Private Member's Bill to fix the Divorce Act carries: more work is required...

Anyone observing the happenings in the House of Commons between 5:30 pm and 6:30 pm today might have observed something entirely rare: it seems a Private Member's Bill, c-252 to amend the Divorce Act: access for spouse who is terminally ill or in critical condition, passed unanimously. If I counted correctly while watching the vote, all Liberals, NDP, Bloc and Conservatives, voted in favour of the Bill.

The Bill goes like this: "a former spouse's terminal illness or critical condition shall be considered a change of circumstances of the child of the marriage, and the court shall then ensure that the former spouse is granted access to the child as long as it is consistent with the best interests of that child."

The Bill was motivated by a mother in Alberta who had lost custody of her children and who was being denied access to her children by her ex-husband. The mother, who also had terminal leukemia, had wanted to reconnect with her children before her death. Sadly, this did not happen and she was unable to reconcile with her children, who will likely be affected emotionally for not having been able to make peace with their mother before her death.

The Bill went through 7 reports by the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights Committee who amended the bill to consider the "best interests of children". The Bill also passed three readings in Parliament.

This is a good start, however, many more changes to the Divorce Act are required. At the end of the day the federal government must protect children's rights to have meaningful access to both parents, whether one parent is terminally ill or not. Children are best served by having meaningful access to both of their parents, except in rare cases. In spite of this, there is no federal policy preserving this right, and no affordable, accessible, timely or non-litigious way of resolving situations of parent-child access denial, even if the reasons for the access denial are entirely frivolous.

This case is the extreme exception and not the rule: more women deny their ex-husband access to their children than the other way around - though the decision to deny access or not is never a gender issue - it is a people issue. The spin sometimes suggests otherwise, but don't be fooled. This is because 25 years after the Charter of Rights and Freedoms (made it illegal to discriminate on issues of gender) gender is still the single most important factor in determining who will retain custody of children in cases of divorce. As a consequence, this also determines who pays child support to whom, making child support yet another gender based transfer payment, regardless of need and the relative incomes of the parents involved.

Therefore, a small number of a large percentage of women who have custody of their children deny access, while a smaller number of a (much) smaller percentage of men who have custody do the same thing. While both men and women sometimes deny access because of their character (rather than their gender), women have more opportunity because JUDGES preceding over the family court make gender congruent still with the best interests of children of divorce.

Why are matters of the family not subject to the standards set by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms? Do judges have an obligation to upphold Charter principles in relation to all adjudicated decisions or does the "tender years doctrine" trump individual rights? This collective interpretation by the judiciary of where the Charter applies and where it does not, as a byproduct, keeps lawyers in lots of work, the "blind advocates" at bay and monies flowing from men to women. Gender rather than character is the determining factor, which does not make the cut with respect to the standards set by the Charter, no matter how you slice it.

This Bill opens the door to fixing the Divorce Act that had been suggested without action by federal reports in 1998 and 2002. More equitable federal policy on child / parent relationships will put the onus on the provinces to live up to such standards and apply family policy through the provincial courts in a gender sensitive manner. This could also neutralise the dangerous trend that has resulted the highest court in our land setting family policy that coincidentally (or not) has made the practice of family law more profitable by the way it rules on matters of the family.

Unfortunately, "blind advocates” seem want to spin this tragedy into a "men victimising women issue" on a child access issues. For those who work in the system or who have lived through a divorce, especially where children are involved, they would admit that the trend actually goes the other way ( if they were being perfectly honest) .

