an order -- whether it's through fear, whether they make a private arrangement -- I think we need to be careful about agreeing that people can opt out. Because if somebody's being persuaded -- I don't just use fear of violence as the only form of persuasion; there are many forms of coercion and persuasion.
I think for a woman to be relying on a monthly payment to support her two children puts her in an extremely vulnerable position to be persuaded, to be coerced into going along with what the payor is proposing. This is the person who holds the power, the control and all the cards.
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There's an onus on me to be agreeable, to be amenable, in order to make things happen. But if I agree to opt out and I then don't get my money, what happens? First of all, how do I get hold of anybody to tell them that I'm having a problem? Second, what is the mechanism for me getting back into the program? How do I do that? How long does it take?
If I had a support deduction order and the company has been contacted and told they don't have to deduct any more, do I then have to go back to court -- I'm assuming I would have to -- and get a new support deduction order, which is going to take time and cost me money? What happens to my children during that three or four months that I wait to go through that process and the money that I spend? I don't know how that process works, but I'm concerned about how it will work. I'd like there to be clarity about how that will work.
I really support the driver's licence suspension. I'm very pleased to see that that has come about. It's long overdue. There are states in the United States that have this in place, and it apparently is to be a good deterrent. However, there's one clause in there, clause 38(1)(e), that allows the reinstatement of a payor's suspended driver's licence upon withdrawal of the order from the plan. I believe it says as per section 16, which is the one that says if the parties sign a piece of paper and mail it in or fax it in, the file is out.
That concerns me deeply because if I'm a woman with two young children and my ex-partner comes to me and knocks on my door and says: "Listen, I know I haven't been paying. I really screwed up. I'm going to do better now. I know I owe you $14,000, but this family support plan is on my case. They're calling my work. I'm going to lose my job. They're calling the credit company on me. Nobody's going to give me any money. I'm not going to be able to pay you. But if you sign this piece of paper and we opt out of the plan, I promise I'll pay you. I'll give you $1,200 a month. I'll give you $400 more than you're supposed to get, and we'll be caught up and I'll pay you."
Here's a woman who now is not getting her money, hasn't got her money, truly believes that through these teeth or hooks the family support plan now has into her ex-partner that his hands are tied and he cannot pay, that he's going to lose his job because the family support plan is calling his place of employment and his credit rating is going down. If that was me, I would probably agree to opt out, but I don't think it's a good idea. If that ability is not there for the payor to even go to that person and say, "This is a possibility," I'd feel more comfortable with that. I think that to set a recipient up for that pressure and to have to make that decision is not fair.
You have to remember that if a person is not receiving their support, they're emotionally stressed, they're desperate. People do irrational things when they're desperate, and I think we want to remove the possibility of any irrational actions from this legislation. To me, that may be one, that a payor may be able to influence somebody under that situation.
Before we had the support deduction orders in place -- I don't recall where I got this statistic, but I read it several different places -- less than 5% of non-custodial parents voluntarily paid support. I don't think we should dwell on the past, but I don't think we should forget the past. I think that when we're making these changes, we have to remember how it was before. We've come a long way and we've got some good changes in here, but we cannot forget why this plan was established, what it is here to do and who it is here to serve.
We have had evidence in the past that non-custodial parents do not pay unless they have to. I think the support deduction order is wonderful; it removes the whole aspect of paying out of the relationship. When I exchange my child with my ex-partner, it is so much nicer not to have a cheque in the middle of us, not to have to talk about him paying me every single month. It's paid some other way. It comes off his cheque, it goes into my bank account, it's not in the interaction any more and it's so much nicer not to have that there in the middle of what is already a difficult situation.
I feel very strongly that this opting out perhaps will not gain a whole lot for the plan, because if those people are paying, it's not causing any work on the file anyway, and I think it could have some fairly severe repercussions, not to everybody but to a portion of recipients out there.
I hope you'll consider these concerns. They're given in good faith. I've been a recipient for many years now. I've been through all of these changes. I'm very happy to see this piece of legislation, but I do have those concerns. The people of Kitchener-Waterloo would like you to consider these aspects in passing the legislation. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you. You've done very well this evening, Ms Irwin, and you've used exactly the 20 minutes allotted to you, which does not permit any time for questions. But it was an excellent presentation, and I thank you on behalf of the committee.
JENNY MCKAY
The Chair: Our next presentation is Jenny McKay. Good evening, Ms McKay. I'd ask you to proceed with your presentation.
Ms Jenny McKay: Actually, what I've got to present is kind of a continuation of what Susan said; we're from the same area. I just received my diploma as a social services worker, and I've done a lot of volunteer work in second-stage housing and with women's groups. What I've brought are some case scenarios to further make our point.
When it comes to not opening a file or closing it at the director's discretion, many of the women in our group in Kitchener-Waterloo and the women I've known in the past have family support plan arrears owing to them. They have worked and are working diligently to raise their children, and in many cases they are the only parent involved regularly with their children. They're on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week, doing their best to provide not only the basic food, shelter and clothing, but also emotional stability and a healthy environment for their children to grow up in.
While they do their best, they get no financial help from the child's other parent. In most of the cases, we know that the person responsible for providing support is gainfully employed, may be self-employed or may be hiding their income or hiding property as well. Closing files may appear to be condoning the actions of these non-supporting parents. This may feel like another slap in the face to parents who have already been demoralized by a process they have had to go through to get support and then have to struggle on wondering when they will finally receive the support they're supposed to get.
If these non-paying parents owed taxes, they would not get off the hook. Why should they get to have their files closed? Are their children not as important as the tax dollars? At the very least, custodial parents should have some input into the process as to whether or not the file should be closed.
As for opting out of the family support plan, one woman where I live is currently separated from her partner, who has been abusive in the past. He's trying to dissuade her from going through the family support plan. He's not been a reliable payor, but he says he'll quit his job if she tries to get any more money or go through the family support plan. He's made other threats as well. She knows she will need help collecting from him, but she's concerned that he will harass her. It would protect her and protect the interests of their children if the court ordered the family support plan to get involved and they couldn't opt out.
There are many cases like this one. I've talked to other people with the same scenario as well. The children's interests are the ones that need to be protected, and ordering help from the family support plan would ensure that regular financial support did reach the children.
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About assets sheltered by third parties: I've talked to many women in the last few years who cannot get child support payments because non-custodial parents are hiding assets. One college friend who was in her 50s had been married for many years to a man she had travelled around the world with. He was a government worker. They had made good money, but he was very abusive. When she left he refused to pay any support at all, and he put all his assets into his sister's name so she wouldn't receive anything. In the meantime, he's taken his son on elaborate trips to places like New York City. For this reason, going after sheltered assets is a good idea.
Some other parts of the bill which we support, as Susan said, are denying a person in arrears a driver's licence and reporting it to the credit union, and we really hope you'll follow through with that and not be soft on it. That's what I've prepared.
The Chair: Thank you very much. The government will go first. We have approximately five minutes per caucus. Any questions from the government? If not, we'll proceed to Mr Ramsay.
Mr Ramsay: Jenny, thank you very much for coming tonight. I share many of your concerns, as I think all members do around the table. All three parties are working hard at this, this week, to complete the public hearings so that we can, as we have, generate some ideas for amendments to even improve the bill further. We're going to be doing that on Monday afternoon, submitting our amendments and debating them. We hope to -- we will, actually; we've agreed that we will finish by 8 o'clock Monday night with that, ready to vote on the bill.
I certainly share your concern on section 7 of the bill, some of the areas where the director may at any time refuse to enforce an order. We're going to be putting forward some amendments to that section. Quite frankly, I'm not sure that a director should have the power to refuse to enforce any order for any reason. This is an order that's been made by a judge in determining family support. I think we have to be tenacious, to go after that, and I certainly share your particular concern about long-standing arrears.
