In its latest effort to revamp family law, Quebec introduced a bill that lays the groundwork to establish a unified family court to curb delays, simplify proceedings, and handle the majority of family legal proceedings, with an eye towards eventually stripping Superior Court of family matters, an undertaking family law experts have panned as ill-conceived and riddled with shortcomings as it is currently drafted.
Bill 91, An Act establishing the Unified Family Tribunal within the Court of Québec, also contentiously introduces mandatory mediation for parents in civil or parental unions, judicial conciliation if mediation fails, and summary hearings to be held on the same day if conciliation efforts are unsuccessful.
But family law pundits are far from impressed by the proposed legislation as it is weighed down by far too many glaring gaps that have yet to be addressed.
“It’s a bill where not all the strings are attached — that’s the least that can be said about it,” remarked Michel Tétrault, author of several books on Quebec’s family law regime. Marie Annik Walsh, a Montreal family lawyer with Dunton Rainville and former president of the Quebec Association of Family Lawyers, also is disappointed by the legislative proposal, asserting that the Quebec government “did not think through all of the ramifications.” Law professor Valérie Costanzo, a big proponent of unified family law courts, is left wanting as the “unified family court at the moment is in name only.”