Women have a clear advantage when it comes to matters of the family. Because there is no place to consider gender so acutely in a just Canadian society, "blind advocacy", like the "boy who cries wolf", has no credibility. Furthermore, "blind advocacy" on this issue is dated and now comes off as pure “spin”. All issues are people issues ... in contrast gender should never be the distinguishing feature in a society with a Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

So, in the spirit of fairness and equality, I re-publish a strong Liberal contribution to fixing the issue of child -parent assess. The Resolution on the Rights of Children to have Meaningful Access to both Parents, is gender neutral and was passed by the Lac Saint Louis Federal Liberal Riding Association and unanimously by the Quebec Liberal Women’s Commission in November 2005:

Resolution on the Right of the Child to Have Meaningful Access to Both Parents

Whereas the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child stipulates that children should have access to family members;

Whereas it is in the best interest of the child to have access to and strong relationships with both parents;

Whereas the federal government has not implemented policy that is in the best interest of the child or the blended family, despite reports in 1998 and 2002;

Whereas non-residential parents can be unilaterally and with no involvement of a higher authority denied access to their children without adequate, timely or accessible remedies.

Whereas the federal government had prioritized child support and remains inactive on child access;

Whereas children and their non-residential families stagnate under lopsided policy priorities;

Whereas the provinces administer and interpret the federal Divorce Act, with long delays and inadequate remedies to child access issues that hurt child-parent relationships;

Therefore be it resolved that the Liberal Party of Canada urge the Government of Canada to implement policy prioritizing access and protecting the rights of children to have access to both parents.

be it further resolved that the Liberal Party of Canada urge the Government of Canada to implement policy giving equal weight to relationship support between parents and children as to financial support.

be it further resolved that the Liberal Party of Canada urge the Government of Canada to create standards and legislation to support provincial and territorial governments in the enforcement of child access similar to those set up previously to support the enforcement of child support.

As long as special interests do not get in the way - and block equitable change on this issue like they did after federal reports in 1998 and 2002 - we may actually get somewhere now. After all, the political will is an invaluable asset when it comes to making fair change.

Could bad policy help bring down an Ontario Minister in her own riding?

It seems the Government of Ontario is spinning faster than ever via a strategically timed communications strategy. This campaign is an attempt by the government to offset a possible "political lemon" and "minefield" in an election year - except when it comes to special interests.

Recent policy by the Government of Ontario has shown how it is possibly ignorant, opportunistic and/or highly influenced by special interests. The reasons why the Ontario Liberals screwed up are published here and here and at Views from the Water's Edge on Saturday and in January when the latest enforcement policy was announced. Premier Dalton McGinty and persons at the Government of Ontario now understand why this recent policy is both short-sighted and gender discriminatory. At the very least, it will go down in history as some very bad policy. Why don't we get tough on crime and possibly start a war while we are at it?

Rather than taking responsibility or taking measures to account for the shortcomings in its policy, the Ontario Liberal government instead came out today with more spin promptly reported on by CTV, which claims Ontario's policy to post the pictures of "deadbeat dads" on the internet has been successful so far in "shaming" 5 dads into paying up.

Claims of success six weeks after launching the controversial website is absolutely premature. No qualitative or quantitative exercise could acurately claim to measure and correctly interpret these 5 results, let alone correctly give credit to one policy action over another so soon after this website's implementation. What about coincidence especially with a sample of only 5. How many dads pay up in a slow month?

Is the release of this information in such a vague way before there is an appropriate sample or any acurate way of assessing the results a sign of panic by Community and Social Services Minister Madeleine Meilleur? Was this a convenient coincidence for Minister Meilleur that needed to be promoted now? I challenge Minister Meilleur to be more specific about who are these 5 dads and how a six-week old website contributed to them “paying up”.

Should Canadians believe that the “Good Parents Pay” website has been successful in motivating those who owe support to pay? What about those other very intrusive enforcement mechanisms that will kick in first and must fail before the website is an option. These include (in the order in which they come into effect): the garnishing of wages, the garnishing of bank accounts, the removal of drivers licences, and 120 days non-payers will spend in jail.

Minister Meilleur, did any of these 5 persons report their lives were ruined by the website, while the hand of “big brother” in their affairs and 120 days in jail were not equally motivating? I also did not see any pictures of women on the site. Is this because all "good mothers pay" already”, or not? Meanwhile, Minister Madeleine Meilleur is now acting like a Conservative and it seems she is hunting for "cheap political points" in an election year by promoting even more child support enforcement than necessary or reponsible.