Ms McKay: I agree.
Mr Ramsay: It almost rewards the worst offender, that if you get your arrears into a long-standing category, whatever that means, then at the discretion of the director we could abandon you.
Ms McKay: It doesn't set a very good example.
Mr Ramsay: No, it doesn't sound very good to me at all. We're certainly going to attempt to delete that section for sure and maybe others. Thanks for coming.
Ms Martel: Thank you, Ms McKay, for coming here tonight from Kitchener-Waterloo. Let me ask you about part of the bill that you didn't refer to and find out first of all whether you're aware of it. One of the changes the government has proposed that we have argued against is payment of fees in two areas: First, if there is, as we understand from the Attorney General, repeat opting in and opting out of the plan, there would be some kind of fee attached to that, the price of which we don't know; second, there is also a proposal for fees for administrative work being done by the staff on behalf of either recipients or payors -- we assume it applies to both -- fees for photocopies of documents, pieces of documents out of files. What's your sense about whether we should be charging fees for anything involved with the family support plan?
Ms McKay: When it comes to the support of children, I'm really against people making a profit from it. I don't support privatization of the family support plan. I think that a judge who is involved with the government has ordered the plan, and it should be enforced by the government. We've already had to pay so much to get the support put in place, and that's just money taken right out of the children's mouths, really. When a woman is being sent support payments, she needs every cent that she can get, in most cases, so I'm really against the payment of fees or privatizing the plan.
Ms Martel: We've certainly heard, during the course of these hearings, from some of the presenters that they couldn't pay to have photocopies brought to this committee, so I think most of the members appreciate the situation people are in.
Certainly the government's business plan, looking at the plan over the next two or three years, very clearly does lead to a privatized model, which was also one of the concerns we raised very extensively in our debate, although we haven't talked about it much during the course of these hearings. With respect to the fees, my argument would be that I would really hate to see a private sector company make money off money that's court-ordered and legally owed to families. It's not government money we're talking about, it's not public money; it's money that has been already set down by the courts as owing to a family or owing to an individual.
Let me go back to your concern about opting out. You didn't really tell the committee your own circumstance, and it's up to you to do that, but I'm wondering whether you've had an experience about opting in or opting out that you can share with us and provide us with some of your views on that point. We've heard all kinds of different views about whether people should be allowed to do that and whether the government should amend that section.
Ms McKay: I'm against being able to opt out, because it leaves some women who have been involved in abusive relationships -- and there are a lot of them out there that we don't hear about; it just goes unnoticed sometimes. I know a lot of women who do get harassed. If there's a place where people can opt out, a lot of women are going to start getting harassed about opting out. I know this for a fact.
I know, as I said, one woman who's already being told everything about how the family support plan doesn't work and she'll never get her money that way, and then he only gives her a few dollars a week instead of the full amount or sometimes he doesn't pay her at all. She's just stuck not knowing what to do or where to go, and if she didn't have a choice, it would eventually go through the court -- he couldn't harass her, because she had no choice in the matter -- and she would start receiving the money that she really needs to raise her three small children.
I myself do receive money through the family support plan each month. My ex-partner is a regular payor, but I don't really know whether he would continue to keep good habits of paying right at the beginning of the month if there weren't a watchdog there keeping an eye. I'm not really sure about that.
But for the sake of all the other women, I really disagree with opting out. I think it's a good safety plan in place to make sure that all the children in the province receive some money.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Ms McKay, for your presentation here today. It was most valuable.
CANADIAN BAR ASSOCIATION -- ONTARIO
The Chair: Our next presentation is the Canadian Bar Association -- Ontario, Judith Huddart, vice-chair of the family law section, and Thomas MacLennan, executive member of family law section. Welcome, and good evening to you both. We have 20 minutes to hear your presentation, so I suggest you proceed.
Ms Judith Huddart: I'm going to start. Let me just say by way of introduction that the process in how we've arrived here is part of what we want to address this evening. The CBAO did provide a brief to the Attorney General last March when there were rumours circulating about cuts and changes to the family support plan. We expressed concern at that time, and as a result of that brief, I and two other members of the bar association met with the Attorney General and some of his staff and in fact met again with another member of his staff later. Our main concern was that we have some input into the changes.
We knew that the family support plan needed changes, but we were very concerned about what we'd been hearing, and what we'd been hearing had been what we've been reading in the newspapers. As much as I'm in favour of some of the changes -- I don't want you to think that we're dumping on this bill; I think there are a lot of good things -- I do feel that this process could have benefited from input from the CBAO, and we didn't have that input. In fact, after we had our meetings and expressed a concern and a willingness to assist in working up a bill with the drafting, the first we heard of it was when the bill was introduced on October 2.
So we're here in a not much better position than a lot of the other individuals who have come here. We didn't realize the time frame on this, that the time line was so tight. We formed a subcommittee of the family law section to deal with the bill. We haven't even met. We're here, Tom and I, to give you our initial impressions; they're preliminary. I don't want you to feel this is the type of submission we would like to be giving tonight, but I want you to understand where we're coming from.
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At any rate, let me say as an overview that we do support a toughening-up of the enforcement provisions, so in that respect we're very pleased to see a number of terms in the bill: the suspension of drivers' licences and some of the other interpretations of income sources and so forth.
But we really have no idea from the bill what the ultimate enforcement agency will look like. We're very concerned that we have a bureaucracy now which is being, if I might say it in the plainest terms, royally dumped on in recent months, which may be replaced by another bureaucracy which may be dumped on some time in the future. We don't want that to happen. We want the energies to go to paying the support out and not to creating yet another bureaucracy, whether that's private or government-run.
We want to see some accountability to the support recipient. That's extremely important. That's the goal of where this bill should be going.
Problem areas: I'd like to talk about that because we have limited time. I think you've already heard, just from what I've heard tonight, concerns about the delegation of the director's authority. I do feel there are no proven benefits in the involvement of the private sector in collection, and this is a concern.
The assignment of the director's powers appears to be a very broad provision in the draft bill, and this isn't just for administrative purposes. As we read section 4, it includes the power to delegate discretionary powers. That's most concerning. The director has very wide discretion in this bill and if that discretion is delegated to a private agency, that could be a very different set of circumstances. As I say, that's very concerning.
The potential to charge fees -- I heard a little bit about that earlier -- is also very concerning to us. From our reading of subsection 4(3) and sections 57 and 58, there is certainly the potential that an agency could charge fees which are beyond some of the limitations in the act. In other words, once a private agency is set up, they have the power to determine who's going to be charged fees and how those fees will relate. For instance, we have a concern that the fee may come off the support. For example, if someone is receiving $200 a month and the most they can get from the payor is $150 a month and there's a fee on top of that -- and who knows how much that fee will be, because we have no information on that? -- the recipient might end up with significantly less per month. That's certainly not what we want to see. We have very little guidance in terms of fees and a lot of that is left to the regulations.
The cost-of-living clause also concerns us. There is a proposal in the bill to limit the type of cost-of-living clause that will be enforced. Unfortunately, it's our experience that the clause they've chosen, which is the very basic clause set out in the Family Law Act, is not the clause that most lawyers use in their agreements and it's not generally what we ask for in court orders.
We are very concerned that the implications of limiting cost of living to the wording of the Family Law Act will have the effect of making those people who are now receiving cost-of-living amounts automatically forced to go back to have that changed, in fact to reapply to have a redefinition of their cost of living. Nobody's going to be able to afford that, so what you're really telling recipients is that they won't get that cost of living. I think that's going to have a very broad application, from our look at it.
We would be happy to sit down to work that out and perhaps come up with a clause that would meet our concerns and be appropriate for the government. I don't think that would be difficult; in fact, we could have done it had we been consulted on that. I think that can be worked out, but we're certainly not happy with the effect as the bill is now worded.
