Lorne Gunter
Children who grow up without both parents in their lives are more prone to a
whole host of social problems.
According to a three-year study done by Edward Kruk, an associate professor
of social work at the University of British Columbia, 85% of young people in
prison and youth detention are fatherless. This is a particularly important
finding since, according to Statistics Canada, youth crime is the only category
of crime that has been consistently increasing over the past decade. Nearly
one-in-five young Canadians will have a run-in with the law — more than twice
the percentage of adults — and most of them have no father in the home.
A combination of his own research and the findings of dozens of long-term
studies of the effects of divorce on children, Professor Kruk’s study explains
that 90% of runaways, as well as 71% of dropouts and majorities of depressed,
suicidal, addicted and pregnant teens, grew up in father-absent homes.
It’s true: There are bad dads out there — men who abuse their wives or
children, or both, or even just abandon them, disappearing entirely from their
lives. But more often than not, father absence is the result of divorce, and,
increasingly, of our legal system’s deliberate bias in favour of mothers and
against fathers in custody awards.
Nearly 80% of custody awards in Canadian courts are made to mothers, and
visitation rights are almost never enforced with the same enthusiasm as child
support awards. Public officials are quick to condemn so-called deadbeat dads,
passing laws to suspend their driver’s licenses and government cheques if they
are behind on their payments to their exes. Yet mothers who deny visitation are
almost never punished. No province, in practice, has penalties for access denial
that match those for falling behind on support.
Federal judges and many appointed to provincial courts are required to take
sensitivity training on women’s perspectives of and experiences with the justice
system. No similar courses about men’s perceptions are required, because the
(badly mistaken) belief within the system is that our laws and courts are
stacked in favour of men.
Among all the examples of anti-male bias in our family law, two stand out. In
the mid-1990s, then-justice minister Allan Rock changed Canadian law so that men
could no longer deduct child support from their taxes, while women receiving
support no longer had to pay taxes on that income. In other words, men are taxed
on income they do not have, while women — who are the recipients and
beneficiaries of the income — don’t pay.
Many judges in divorce cases initially “grossed up” or “grossed down” their
support awards to compensate for this new upside-down tax arrangement, so the
net effect was neutral. Still, the point of the change was to punish men because
the bias within the federal justice department held that men were all heels and
women all victims.
Over time, too, the initial neutrality has vanished (if men’s stories of
their financial experiences after divorce are to be believed), forcing many
divorced fathers into poverty, alienation from their children, depression and
even suicide.
The other glaring example of anti-male bias comes from Justice Canada’s
rejection of a 1998 recommendation by a joint Commons-Senate committee that all
child custody awards in divorce cases start as 50-50 mother-father arrangements.
Not only did the justice department ignore the suggestion of “equal parenting,”
in 2001 arch-feminist civil servants conducted their own cross-country review in
secret, inviting testimony only from those special interest “experts” who agreed
with their jaded view of men.
According to the latest census figures, husbands and wives who both work
outside the home now spend nearly equal time raising children. If, in divorce,
one parent is given far more time than the other with the children, the kids
suffer badly from the loss of affection and contact with the non-custodial
parent, who is usually the father.
The best solution is for couples to work harder to avoid divorce. It is a
modern myth that if the adults are happier after divorce, the children
eventually will be, too. Divorce is hard on kids, period.
But given that divorce is unavoidable today, the Conservative government must
heed Prof. Kruk’s finding and reconsider the concept of equal parenting when
marriages fall apart.
National Post
lgunter@shaw.ca
April 6, 2009
Commentary by the OttawaMensCentre in the National
Post
Lorne,
The 83 page report is highly detailed and has a lot of reading, the evidence is obvious and overwhelming but don't expect any changes because we have a feminist operated judiciary who have only one goal, the state of two unequal genders with female superiority.
The same kind of arguments, equally insane were made by the Nazi's and are in effect, a social policy of Gender Apartheid.
Although a legal presumption of equal parenting would provide judges with the law, they ignore the law now, and make political decisions, feminist approved decisions rather than legal decisions, some judges are obviously blatantly corrupt and make decisions that can only be politely described as a "flagrant abuse of power" but, they are in the job for life and only a remote chance in hell of being dismissed, unlike the probability of a lawyer being suspended, apparently once a judge, they are assumed to be god like and immune to the temptation of abuse of power, thats another myth that we all know is unadulterated crapola.
We also need massive changes to child support to factor in the cost of children having a relationship be it even 10% of the time, often the cost to an access parent is equal to or exceeds the primary parents cost.
The present guidelines provide women with a windfall cash, tax free, that makes high income women rich and low income men reduced to living in poverty, in fact, many become homeless, and indefinitely repeatedly incarcerated for no other reason than being born male and a father.
Ontario Courts don't hide their corruption and their bias, very rarely does a man ever get awarded spousal support, while some men end up paying spousal support to multiple wives and some women collect child support for one child on the single child amount from several men, not just double but also tripple dipping, that is, the biological father and any other unfortunate man who is kind enough to have a relationship with that child is fair game for a women to seek and get yet another windfall of tax free income without any comparison the the father's income. That is, one rich woman can send several man into poverty not to mention total destruction.
Then we have FRO, a system that is set up to be almost impossible to vary and inequitable not to mention unjust. In Australia by way of comparison, child support is automatically based on one's tax returns and both incomes of parents are computed.
Its time for change but don't expect any good news.
The word is that the new chairperson for the Reform of Ontario Family Law is none other than Justice Mary Jane Hatton, perhaps one of the least suitable judges to be such a person.
www.OttawaMensCentre.com