This is in spite of best practices in family policy that show a relationship between fathers who see their children and fathers who pay their child support voluntarily. In the meantime, out of either ignorance or belligerence, the Minister has missed opportunities to create policy that would to seek to collect otherwise uncollectible child support by working with the Attorney General's Department to preserve the rights of children and their non-custodial parents to have meaningful access with one another.

Organised groups who are proponent of policy that would make child-parent access a fundamental right, are currently planning to hold the Minister accountable in her home riding of Ottawa-Vanier in the time leading up to the upcoming Ontario election. Inter-provincial forces are planning to set up in her riding and concentrate their efforts to topple Minister Meilleur as an MPP with campaign made up of local publicity, information that will be distrubuted to every consituent and a door to door campaign and daily rally/protests in the Ottawa-Vanier riding to help elect anyone but Madeleine Meilleur. More on this later...

For today, I leave you with an excerpt from a very thoughtful article written by family law lawyer © 2005 Karen Selick which is published here on her website and previously in the February 2005 edition of Canadian Lawyer under the title: the Politics of Child Support. She calls this iteration “Demonizing Deadbeat Dads”:

…So far, it appears that the only purpose was to score points with voters by appearing to do something—anything—to benefit children. However, the benefits
are nebulous.

…The statistics that might really have been useful were missing: for instance, whether case loads and compliance have been affected by the major policy changes of May, 1997—i.e., the introduction of the child support guidelines and the abolition of tax deductions for support payments. As a family law practitioner, I believe these changes greatly increased the net cost for most payers. Is this more onerous burden reflected in higher default rates?

…Has anyone in the Ontario government actually looked into the factors that are known to correlate to good payment history? Two of the most portant seem to be the parent’s ability to have some input into his children’s upbringing and his right to maintain regular contact with them.

…Then there was the 1998 report “For the Sake of the Children” produced by the Special Joint Committee on Child Custody and Access. It recommended abolishing the inflammatory terms “custody” and “access” in favour of a system of shared parenting. The federal government hastily shelved the report (ideology again?), but there’s nothing preventing Ontario from implementing changes along those lines. If Ontario really wanted to do something for families, it should quit the ineffectual posturing and start looking at the measures that might really help.

Politicians like Premier Dalton McGinty and Minister Madeleine Meilleur have for whatever reason turned a blind eye to best practices in family policy. This is backed up by Karen Selik here and there are plenty of statistics to show how much they are off course. Ontario's opposition parties have so far missed opportunities to highlight bad family policy by the Liberals, perhaps because special interests have gotten to them too. Who other than "child-parent access organisations" are going to hold accountable these enablers of ongoing gender discrimination?

Will Madeleine Meilleur need to be sacrificed for the greater good or will she come to her senses first? Please stay tuned...

A shocking truth: one blogger gets CRIES FOR HELP from people around the world...

Are others being terrorised?

I wrote my last blog about Dr. Kenneth Dickie last weekend. Since writing the Dr. Dickie series, I have been contacted by others living inside and outside of Canada who are also targets of bad family policy in Canada. One man in exile in Europe contacted me ... he no longer has a Canadian passport or a drivers licence. He described himself as being "hunted and cornered" by the FRO (Family Responsibility Office). What's next? Dawg the Bounty Hunter hunts down "deadbeats" for a live TV audience?

Historically, non-payment of financial support for children to ex-spouses is in part because of an inability to pay. Also, there are those who are unwilling to pay to retaliate for illegal denial of child /parent access by custodial parents. Do proponents of excessive support enforcement consider these types of situations too?

Illegal access denial without penalty is possible because of a lack of non-litigious or institutional remedies to matters of child-parent access issues. Rightly or wrongly, custody is still awarded to mothers because of their gender (rather than because of their character). Can anyone who interprets the Charter see this as being anything other than gender discriminatory?... but I digress. Because of a lack of policy on access or deterrents to the denial of access, some custodial parents self-interestedly limit access (to punish the other parent) even if psychological research shows that such behaviour negatively affects children emotionally.