The other concern about the premise of limiting the cost of living, as I understand it from the bill, is that there is a reluctance to enforce anything that is not standard and that that was the purpose of putting in specific wording on the cost of living. Well, we have child support guidelines coming out next May and those guidelines are going to require annual recalculations of child support. If the government, according to this bill, doesn't even want to look at different ways of calculating cost of living, I'm very concerned and I'd love to hear whether there's been any consideration of how they're going to deal with annual recalculations of child support, because that will dramatically affect the payments going through the plan.
Another concern is with respect to estates. The Family Law Act provides that support orders normally bind the estate of a payor, but the bill proposes that there be no automatic enforcement. In fact, they are proposing that enforcement of support terminate on the death of the payor. That can have a significant impact. For instance, if you've got an older woman who's receiving support from her ex-husband, she could be in very tight financial circumstances. Certainly that's what the statistics seem to indicate these days. If those women are forced to reapply to have their support continue, that's a burden they really can't afford.
Think about it. In reality, what it could mean is that they would be applying to go against the estate of their ex-husband. That estate may be administered by his new wife. That is not a position that you'd want to put somebody in. There's got to be a better way of dealing with it, and I think the state should be assisting people on the death of a payor to maintain their support payments, not taking that away. To say that they can apply under the Succession Law Reform Act for dependants relief is not the answer. That's a whole other legal application; it's a different set of criteria. And it's unfair, when somebody has an ongoing support order, that they be told to start over when it's nothing they've created that's made this happen.
I know you've heard a lot about withdrawal of the orders. I think there's mixed feeling in the bar about that. Certainly there is a recognition that we don't want to burden the plan with a number of orders that are apparently being paid without any question. But, as it was raised by the last speaker, we don't know what happens when you take those orders out of the plan. There's nothing to guard against duress, in my reading of this bill. I know that legislation in other provinces has stricter provisions and can even require a thorough review of the issue before a judge before anyone is allowed to withdraw. That's not present in this bill.
The other thing that has come up in our discussions is again something we might have suggested had we been consulted, which is that perhaps there should be a compromise: to revert back to what we had before the support deduction, to just have a payor pay voluntarily to the plan, which means it doesn't have to go through that person's employer, but it's still going through the plan so there's still somebody looking out for the recipient's interests. That's something that we could perhaps consider as a compromise, and I'd like to see that looked at.
The other issue I want to deal with is the regulations. Going back to the discretion of the director, the regulations allow for powers to be prescribed for practices and procedures, and that isn't defined in any way. We're very concerned that we perhaps have a role in drafting some of these practices and procedures, as we know that has to happen and that could be an integral part of the functioning of this system. We're also concerned that there be some limitations on the delegation of those practices and procedures, that they not be further removed from the direct responsibility of the ministry.
I'm going to stop there and let Thomas continue.
Mr Thomas MacLennan: I'm going to be brief, because Judith raised most of my concerns. I want to repeat her concern that we did not have an adequate opportunity to thoughtfully review this draft legislation and come to you today with the ability to have sat down among ourselves and to have discussed it. There are four people on our subcommittee and only two of us were able to be here this evening. One is with her child at a tonsillectomy today and the other one is on holidays. That's because we received notice of this hearing three days ago. That is simply unacceptable.
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One more matter that I'd like to raise and that I hope this committee considers is that, irrespective of the changes -- and I'm in agreement with Judith that some of these changes are long overdue and we're very happy to see them, because they enhance the collection of support for many women and children -- this government ought to be ensuring proper funding for the family support plan. This government ought to be ensuring that the plan is properly staffed and that people receive the money this government collects for them. Recent events involving the family support plan, in my submission, are an embarrassment to this government and to this province.
I also share Judith's concern with respect to farming out the director's responsibilities to agencies and private institutions and the ability of those agencies and institutions to avoid the application of sections 57 and 58 of this draft legislation, those sections dealing with the payment of fees and the priority of payments received going first to ongoing support, then arrears, then, ultimately, any fees that may be prescribed. That's something I have a great deal of difficulty with.
Unfortunately, what we're faced with is a situation where none of us at this table knows what is going to happen, because, again, the regulations are so broad that to make any comment on this at all would simply be to guess. Those are my comments.
Mrs Boyd: Thank you very much for coming. I'm glad that on such short notice you could at least give us the benefit of your advice so far. The cost-of-living clause issue is an important one, and it's one we haven't been able to come to grips with in terms of the amendments we're proposing, because it really is a very complex issue. Part of the problem is that the variation that's there between orders really creates a problem. I think the Attorney General would be very unhappy if he found 150,000 people suddenly in the courts getting a variation to cost of living. I'm very fearful that may happen.
I'm curious because no one has talked about the challengeability of some of the enforcement things, for example, the issue of going into joint bank accounts, getting partnership things and so on. My concern is that this looks really wonderful to clients of the plan and they aren't taking into account how prolonged many of the legal wrangles will be in order to take advantage of those clauses. Could you comment on that?
Ms Huddart: I agree with you that we don't know. We don't have an answer to that. Certainly, there may be ways to speed up this process, in theory. I think it is something that's needed. I don't want to take away from that, because it has been a real problem when people try to find a way -- it's amazing, the inventiveness of people to escape that.
I don't know what the solution is. We've been trying to expedite a number of things going through the courts, and we haven't been successful. I think that perhaps, again, it's going to take somebody to keep a strict handle on this and make sure that it's not allowed to go off in limbo. There are ways to deal with it, but I think we have to set deadlines and we have to set time frames. Maybe that has to be built right into the legislation so people are aware of that.
Mrs Boyd: The number of lawyers working for the plan has dropped from 17 to 4. The business plan suggests that you can use rent-a-counsel, if you like, to do some of these things out in the areas. Can you comment on that?
Mr MacLennan: I can't speak for the legal profession; I can just speak for myself. But I think that's a carrot that's being thrown at us: Maybe we'll get a little extra work from the downsizing of the plan. I don't understand why it's necessary to reduce the number of staff lawyers at the plan. I think any economic analysis would show that paying a salaried lawyer to enforce these things, someone who then develops an expertise in enforcement, is far cheaper and far more cost-effective for the province than farming it out to lawyers.
Mr Tilson: Thank you for coming. The ministry has put forward some calculations as to the existing plan, which has existed for a number of years, and in particular, there's about $1 billion in arrears, of which the ministry estimates that one half is collectible. They talk about only 23% of the cases are in full compliance, they talk about in a full 46% of the cases no payments are being made at all and they talk about 77% of the cases not in compliance; three out of four families aren't receiving the money that they deserve.
You may or may not agree with those calculations, but I believe that you will agree with the fact that the systems we've had in the past simply haven't worked. I've listened very carefully to some of your comments, and I know the government will listen to your suggestions, with possible amendments. I would like you specifically, listening to those figures -- and you may not agree with them specifically, but I presume you will agree with the fact that the systems since 1987 simply haven't worked. The various enforcement tools that are being offered -- you know them, and we all know them in this room -- what effect do you think those tools or the threat of those tools will have on these figures?
Mr MacLennan: I have a couple of concerns. Again, we received a few days' notice of this hearing --
Mr Tilson: Okay, I've heard that. I'd like you to direct your comments --
Mr MacLennan: -- so this is a preliminary concern. I haven't been able to sit down with Judith and discuss this.
Mr Tilson: But you both practise family law --
Mr MacLennan: We both practise family law.
Mr Tilson: -- so you know what the game's about. You know what threats will do and you know what is needed in the system.
