News

OTTAWA, Nov 25 (LSN)  CBC TV claimed this morning to have received a draft copy of the Report of the Special Joint Committee on Child Custody and Access. The report recommends shared parenting be the norm in cases of divorce rather than sole access. CBC said that the draft report recommended:  – Shared parenting should be the legal cornerstone of the Divorce Act, guaranteeing both parents shared access. Currently, sole access almost exclusively by the mother, is treated as normative.  – Divorcing parents must agree on a parenting plan either set up voluntarily or with the help of a mediator.  – If either parent fails to adhere to the plan, professional intervention would occur including fines and maybe even a jail term.  – Greater access for grandparents and other extended family members.  The committee was established in response to findings that in some provinces over two thirds of child abuse allegations filed in custody and access cases were unfounded but nevertheless resulted in prolonged denial of access to children for the accused parent,  most often the father.  The proceedings of the joint committee have been seen for months as a direct threat by entrenched feminist interests, and the reaction by them at times has been vicious.  The National Action Committee for the Status of Women as well as radical feminist Toronto Star columnist, Michele Landsberg, have been two of the most vocal critics.  Recently, Liberal MP and Secretary of State for the Status of Women, Hedy Fry, joined the fray with an attack on the idea of joint custody in an opinion piece published by the Globe & Mail.  The content and timing of Fry’s column was the last straw for pro-family Senator, Anne Cools, one of the founders of the Committee. Senator Cools has herself often been the direct target of personal malicious attacks by feminist interests. On November 19, in a speech in the Senate, she launched a blistering attack against not just “biological determinist gender feminists,” but also took direct aim at Fry, Landsberg and Joan Grant-Cummings, the head of NAC.  Attacking feminism, the Honorable Senator said, “I repudiate gender feminist morality and … reject any concept of morality based on biology, race, colour or gender. …  Simply put, I reject [feminists’] notion that women are morally superior and that men are morally defective.”  Cools leveled her harshest criticism at Fry, who she accused of abusing the Parliamentary process through her November 9 Op-Ed. “Such an attack on a committee of Parliament by a minister is an egregious act, unworthy of any minister of the Crown,  of the cabinet and of the Liberal Party of Canada,” she said. “Secretary of State Hedy Fry, like certain modern Liberal ministers, does not understand the parliamentary system in which she operates. In the alternative, if she understands it, she does not respect or practice it.” Cools also accused her of trying to “coerce” the committee to do her bidding and of denying Liberal tradition on custody issues with her strident feminist views.  Cools did not restrict her criticism to Fry, noting that “in another era of strong parliaments and strong party caucuses, this or any other minister’s similar actions would have … met with strong disapproval from her own party caucus. In today’s parliamentary community, however, they are met with silence, even acquiescence.”  Turning to Landsberg, Cools aptly described her writing as “hate propaganda” and accused the outspoken feminist of being “pathologically nasty.”