Nevertheless, Canadians who divorce and do not (or cannot) honour their financial responsibilities lose their drivers licences, their passports and their children, because of legislation that wrongly assumes further enforcement will motivate people to "pay up". Only after that, those who don't pay what they are due could spend 120 days in jail. After that, Ontarians and/or Albertans who still don't pay will end up with their picture on the internet and labelled a "deadbeat".

I once read we have enough nuclear weapons to blow up the world 50 times over... for those who get off on that, wouldn't once enough? How much support enforcement do we really need?...Does Dalton McGuinty's Liberal government truly believe the posting pictures of "deadbeats" on the internet is really good family policy? Or, is this simply "good politics" in an election year? Is this, as George Bush once said, to "smoke them out of their holes"?

Excessive support enforcement helps keep children away from their fathers

As a by-product, even those who always intended to pay their first families (what some say is excessive and miscalculated yet legislated child and spousal support) will invariably lose all contact with their children. Then again, "access" (which serves mostly men because of the gender preference in custody decisions by Canadian judges) does not matter. Many parents also end up in exile and may lose everything, including their homeland. Some, like Dr. Ken Dickie, end up in jail simply, because they cannot pay.

"Debtor's prison" was eliminated a long time ago in all matters other than the family. So, is this OK because only "divorced dads" are at risk of such incarseration? Is this also a form of state-orchestrated child-parent alienation for mothers who may want to have that card to play just in case? One father in exile suggested in an e-mail to me that politicians have created a "monster (in the FRO) and now they don't know what to do with it"? Are Minister Madeleine Meilleur and Premier Dalton McGuinty responsible out of ignorance, opportunism or pandering to special interests? Will they pay politically for making short-sighted and bad policy decisions (for political reasons) in an election year in Ontario?

Is Canada's judiciary more loyal to legal industry or to fairness and equality?

On New Year' Day I wrote about "discrimination ratings" by Ontario Court of Appeal judges. I highlighted Supreme Court Justice, Rosalie Abella, as an example of a (former) Ontario Court of Appeal judge with one of the worst discrimination ratings.

I previously knew of Justice Abella because of the anecdotes made flippantly by lawyers who I know in Ontario. Some consider Justice Abella to be responsible for much "rain-making" for the legal industry in family law - either the "hero" or the "zero" - depending upon one's perspective. Jurisprudence under her watch made it so that separation agreements in divorce could be could be reopened - because of either "missing financial disclosure" or "inadequate independent legal advice".

Cynics might consider that jurisprudence of this type ensures that the legal industry is fully in control in of the break-up of families in Canada whether that is appropriate or not. Consider this: Canadians must consult a lawyers while separating or divorcing in order to avoid being completely financially vulnerable. This jurisprudence is precisely for why Kenneth Dickie and others have been ostracized by Canada and are in exile.

Are these persons victims of a money grab and a takeover by a legal industry (along with their judicial accomplices) which produces more lawyers than there is legal work? What ever happened to transparent money grabs - like "ambulance chasing"? When children are involved, is it really in their interest for matters of the family to be sorted adversarially?

Are major law firms are "flippant" about family law inequities? Que bono?

This article in its entirety provides an overview of “advocacy dominance” and “superior representation” by certain Canadian law firms in matters of the family. The article was posted on the website of one such firm as a testimony to their ability to provide fair representation in family matters. Healthy sceptics might consider this to be more about assurances (from those who profit from bad family policy) that it is possible, post-agreement, to go after one’s ex-spouse for everything they can. This is via litigation on family matters, even if matters were previously resolved via a supposed “binding contract” in the form of a separation agreement. Would business people agree to such terms?

As such, I leave you with an excerpt from that article below, which also shows another case where Mr. Harold Niman represented a female client pro-bono. Why?