Mr MacLennan: For a couple of things I think what's needed is flexibility, and I don't see that in this legislation. For example, I think it's section 35, dealing with the suspension of drivers' licences, subsection 35(2) states that there's a limitation on the court's ability to make this so-called order to refrain 30 days after the notice is given. That's great, that's a wonderful deterrent. If you get this notice, you ought to run out right away and address your arrears, otherwise you're going to lose your driver's licence in 30 days and there's no way that you're going to be able to get it back. That's how I read that. My concern is that a lot of these payors are going to be sticking their heads in the sand and are going to be ignoring these notices that they get.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr Tilson. We're going to have to move on to the next caucus. Mr Ramsay, two minutes.
Mr Ramsay: Thank you very much for your presentation. I'd like to ask, because this is the second time tonight the restrictiveness of the COLA clause in subsection 7(4) has been brought up, what's the reasoning from the ministry that the COLA clause has to be in accordance with the Family Law Act?
Mr Goodman: That is the provision in Ontario legislation that we're dealing with that provides for an automatic system of calculation based on the consumer price index.
Mr Ramsay: Why does it have to be on that basis? Has there been confusion with some of the judges' orders in regard to COLA that you can't interpret it properly? Why does it have to be by that formula?
Mr Goodman: The trouble with COLA is that there can be almost as many different provisions as COLAs or lawyers or judges who are dealing with the situation. The attempt is to try to standardize the types of COLA clause that the program will be enforcing.
Mr Ramsay: I know you said you didn't have time to develop any wording, but what sort of concept would you be looking at to develop that wording? What would you be looking at?
Ms Huddart: One major problem that we have certainly in Metropolitan Toronto is that you're left to deal with the percentage change in the consumer price index for Canada. Why Canada? We never put Canada in our agreements; we put Metropolitan Toronto, the city of Toronto. I think it should be linked to the metropolitan area where the recipient resides. That makes more sense. You're penalizing a lot of people in metropolitan areas by picking the Canadian consumer price index. That's a very simple thing that we could change. We could just agree that it be the jurisdiction where the recipient resides. I don't see why we can't change that. There's no magic to that. That, to a great extent, would alleviate a lot of the problems we would see.
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It's not going to help the people who have off-the-wall cost of living, but I think to a great extent a lot of lawyers would be satisfied even with that one change. Then the question is, how can we implement it? I think the other thing you do is that you deem a cost-of-living clause to be worded this way if it isn't, and if somebody doesn't like it let them go back and apply to have it changed. That way, at least you're not booting it out the door.
I think we could do that. It's a simple question. We deem a lot of other things in legislation to be what they're not, and I don't see why we couldn't do that here so that at least the people will have something sitting there for them. That's my suggestion.
The Chair: Thank you very much for your presentation here this evening. We're proceeding to the next presentation, Gary McCutcheon. Is Mr McCutcheon present? Jo-Ann Tambeau?
ROBERT REIMNEITZ
The Chair: Robert Reimneitz? You're scheduled for 8:30 but we can get you in now.
Mr Robert Reimneitz: Thank you very much.
The Chair: Please proceed with your presentation. You have 20 minutes allotted to you, including all questions. Please proceed.
Mr Reimneitz: Let me first introduce myself. My name is Robert Reimneitz. I come here from Windsor. I received a call from the member in my district asking me to come here and speak this evening to the problems that I've had with the family support plan. I've only been involved with the support plan for a very short time. My order was written June 21, or in that relative area, and in that time I've had increasingly difficult times getting hold of anyone.
It seems to me, after reading this, which I received only tonight, that there seems to be a great deal of concern for the expansion of the ability of the recipients to receive the payments, but the situation that I've become aware of so far is that the money I am paying through my employment is not getting to the recipient. So far, there have been arrears on my behalf, according to the people at the family support plan, and to that fact, when the court order was written and when the family support plan started deducting from my income source, I pre-informed the payroll clerk at my place of employment that the deductions were to be started. I wanted to do this so that there would be no arrears.
From day one, these payments were made directly, and I can provide perfect payroll records to that fact, and yet upon my changing employment, my source of income, there was an extra deduction for supposed arrears. This is a deduction that I did receive advance notice of, and I did make several attempts to contact someone in the family support plan to discuss this. I made a total of 78 phone calls, in which I was told every single time that someone would call me back next week. There seems to be no accountability on the part of the family support plan whatsoever. I spoke to my member in the district where I live and she sent them, she told me, probably 20 phone calls, 20 faxes, and no one ever gets back to anyone. It seems to me that there is no means for a support payor to have any sort of control as to the extra actions taken against him.
I read in this bill here that I received this evening that there are going to be changes in the way the law is taking -- I'm not sure how to phrase this -- penalties upon the payor in the case of arrears. I think that all of these are excellent ideas. There should be some accountability on the part of the payor, but the fact of the matter is, speaking I hope for responsible payors, there's no accountability on behalf of the government. There is no one in that office who can account for anything.
Yesterday, only after receiving the call from Mr Arnott, I decided to try and make one more attempt to speak to someone at the family support plan, and the only answer I could get is, "I'm sorry, we can't help you." I said, "Well, where's your office located? I can come down and I can prove to you in written documentation that I have not missed a single payment." They said, "I'm sorry, we cannot do that. We are not set up for you to come down here."
My question is this: What recourse does a payor have? I don't understand. Everything in this bill seems to be catered towards the support recipient, and I don't see anything towards some accountability towards the payor.
That's all I've really come here to say this evening. If you have any questions for me, I'd be glad to answer them. I was given no notice -- I think I was called on Tuesday or Wednesday, and the member in my district informed me basically nothing of what this was about. That's all I have to say.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Robert.
Mr Tilson: Mr Chairman, could I ask the indulgence of the committee? Mr Reimneitz, I'm the parliamentary assistant for the Attorney General and you're one of several people who have come to the hearings with personal problems, personal failures in the system. I'm prepared to speak to you after you've spoken to the committee about that. You may not wish to put those personal problems on the record, because this is all a public record. Having said that, you may not want my assistance, and that's fine too. But if you do, I would be prepared to meet with you after your presentation here. Members of the committee may wish to address questions to you on anything, but I offer that to you.
Mr Reimneitz: I did just think of one thing. I'm sorry, but this just came to me now. I don't know if it's in this bill or not, because I haven't really had a chance to read through it all, but I would suggest some sort of, I don't know, a snitch hotline for people aware of payors who are extremely delinquent and who have more than the financial ability to pay the arrears.
It saddens me to say that I can actually testify to a case where someone -- I live in Windsor and there is a lot of cross-border travel. There is someone living across the border who is, by any definition, financially affluent, who is, to the best of my knowledge and to the best of the family's knowledge, extremely delinquent in family support. This is a gentlemen who makes constant trips across the border. People in authority here would have any number of opportunities to speak to him to make him accountable for these actions, but from what I understand, there's no system set up to report this sort of activity.
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The Chair: Thank you. First, any questions from the government side? If not, Mr Ramsay.
Mr Ramsay: Robert, I just hope the whole thing works better too. It needs to work better for all parties involved. I think a lot of the emphasis has been placed on the payee because in the history of the program that's where a lot of the problems are, but I'm very sympathetic to your case too. You're the second person to come before us who has said that the plan says they're in arrears and, to your best knowledge, you're not. You don't have any recourse to go and somehow show and prove, and you've got payroll records to straighten that out. Hopefully when the plan does get straightened out and their central office is up and running and fully developed there will be an easier way for people to access the plan -- because mistakes happen -- to refute charges that have been made etc. So I support you in this. The plan has to be fair to both parties so that it works well for everybody. I support you in that and we'll work towards that.
Mrs Boyd: Thank you for coming. I really feel that your observation that most of the focus is on recipients as opposed to payors is probably correct. There is a reason for that, of course.
Mr Reimneitz: I fully understand that. When I got involved with the family support plan I was told I did not have a choice as to that. I understand the reason for it, but I was actually encouraged by it because it makes everything easier for both parties.
