News From Our Northern Neighbors: The Risks of Bill C-223: Why “Keeping The Children Safe” May Do the Opposite

Bijan Rafii M. Sc.,
Chair, The Canadian Campaign for Equal Shared Co-Parenting
Executive Director, The Canadian Centre for Men and Families - York Region
bijanrafiiesp@gmail.com

Late last year, private member’s Bill C-223, the “Keeping The Children Safe Act,” was introduced in the Canadian Parliament. If passed, it would fundamentally reshape family law by rendering claims of parental alienation—the process where one parent manipulates a child to reject the other—inadmissible in family court. Furthermore, the Bill would prohibit court orders that reverse custody in response to extreme cases of alienation, ban reunification therapy intended to repair the child-parent bond, and remove the requirement for corroborative evidence when claiming intimate partner violence (IPV). Additionally, it would significantly reduce barriers for a custodial parent to relocate without the consent of the non-custodial parent.

The motivation behind this Bill appears to be the promoters’ perception that parental alienation is not a valid phenomenon and that such claims are primarily used by non-custodial parents (often understood to be fathers) to harass and abuse the custodial parent. However, parental alienation is widely accepted as a form of coercive abuse in peer-reviewed literature (Kruk, 2018; Harman, Kruk & Hines, 2018; Harman, Lorandos, 2021; Harman, Matthewson & Baker, 2022; Harman, Warshak, Lorandos & Florian, 2022). It is a particularly pernicious form of domestic abuse that hurts both the affected parent and their children.

In my professional experience working with many affected clients, parental alienation is one of the most devastating forms of psychological abuse. Victims experience severe trauma, often leading to sleeplessness, chronic anxiety, and suicide ideation.

For children, the impact is equally catastrophic, as it effectively erases a loving parent—and their entire extended family—from the child’s life. This loss deprives the child of the resources, support, and guidance that the alienated parent provides.The data regarding children who lose a father is stark and illustrative of these risks. Such children are 4 times more likely to attempt suicide (Velez and Cohen, 1988) and face at least double the risk of committing crimes or being incarcerated as both juveniles and adults (Kofler-Westergren, Klopf, Bernhard, 2010; Seidel, 2022). They are 5 times more likely to commit rape (Knight and Prentky, 1987) and have double the risk of running away or becoming homeless (O’Neil, 2002). Furthermore, girls whose fathers left home before age five are 8 times more likely to experience adolescent pregnancy (Ellis et al., 2003), while children overall face triple the risk of substance abuse (O’Neil, 2002).

The Bill also intends to protect custodial parents from IPV based on the assumption of a large gender gap in victimization. However, the most authoritative source of data, Statistics Canada’s General Social Survey on Victimization (GSS), shows a much narrower gap. According to the survey, 3.5% of Canadians reported experiencing IPV in the past five years (4.2% of women versus 2.7% of men). Interestingly, the 2014 cycle showed a distribution of 4.2% of men versus 3.5%of women. This suggests that the IPV gender gap is much lower than the driving ideology of the Bill implies, and that many fathers may actually need the protections the Bill seeks to limit.

Similarly, there is a perception that parental alienation mainly affects men. In reality, the gender gap in alienation victimization is also narrow. A Nanos survey designed by Drs. Denise Hines (George Mason University) and Alexandra Lysova (Simon Fraser University) found that 6.3% of Canadians reported their mother tried to damage their relationship with their father, compared to 4.6% who reported the same of their father. Consequently, this Bill would ignore not only male victims but also a significant number of female victims of alienation.

A more effective way to reduce IPV and conflict comes from international jurisdictions that employ equal shared co-parenting (ESP) legislation. This approach creates a presumption for ESP unless there are special circumstances like abuse or neglect. Many European and Scandinavian countries, along with several U.S. states, have seen significant benefits from such models. For example, a study from Spain reported a 45% drop in IPV and an 8% drop in intimate homicide after the introduction of ESP legislation. Another Spanish report showed that ESP significantly reduced risky behavior in teenagers.

Conclusions

Although Bill C-223 is well-meaning, it will delegitimize parental alienation—an established form of abuse—and harm both male and female victims, as well as their children. By making it easier for one parent to remove the other from a child’s life and lowering evidentiary requirements for IPV, it risks incentivizing the weaponization of abuse claims. Canadian family courts should not become tools for one parent to hurt another; instead, they should look toward progressive international models that prioritize the well-being of the child through shared parenting.

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References

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