"If my client assured me that she was familiar with her husband’s assets, then it’s possible, perhaps, to do a settlement without full disclosure," says Sadvari at McCarthys tentatively. The risk, however, isn’t really the wife’s - if she later feels she got too little, the fact that the settlement was made without full financial disclosure leaves the husband vulnerable. The courts have shown themselves perfectly willing to reconsider agreements more than a decade after settlement - tow it, Bailey v. Plaxton. Married in 1965, divorced in 1985, Beverly Bailey - represented pro bono by Harold Niman of Niman Zemans Gelgoot - and Alan Plaxton - represented by Stephen Grant of McCarthy Tétrault - were back in the courts in March 2000, to revisit spousal support 10 years after payments, in accordance with their divorce agreement, ceased."

This seems too similar to the financial arrangement Harold Niman allegedly had with Mrs. Dickie to be a coincidence. Is Harold Niman also representing these clients for a larger purpose? You tell me…

Persons from Toronto making an information war about Dr. Dickie: Did their latest move backfire?

I would like to finish up on this theme, however, it seems persons from Toronto are making many efforts to control the flow of information about Dr. Kenneth Dickie. Should this make me stop writing? Well, at least the Freeport News appears to be acting objectively.

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A Canadian Deadbeat in the Bahamas?

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In case some of you are just tuning in, I have written four posts about Dr. Kenneth Dickie since February. The first one on February 10th was kind of "tongue in cheek" because I was relying on what the Canadian media was reporting as my only source of information. My issue with Dr. Dickie at the time was that he had seemed to leave Canada for the Bahamas to escape family support obligations and that the bad publicity would make it more difficult for those of us left behind to fix a very broken family law system in Canada.

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My post of February 24th was more balanced, since it was based on my own interview with Dr. Dickie and the exlcusive radio interview on Chin Radio in Ottawa with Ernie Tannis. I discovered that Dr. Dickie paid $1.25 million to his ex wife over ten years. He had also set up trust funds for all his kids for them to go to university or college after his support obligations expired which is usually when children turn 18. One month before all of Dr. Dickie's obligations were to have been fulfilled, his ex-wife reopened their separation agreement with the help of her lawyer, Mr. Harold Niman, and the rest is history. Dr. Dickie was put in jail for 45 days previously. He is currently in exile in the Bahamas because at the time he couldn't get a bank guarantee to back up 250K in future support payments to his ex wife for his grown children who already had educational trust funds.

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While you are at it Mr., why don't you also chop off Ken Dickie's hand for stealing a loaf of bread? The unknown circumstances of this case are almost as horrifying as the fact the Canadian media has chosen not to report on them.

Since then, I have had to republish that February 24th article twice, once on March 3rd with a foreword and again on March 9th with a public plea and a call for corporate support via the search engines in not suppressing on the internet the information I wrote telling Dr. Ken Dickie's side of the story.

In my blog of March 9th I explained how all evidence of my previous post about Dr. Dickie had disappeared from Google's ordering program. I presume, correctly or not, that this is being accomplished by the threats of litigation used by those who either specialise in civil litigation or those with a vested interest in restricting freedom of speech and controlling information because financially and reputationally it is worth it for them to do so. Would the large amounts of money that will flow to the legal industry as a result of the Dickie vs. Dickie Supreme Court of Canada jurisprudence warrant them spending time and making efforts in liaising with the search engines to suppress people's access to Views from the Water's Edge?

After my March 3rd post vanished from the ordering program on Thursday, at least this had not happened at Yahoo. I reported about this. And, this is what showed up until earlier today on Yahoo as the top two results when one looks for information about "Dr. Ken Dickie":

1. Views from the Water's Edge... the exclusive radio interview with Dr. Ken Dickie
on Chin Radio, 97.9 in Ottawa ... Dr. Ken Dickie is the Ontario plastic surgeon
and alleged "deadbeat dad" who ...viewsfromthewatersedge.blogspot.com - 255k - Cached - More pages from this site

2.Views from the Water's Edge: What do Leper's Island, Debtor's Prison and "deadbeat dad" have in common?: online ... ... the exclusive radio interview withDr.
Ken Dickie on Chin Radio, 97.9 in Ottawa ... Dr. Ken Dickie is the Ontario plastic surgeon and alleged "deadbeat dad", who ...viewsfromthewatersedge.blogspot.com/2007/03/... - 83k - Cached- More
pages from this site

If you like, I recommend you go see what shows up when the phase, Dr. Ken Dickie, is searched using Google and what happens when the same words are typed into Yahoo today. Please tell me if you don't think someone is intervening? It would be a relief, so please, though I would first recommend your visiting my other posts on this topic to see for yourself Views from the Water's Edge at the top of Google's search results initially.