Mrs Boyd: Sure. You don't have to deal with money when you're at an emotional point of breakdown anyway.
Mr Reimneitz: For two people dealing with children, if you take the money out of the argument, the argument goes away.
Mrs Boyd: I think you're right. That's a very important thing. That's one of the reasons we're not happy with the opt-out clause and the possibility that the director could withdraw any enforcement of the act, because we think it tends to reduce some of the hostility and some of the difficulties. It's hard enough, isn't it, to maintain contact and to exercise access over children?
Do you have any comments? I think one of the things that puzzles people is why there seems to be such reluctance among such a large group of men to pay the support that they've been ordered to pay.
Mr Reimneitz: The only thing I can really say to that fact is when I was going through the proceedings in court for my daughter, we went through this on what I would refer to as an amicable level. We discussed it and we came to certain figures, to the fact that this is what I could afford and this is what seemed reasonable, and we went through the financial statements, both lawyers. What ended up happening was that the lawyer on her behalf, in my opinion, greatly overestimated my income, in the extreme. In the actual court case they took my single highest pay stub ever and based my whole life upon that. What I was told was the only thing the judge will accept is that he can reasonably argue to the fact that you might make that much. The court system is, in my opinion, completely unreasonable.
Mrs Boyd: What would help you, really, would be some adjustment to the Family Law Act where how these things are calculated might be set out. You probably know that the federal government and the Ontario government are looking at specific guidelines for support of children that would be in play to meet the needs of the children. The focus then would be on the children as opposed to either parent. Do you think that might help in the circumstances you're talking about?
Mr Reimneitz: I think that would probably help. The single biggest irritation to me with the way my support is paid to the recipient is -- my daughter's mother is on social assistance and she has been for quite some time. The only thing that really bothers me about it is, when we went through court they explained to me that the government has come up with a set of guidelines to the amount of support paid, based on your income. These guidelines are set out to ensure that your children do not live in poverty, but 100% of the money I pay is deducted off her social services cheque. My daughter sees exactly none of that money. I do my best to provide her with clothing and everything else outside of that, but with the amount I was told I'd be paying, I can barely afford to do that. I think there should be some sort of appeal board or appeal process to the amount of support paid.
Mrs Boyd: Other than just going back to court and going before another judge.
Mr Reimneitz: Yes. If you can't afford to pay the support, you can't afford to pay a lawyer.
Mrs Boyd: There's been some suggestion that one of the solutions to that might be the solution they have with the mediation process in Kingston, where they sit down with a paralegal person and work that stuff through on an agreed basis. So far their success rate appears to have been better, because both parties tend to be more satisfied with the decision that comes out of that process rather than just the adversarial process of everybody putting their financial statements in and then arguing it out in front of a judge. Do you think that might work better?
Mr Reimneitz: That would probably help greatly, in my opinion. I went into this without a lawyer. I couldn't afford a lawyer, so I went down to the courthouse, filed the papers myself and went to the law library and read. I think there are probably a lot of people in my position who cannot afford counsel, so a mediation process like that would probably be a great asset.
Mrs Boyd: There are a lot of people who opine that the legal system would be better if more people were more informed about it in the beginning, whether they're instructing a lawyer or whether they're doing the work themselves.
The Chair: Thank you, sir, because no one has spoken about mistakes. When the full draconian steps under this bill fall upon an innocent person and ruin his credit rating and things of that kind, I think that's something to reflect on. Thank you very much for attending today.
Now, Joan Fraser? Gary McCutcheon?
JO-ANN TAMBEAU
The Chair: Jo-Ann Tambeau? Welcome this evening. We had you scheduled for 8:10, and we're right on schedule. You're the only one today. Excellent. Please proceed.
Ms Jo-Ann Tambeau: Okay. I'm in favour of many of the changes. The tightening of the reins, so to speak, has been a long time in coming.
I am someone who has been on the plan since 1990. It has in some areas worked for me. I have some grave concerns in the following areas, and one of those is opting out. In my case that's not possible, especially when there are restraining orders involved. Another one of the areas refers to what Sue said before, with coercion by the spouse to try to get us to sign something.
I was one of those people who signed something in 1993 when the family support plan garnished his wages. He came to me with an agreement made by a lawyer, making promises that if I signed it he would give me the cash, he would give me other things. At that time I didn't have a lot and I was counting on that money. I signed stating that he gave me the $7,000, the affidavit. He took that and sent it to the family support plan. He was reimbursed the money that had been deducted and in the end I owed social services $7,000, which I still owe them today. However, I'd never be convinced today to sign that, but I wouldn't have known had I not done that. It's very easy to fall into that. They promise you the world, especially when someone is garnishing their paycheque.
As far as the privatization goes, I don't agree with it whatsoever. When some of us are counting on our support payments each month and that is all we have to live on, I'm afraid that if it goes to privatization, we will be charged fees. Those fees will be taken off the top, off our support, and there are no dollars to pay fees. When we went to court and the judge decided what he should pay and what we were going to live on a month, we use every penny of that. We can't afford a fee. We can't afford another dollar off those amounts.
My last concern is the delegation of authority of the director. We fought long and hard in court. I'm still in court with my court case. To date I've paid $10,000. We submitted to the courts our statement of incomes. The judge decided on that information what should be paid. It's been a long battle. I really don't want anyone with the authority to decide whether there should be other arrangements made, whether he should be able to pay less when he is in arrears. That's already been decided upon. It took us a long time to do that and a lot of money, and I don't think anyone should have the authority to do that.
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Last but not least, I have another case also with the family support plan for $60,000. Of that $60,000, since 1990, $600 has been paid. That is one of the cases that probably when it came before someone who had the authority to close that and deem it uncollectible, it would look like a case that should be. However, this person is married to my sister and lives a few miles away from me. The mortgage is in my father's name and my sister's name so that he's out of it. So if someone were to deem that uncollectible, I know it is collectible. I know he has assets. I don't want to see someone else with the authority to throw that out, because I'm the one who's gone without that money. I'm the one who's scraped. I'm the one who's lived on a budget. And he has had, so to speak, the life of Riley over the last four years. So possibly it's time now that he did whatever he had to do to pay his arrears and he can live the way the children and I have over the last five years.
That is basically all the concerns I have. Are there any questions?
The Vice-Chair (Mr Ron Johnson): Thank you, Ms Tambeau. We will move to some questions, starting with the Liberal caucus.
Mr Ramsay: Jo-Ann, thank you very much for coming in and sharing your story with us tonight. You give us a very good example of why the opting-out provision proposed in the act may not be applicable to everyone, in your case maybe for two reasons. You've talked about a restraining order and you also said that because you then received the money, an order was registered that you received the money, all of a sudden you were in arrears yourself with Comsoc for social assistance.
Ms Tambeau: And still am to this day.
Mr Ramsay: And still are today. So there may be some good reasons there for that protection in the act. I think what we're going to have to try to strive for is some balance here where, when there's no good reason why somebody shouldn't be able to opt out, they be able to do so, but there are certain criteria that would have to be satisfied before that option could be exercised.
I'm especially concerned about people who have suffered abuse. How is the plan to know that there's no sort of physical coercion going on that has maybe made up your mind for you to opt out? I'd want to make sure there are some protections there, and so I think our challenge is going to be in the next couple of days to try to --
Ms Tambeau: Exactly, and possibly if you looked at maybe that person has had a track record even before the court order or has made payments on a regular basis, then that would be someone. But in my case I had to take this person to court to get them to pay. Obviously he was never going to pay unless the court order was there. And even when the court order was there, he did not pay until the plan caught up with him in 1993 and garnisheed him. That's when he got excited and made the promises.
Mr Ramsay: I think under the new act, where information is forthcoming, like the second case you were talking about, there should be powers in the plan to pursue these assets now that have been hidden in the past. When this act is passed, the plan should have the resources and the wherewithal to go after people, as in the illustration you gave, where there are some assets to be able to rectify that situation. I think this new act should improve that situation.
Ms Tambeau: Definitely. And hopefully too there's some kind of open line between we who know what they're doing and how they're scamming and how they're hiding it. It's not just my case; I know many other cases where it's been sitting in someone else's name. They run their own businesses; they evade the taxes. Possibly something similar to here: Maybe if you had some of us come in and everybody compared stories and put it all out on the line, your enforcement officers would have a better time of collecting and knowing the tricks and what games they play.
Mr Ramsay: Very much so; that's a good point. I think when they get into this they're going to all of a sudden discover a lot of these things and probably learn from that, so I think you're right. Thank you very much.
The Vice-Chair: To the third party, Ms Martel.
Ms Martel: Thank you very much for coming, the three of you, from Waterloo this evening. I want to focus in on the concern which we have raised in the House quite strongly around the ability of the director to choose whether or not to close a file and whether or not to take any enforcement action. The reason I do so is because I have heard the Attorney General on more than one occasion, and I heard the parliamentary assistant again here tonight in a question to the last group, say that the plan is $1 billion in arrears, of which the ministry estimates one half is uncollectible.
I don't know why the ministry estimates that $500 million is uncollectible, but I tell you, when I hear that and then I look at the powers that the director is going to be given to close files, I have to wonder if we are going to see $500 million worth of files closed if this provision goes through in the way it's presented. I have to wonder if any number of women who came here before us with horror stories of being in arrears 14, 15 and 16 years are the very ones who are going to have their files closed.
So what I want to ask you is, in terms of your arrears, some $60,000 worth, it seems like (d) applies to you: "arrears of long standing are owed under the order." Do you think it's right that the director should have that right? And are you not concerned, when you hear the government say that $500 million is uncollectible, that your $60,000 might be part of that?
Ms Tambeau: I believe it will be part of that to make the numbers look right, and it's dead wrong. If anyone's is collectible -- it doesn't look it, but the sheriff has been at this guy's door. There was an order by the sheriff to go out and see what assets he had. When the sheriff goes out four times, if he doesn't happen to be the one coming to the door and someone else comes to the door with a story, the fourth time it goes back and goes back to the support plan. My ex-spouse's statement was that he travels between England and Florida, where my father has a home, and he's sometimes here and there. Well, it must be nice, with $60,000 in arrears, to be jet-setting all over.
And you're darned right: To make those numbers look good, my $60,000 will probably be one of the first ones gone, and he's collectible. And no, I don't know who is giving the director the power like that. Why did we go to court? Why did I pay $10,000 to get this court order if somebody in the swoop of a hat can just walk in and say, "It's not collectible"?
Ms Martel: Some of the other criteria are ones that are of concern to many people. The first one is, "(a) the amount of the support is nominal." We've heard from a number of presenters that "nominal" depends on what your own financial situation is, because $25 or $50 may mean the difference between your buying food or you at a food bank. I really worry about who's making those decisions and why we even have that kind of criterion if in fact we're going to have the enforcement tools that the government says we're going to have to start collecting some of this. Why do we need a whole section that allows the director to make a decision to close a number of files if we have all of these new tools that are going to help us enforce and get all this money back?
Ms Tambeau: He shouldn't be given the authority and he has no right to change anything in those orders. We fought long and hard for them. Like you said, "nominal": nominal to who? When the family support, at the beginning of September, was $2,200 in arrears to me and I live on $1,200 of that a month, nominal to me -- $1 meant a lot to me. So who's to say? When I budget on that $1,200, $10 is nominal to me. I can make $10 go a long way these days.
Mrs Boyd: Thank you very much for coming. I really have been so impressed as we've gone along with how very clearly people can explain their own situation. It must be very emotional to have to do this. I gather that you are part of a support group around this issue?
Ms Tambeau: Yes, I joined Jenny and Sue when we started up in Kitchener because the arrears were burying us.
Mrs Boyd: Approximately how many people are there in your group?
Ms Tambeau: Approximately 35.
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Mrs Boyd: So I expect each of you has an individual story that has many of the same themes but would be a little different in each circumstance.
Ms Tambeau: Yes, and some of the stories are worse. I was lucky to have a bank manager behind me who allowed me to go into overdraft. It incurred a lot more costs for me when the support plan was $2,200 in arrears to me at the beginning of September, but I've now incurred costs for a $5 presentation for each cheque that came in for one of my bills, 21% interest on the money I was overdrawn that month -- that was a little rough in the first 18 days of November, when I received one payment.
Mrs Boyd: Did you bill the Attorney General's ministry for that?
Ms Tambeau: I have not done it yet. I need to go through all my bills. I've spent many dollars calling Mr Harris's office and speaking to his aide, and in the end I did get things done, but only because I'm a very aggressive person. A lot of women out there didn't know how to do it. But I also landed in a shelter when the plan went, because when you're $2,200 in arrears and you live on $1,200 a month, there is no money to pay your bills.
Mr Guzzo: Thank you very much, Ms Tambeau. It is an interesting observation for those of us to hear the issues on a personal basis. I'd like to clarify just a couple of quick points; first of all, the nature of your ex-spouse's business. What type of work does he do?
Ms Tambeau: For which court order, the $60,000 in arrears?
Mr Guzzo: Yes.
Ms Tambeau: He works under the table. At one point I have information on him working along the highways, which would probably be city workers. He needs a private investigator on him. He does own his home with my sister and my father listed as the owner of that property, along with his wife.
Mr Guzzo: With regard to the problem in which you found yourself with the welfare department, do I understand it that what happened was your ex-spouse showed up at your door and asked you to sign an affidavit and he filed that affidavit?
Ms Tambeau: Yes. When the court order had been standing already I believe for two years at the time, the final wakening call came for him when the money came off his cheque.
Mr Guzzo: Right. So he shows up with an affidavit, which you sign.
Ms Tambeau: Yes.
Mr Guzzo: And he uses it to get back the $7,000; you wind up owing $7,000.
Ms Tambeau: Yes.
Mr Guzzo: Right. Do you know how serious it is to sign a false affidavit?
Ms Tambeau: Yes, I do.
Mr Guzzo: Do you understand that it could carry a jail sentence? Did you know that?
Ms Tambeau: I do now.
Mr Guzzo: You know the other cases to which you referred? You talked about knowing other situations and other cases where scams --
Ms Tambeau: Yes, and I've gotten those women too reported to the family support plan. Any information I've ever had, I reported, and I went directly to social services when I signed that paper.
Mr Guzzo: And you say there are numerous ones through your group and through your contacts where you live that you know.
Ms Tambeau: Yes.
Mr Guzzo: Any of those using the sheriff's office in your community in the manner which you describe?
Ms Tambeau: Not that I know of. The order came from the family support plan for the sheriff to --
Mr Guzzo: Just to go back to the question of privatization, I understand quite well what you're saying with regard to fees, and they would be hefty. To privatize in circumstances such as this, you'd be paying a percentage. I would think that's what we're talking about. I also think we're talking about very, very rare cases. In the case of the $60,000 and your inability to collect it, if a private agency were prepared to guarantee you collection, without fee unless it's collected, would you be prepared to pay 30% to collect that $60,000, have $40,000 in your pocket and $20,000 --
Ms Tambeau: No.
Mr Guzzo: Thank you very much.
The Chair: We have two minutes left.
Mr Tilson: Since you represent a group, a question that I've asked other deputants who have been here has to do with payors who do not pay. There are different types of payors who do not pay. Some will say: "I'm not going to work any more. I'm not going to own anything. You try and get money out of me. I'll live on social assistance." Then there's the type of payor who will say, "I'm just not going to pay," and they stash their assets with another spouse, they have hidden bank accounts -- under a rock, wherever they can hide it.