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Why not just shame Dr. Dickie in the Bahamas and make him public enemy #1?

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I also found out this week that "someone" in Toronto has approached the publisher of two major Bahamian newspapers, the Freeport News and the Nassau Guardian, and asked them to accept a fax containing copies of numerous newspaper articles from Canada - possibly the same information or worse that led me to understanding a "biased" truth when I wrote my first article about Dr. Dickie on February 10th. Was this, as George Bush once said, to "smoke him out of his hole"? When this type of intervention is combined with what I have discovered about persons motivating the search engines to suppress information (possibly via threats), I start to wonder whether this quest is just a movement or a full blown cover-up/conspiracy?

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Well, at least journalism in the Bahamas seems to be more balanced, as they apparently went to Dr. Dickie to look for his side of the story. As such, Dr. Dickie was given the opportunity to provide them with other information, including my articles at Views from the Waters Edge.

In the name of freedom of speech, gender equality and innocence before guilt, I strongly recommend you check out this article about the Dickie vs. Dickie case by The Freeport News. It puts to shame anything reported by the Canadian media on this topic.

Does anyone else have problem with this? Is anyone else starting to wonder why it is so important to some to control information about Dickie and to suppress his side of the story? Que Bono? What type of society are and journalism are we proponents of here?

Newspeak on Dr. Dickie...great lengths taken to bury the truth: Why?

I wonder if I am the only blogger reading this post who has seriously thought s/he was at risk of having her/his blog "pulled" from Blogger for reasons of censorship and/or self-interest.

This is the scenario:

1. On February 24th I published a post about Dr. Ken Dickie who is the alleged "deadbeat dad" who is in exile in the Bahamas. This is because the Supreme Court's decision to overturn a lower court's ruling will put Dr. Dickie in jail if he returns to Canada. Dr. Dickie told the story in an exclusive interview that suggests he may have been sacrificed in exchange for jurisprudence that should generate $$$ billions $$$ for the legal industry.

That post generated lots of hits and came up near the top of page one on any Google search containing the name: Dr. Ken Dickie.

2. On Wednesday February 28th all evidence of my post (that told the other side of Ken Dickie’s tragic story) mysteriously vanished from Google’s search results. All references to Dr. Ken Dickie in that post were no longer picked up by Google’s ordering program. It was as if I had never written about him - even though the posts were still up.

3. On March 3rd I republished that article on Dr. Dickie in a new post. I added a foreword that raised questions about why it seems my previous post had been censored out of Google’s ordering system. I also started an experiment to see if my re-publish of that post would be “struck” from the search results again. I have been checking each day since more than once in order to report on any subsequent intervention and threat to freedom of speech.

4. Sometime after 3:00 pm (Eastern time) March 8th (approximately 9 hours ago maximum), the post link to my blog http://viewsfromthewatersedge.blogspot.com/2007/03/what-do-lepers-island-debtors-prison.html) stopped showing up in Google searches for the words “dr. ken dickie”. However this time, the information has only been censored partially. Result number 15 is the site viewsfromthewatersedge.blogspot.com. Nevertheless, the specific post has been removed from Google’s ordering sometime in the last eight hours.