My question is -- and I assume it's generally women you communicate with -- why do these people act like this? Why do they do that? They just don't care? One man came and said: "It's because of access. If I don't get access, I'm not paying a nickel."
Ms Tambeau: We have so many. That's why the only victims in this war are the children. There are many people; there are many different personalities. I've had two of the incidents that you just stated. One was going to quit his job at Ontario Hydro and I would never get a dime; and the other one's hiding everything and living behind my sister with my dad helping out. I guess not very well-rounded people and I made a few poor judgement calls.
Mr Tilson: So you don't think it's the access issue? You think it's just the type of people who are like that?
Ms Tambeau: Yes, it's the type of people. In my court order with the one with Ontario Hydro right now that I am getting payment on, when asked about access by the judge, he didn't want any.
The Chair: Thank you, Ms Tambeau, for your presentation here this evening.
Ladies and gentlemen of the committee, there are no more scheduled witnesses. However, we have one individual in the audience who has requested from the clerk an opportunity to make a presentation to this committee. We are legally entitled to sit till 9. It means that we've refused 35 other persons. However, this person is here and wishes to make a presentation. I am guided by what this committee desires. Agreed?
Mr Ramsay: Do you know how long the presentation is?
The Chair: No, I have no idea.
Mr Ramsay: Could we just give him 10 minutes?
The Chair: We didn't know what the other ones were either, so it's called pot luck, Mr Ramsay.
Mr Ramsay: The usual rules?
The Chair: Fine.
MARIUS FREDERICK
The Chair: Sir, you have your opportunity.
Mr Marius Frederick: My name is Marius Frederick. I am from Mr Tsubouchi's riding, Markham, and I had the unfortunate luck to come up against the system. My wife took off with the children. In Newmarket I went to the courthouse. The laws of Canada state that when a spouse takes off with the children it is a criminal offence. They refused to lay the charges because she's the mother.
We seem to have a two-tier system. I'm going to say something which is not going to be taken very well. We seem to be heading down the path where in the 1950s and 1960s black people weren't able to ride on the buses. We seem to be creating a gender war, ladies and gentlemen. I am really saddened by this because I've seen and heard the stories of a lot of men. A lot of children are getting hurt, like the lady before me has said, and really the only ones who are benefiting from it are the lawyers. If there are any lawyers in the room, that's too bad, but it's true. Only because you go to the lawyer, he's there's to protect my rights -- "Yes, give me a $1,000 retainer, a $10,000 retainer."
Another thing: We have the destruction of the legal aid plan, so the legal aid system goes, "Okay, you sign the kids over to the wife because she's the caregiver, and if you don't, if you refuse to, we're going to cut your legal aid funding." That still goes on all the time.
I don't know what to say. I've been watching the parliamentary channel lately and somebody keeps standing up and saying to the House, "Minister, don't you know that your family support system is not getting the money out to the people who deserve the money, and the women and children are starving?" Ladies and gentlemen, I'm tired of people standing up and using the children as a shield. The children should not be used as a shield in the House, in the media or anywhere.
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Women and children are not the only victims in this. I'm speaking personally because I care for my kids. I'm paying child support that I can't afford. I will lose my place where I live because I do not have the money to go and fight in the court system to get this. That's the way it's going on. I want you to know that the things you do here really affect other people.
There's another thing that we came upon. I have had a look at the Civil Justice Review. You have a bill sitting there that wasn't proclaimed by the former government. The Civil Justice Review even said that women can lie in front of a judge and tell lies on affidavits, and there's nothing being done about it. Your own Civil Justice Review has it in the records and nothing, ladies and gentlemen, has been done about it.
We are asking on behalf of the children, on behalf of everybody, on behalf of the men. I'm the product of a woman and it seems that once you're no longer a child and you become a man, you're somebody else that we've created. We're worse than a dog; a dog has more rights than us. I've worked for this country and I've been in the military. I went to Newmarket court. I fought in the municipal election. I'll give you a little bit of history.
My municipal council was shutting down fire stations, like we shouldn't have fire stations at night. We had a problem with that. I ran in the municipal election to bring up that subject and I got the people aware of what was happening. We now have new fire trucks and those fire trucks attended that woman who got killed on Steeles Avenue. I'm sure you heard about it. I'm saying that somebody can make a difference.
I beg you. There are men's groups out there; there are tons of them. I've looked on the Internet. There are two sides to the story, and to be going on the side of the woman all the time -- I mean, we're making a two-tier system and we're having a thing where you go into court and the judges tell you that you should become a more productive member of society just by looking at you, and I think that's not right.
We've got something here. We've got a bill here that's telling us that you're going to take our licence away because we work. We're not making $50,000, $60,000, $70,000, $100,000 a year. Some of us are just barely surviving with the economy that we have going on out there right now and it doesn't seem to be getting into anybody's head where all the money is going.
Another thing I heard on the TV is that the money is missing for the children. When I started, I thought it was going to be a 50-50 proposition, not that the father is supposed to give all the money and the mother is supposed to be dependent on all that money. The father's having his own problems as well. Granted, I know there are some men who may shirk their duties, but to be quite honest, if I have to pay for my children, the mother gets the money. According to the law, the way the system is, I have to go pick them up. That's my gas money. I have to pay for repairs on the car. If my car's stolen or something happens, I have to pay for the seats for those children. I have to pay for food. I have to have a house for when they come for this so-called access. I find that a disgusting word. Nine times out of 10 we take care of the children.
Because of women's lib you want us to be a more caring person, a more caring man. Yes, we are more caring and we want equal rights, but there are no equal rights when we go to the court system and we're being totally trashed before we open our mouth or something. "I'm sorry; the children belong with the wife." Meanwhile we've stayed home and we've taken care of those children, and then the system comes in and it rips it apart all over.
I know a lot of men's groups. We're not funded by government agencies. I'm telling you right now and I'm giving you a warning that when it comes to the system, people are handling it in different ways. We had a murder of a husband and a wife. You've read the story. I have researched it and it has come to my attention that the father was taking care of that child, worked out of that home. The mother again went to the lawyer, the lawyer said, "Oh, we can get him. We're going to say he did this and did that," and the guy lost it. They put him in jail a couple of times, and then he comes out and he kills.
I don't condone violence and I say, ladies and gentlemen, we have to find a way to take it out of the system. There are more than enough criminal laws to deal with the situation if the person is a violent offender, but take it out of the hands of the lawyers and get it out of the system. Put it for mandatory mediation. After that, if it doesn't work, then by all means put the courts on it. But to put the courts on it, you're destroying the family, you're destroying everything. This aggression between the mothers and fathers, if it cannot be worked out, I don't know, but we're coming to a point where we're creating a backlash. It's coming very shortly.
Mr Ron Johnson: Thank you for your presentation. I know that you give a different perspective from what we've been hearing most of the time. As much as I disagreed with a few things that you said, you made some points that I did agree with. I think, though, that what's important to understand is that this bill deals only with parents who are not living up to the responsibilities that they have to their children. If non-custodial parents are living up to their responsibilities as deemed by a court, then this bill won't affect them in a whole lot of ways, other than some opting-out clauses and that sort of thing. It's important to recognize that.
Mr Frederick: The family support plan is a setup for failure, the way it stands at the present time. They make an order and it's always made that it's either what the person cannot pay or you have it being pulled off from the employer directly into the family support plan. The family support plan has a history even before this government came into fact. That's another thing which is fallacy that I hear on the TV.
I know somebody personally who has the cheques for everything he's paid and the family support plan has always been behind. The system is drastically flawed. You're telling me that you're going to take away people's licences and the chance to earn a living. I can see the taxicab drivers, I can see the bus drivers, I can see a province-wide strike that you have never seen before because you've pushed, you're coming to a brink, you're coming to a position I spoke to somebody about. He said, "It's out in Alberta or something like that."
You've taken the money away from the employer, but there's still a problem. I can see people losing their licences, then losing their jobs, because there's a flaw in this bill. There's no mechanism for you to check on what's actually going on, because the system has been flawed for so long. You plan to ram this bill through and there's going to be lots of problems with it.
Mr Ron Johnson: It's important to understand that as much as all three parties agree that it's a good bill, the bill is designed in many respects, coupled with some of the restructuring that we're going to go through, to help solve the very problems that you're talking about: the disbursement of funds to families. You're quite right: There have been many cases where the non-custodial parent has been having the deductions off the payroll but the money hasn't been getting to the custodial parent and the children. That is what this government is committed to working on: fixing those problems.
As much as you're right in that respect, it's important to understand that there are in fact non-custodial parents who are not living up to their responsibilities. This bill, through some of the enforcement measures, will help address that. That's the aim. We would welcome some suggestions to the bill, some amendments and some things that you really think are wrong with it. Give us some ideas with respect to that.
Mr Tilson: Thank you for coming. I'm sure if you have any chance with Mr Tsubouchi, he will be pleased to work with you as well.
You've just covered a whole array of major problems that we have with respect to matrimonial disputes. This bill, as Mr Johnson has indicated, deals strictly with enforcement of existing orders. I think at another time it would be more appropriate to talk about those other things you've talked about, but they're excellent suggestions, excellent thoughts you have with respect to how legal costs have become prohibitive, and the issue of access. All these things are crucial, and I believe our government will in due time address those issues. Thank you very much.
Mr Ramsay: Thank you very much for coming and I'm glad we were able to accommodate you tonight.
The Chair: Thank you very much, sir.
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Mrs Boyd: Mr Chair, there were a couple of items that we had asked for from the ministry that we haven't got. Mr Tilson read out week-by-week statistics for November, but we had asked for the regular family support plan statistical summary that comes out every month, for June, July and August as well as November. I wonder if we could ask for those to be available to us.
Mr Tilson: I don't have it at this time, Mrs Boyd.
Mrs Boyd: I wonder if they could be faxed to the committee members' offices tomorrow.
Mr Tilson: We can use our best efforts, if it's available, to do that, yes. I don't want to give an undertaking if it's impossible, but if it's available we'll be pleased to do that.
The Chair: We'll accept your best efforts at this moment, Mr Tilson.
Mrs Boyd: It seemed to me that when the ministry was here on Tuesday, a couple of other things were raised that we asked to have given. I don't have Hansard in front of me so I'm not sure of that, and I wonder if the clerk could help us with whether there were other pieces of information that we had asked to be tabled.
Mr Tilson: You're right. I honestly can't recall either. I've just asked the staff, and they're aware of those things. They're still trying to make that information available. I don't know how voluminous that is.
Mr Goodman: The two items, if I recall correctly, were some information with respect to provincial-federal discussions, and the other item was with respect to the possibility of payors paying directly to support recipients as opposed to going through the plan. I don't know the status of those, but those are the two items.
The Chair: Hopefully, the ministry can either provide that by fax or, if it is too voluminous, present it at 3:30 when we proceed on Monday. That's a little late. We'd like to have it before that if possible.
I remind all members of the committee that amendments to be considered have to be deposited or filed with the clerk by 12 o'clock on Monday, December 9.
Mrs Boyd: There was another item, Mr Chair. Throughout this whole business there has been some question about what exactly the plan is, in terms of the office, for getting the computer capacity to do what is required under this act. You'll recall that the minister talked about that in the House as RFPs going out and so on. I think this could be on one page -- it doesn't have to be voluminous -- just basically what the timetable is: Has an RFP gone out for the technology that's required? When is that RFP to be closed? What are the best estimates -- and we always know these are the best estimates that a ministry can give -- as to when that equipment will be up and running? At what point do you think the various items of enforcement within this act will in fact go into place? I think there's been some talk about them being in place for January 1. I continue to be concerned that that's unrealistic and I don't think we should be holding that out to people.
It would be very helpful if certainly before third reading and as part of third reading the government could lay that out for people. Otherwise, it seems to me that the plan is going to get suddenly inundated with requests from people who expect this act, once it's put into place, to immediately begin to produce results in 100% of the cases. I don't think that's in anybody's best interests.
Mr Tilson: I understand your question. Obviously I can't give any undertaking to the committee, not knowing when this bill is going to receive royal assent, when it's going to be proclaimed, when the guidelines are going to be prepared. The minister has given some indication of when he hopes it will be in order. All I can do is to pass on your request, which is a reasonable request, to the minister and hope he will be in a position at the appropriate time, whenever this bill becomes law, and we don't know that yet. Do we have an agreement between the parties with respect to the third reading?
Mrs Boyd: We certainly agreed on before Christmas. It just depends on when the House leader calls it.
Mr Tilson: All those things are dependent on the bill passing and proclamation and all that other business. It's difficult to give a precise estimate at this time, but I will pass on your request to the minister.
Mr Klees: Mr Chair, if I might ask a question, one of the issues that's been discussed fairly extensively is the matter of the closing of the files. Reference was made earlier today by Ms Martel to the government's statement on the fact that about half of the $1 billion is uncollectible. I think the assumption was drawn that that $500 million of uncollectible outstanding support would be deemed by the government as being cases closed. That assumption, I think, was drawn.
I think we need some clarification on that. If that's the case, it will obviously weigh heavily in our discussions around any proposed amendments relating to the closing of files and the authority given the director for that. I would very much appreciate if we could have from the ministry, first of all, a definition of what is meant by "uncollectible" in the context of that statement, and whether it would be the intention that those uncollectibles be treated as cases that would be closed. I think that would be helpful for our discussions.
The Chair: If that can be provided, the request has been made.
Mr Tilson: Well, Mr Chairman, normally this sort of discussion would take place during clause-by-clause. It is reasonable for committee members to ask me, and if I can't answer I'll be asking the staff to give the rationale. I will try to give the rationale as best as I can, but as to what exists now and what is being proposed through proposed guidelines, proposed regulations, we'll be prepared to discuss those questions at the appropriate time on Monday.
Mr Klees: The reason I'm asking now is to give you some opportunity to prepare for that.
Mr Tilson: Knowing the members of the opposition, I know those questions will be coming.
Ms Martel: If I might, just on the same point, the minister's comments around this are in Hansard from his speech on second reading. What he actually said was, "According to ministry criteria, it's our belief that some $500 million is uncollectible." Perhaps the ministry can provide us with the criteria, then, that would lead them to assume that is the case. That's where the reference came from, right out of the second reading debate. He certainly used the words "ministry criteria" in his comments. There has to be some work that's already been done which would lead him to say that in those remarks. We'd like to see what those criteria are and match them against what we see in the bill, because we are nervous that that's where it's coming from.
Mrs Boyd: Very often during clause-by-clause, if we ask these questions, particularly when we're under a time limit, as we will be on Monday, we're told, "We don't have that information," and then we are SOL. So I think it is only fair for us to join Mr Klees in really requesting that the ministry --
Mr Tilson: We're not like the NDP, Marion. We've never done that. That only happened between 1990 and 1995.
Mrs Boyd: We've been sitting on committees with you, David, for the last year and a half.
The Chair: We are not here to debate the matter. Mrs Boyd, you are quite correct. We will start at 3:30 on Monday and discussion will take place until 8 o'clock, and at that time, that is the end of any discussion or questions, so anything that could be got to us ahead of time would certainly be looked upon with favour.
We are adjourning until 3:30 on Monday, December 9. I would request that the subcommittee stay for three minutes to deal with two requests for reimbursement of expenses. Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen.
The committee adjourned at 2050.