15. Views from the Water's Edge- [ Traduire cette page ]
Dr. Ken Dickie is the Ontario plastic surgeon and alleged
“deadbeat dad” who lives in the Bahamas. He was officially placed in exile two
weeks ago by the ...viewsfromthewatersedge.blogspot.com/ - 250k - En cache
- Pages similaires

5. Then I checked Yahoo. The top two search results at the moment are similar to the order I viewed earlier today on Google when I enter "dr. ken dickie". The top two Yahoo results are currently my blog and my blog link below so what's up Google?:

1. Views from the Water's Edge
... the exclusive radio interview with Dr. Ken Dickie on Chin Radio, 97.9 in Ottawa ... Dr. Ken Dickie is the Ontario plastic surgeon and alleged "deadbeat dad" who ...viewsfromthewatersedge.blogspot.com - 255k - Cached - More pages from this site

2.Views from the Water's Edge: What do Leper's Island, Debtor's Prison and "deadbeat dad" have in common?: online ... ... the exclusive radio interview with
Dr. Ken Dickie on Chin Radio, 97.9 in Ottawa ... Dr. Ken Dickie is the Ontario
plastic surgeon and alleged "deadbeat dad", who ...viewsfromthewatersedge.blogspot.com/2007/03/... - 83k - Cached
- More pages from this site

What is the big deal?

Does anyone else find this creepy? Who is this “big brother”? Why should anyone care about Dr. Dickie’s side of the story or suppressing my blog for that matter? Did someone threaten to sue or is this an order from “on high”? Or, is this the preference of someone inside the search engine? Who gave the word to “pull it”?

If self-preservation rather than the universal principles of (freedom of speech, gender equality and innocence before guilt) were my motive I would probably have “gotten the hint” and I would stop posting on this topic. After all, someone(s) unknown keeps going to great lengths to suppress Dr. Ken Dickie’s side of the story.

Unfortunately, so far Dr. Dickie’s side of the story is represented almost exclusively by this post. Could someone else carry the torch in the event that Google who controls Blogger decides to eliminate my blog? Who then will tell Dr. Dickie's story?

Why would anyone care?

The jurisprudence created by Supreme Court of Canada’s ruling about Dickie v. Dickie is bold and powerful.

1. Does this represent the “nuclear bomb for women in matters of the family?

2. How could our highest court bring back “debtor’s prison” for matters of the family, even though such a concept has been banned in modern times?

3. How could an untold story in a civil matter result in jail when that same situation in a criminal matter would never result in jail?

4. Is there any credibility left in the judiciary after this very bold jurisprudence?

5. Who benefits most? The legal industry? Proponents of patriarchy? Those who seek to preserve the flow of monies in divorce from men to women?

6. Is this type of cover-up the work of “old boys” who presume women’s groups will make less of a fuss about gender inequality if they are given the upper hand in matters of the family? If so, the pursuit of corporate and political gender equality is slowed down because women can instead focus on enjoying the edge they have in family matters while divorced fathers like Dr. Dickie are sacrificed.

What about the Charter of Rights and Freedoms? Shouldn’t gender be taken out so that the objective gender equality is across the board rather than there being some issues that benefit men and others that benefit women?

Will evidence of this post be disappear too?

Perhaps the better question would be this: will someone try to take down my blog altogether? I obviously have not gotten the hint. Stay tuned. If this blog and persona disappears because I went too far, please consider those who seek to conceal information that may exonerate Dr. Dickie have much riding on this. After all, who is charged with concealing the porn and are they as successful?

Once again, in the name of freedom of speech, gender equality and innocence before guilt, I republish the post to balance the information available to the public with an interest in understanding Dr. Dickie and what this Supreme Court decision really means for the rest of us.

Saturday, March 03, 2007

What do Leper's Island, Debtor's Prison and "deadbeat dad" have in common?: online censorship shows that it is mostly about "the spin".

Over the last couple months I have learned a little about search engines and what makes them work. For the most part, information is sorted and is accessible regardless of content (unless objectionable). In the 21st century with so much information being shared by so many persons via much new technology, it is essential that principles such as "freedom of speech" be extended and preserved when these new forms of communication are the media.

Well, last week I told the other side of the story about Dr. Kenneth Dickie, the alleged "deadbeat dad" who is in exile on an island in the Bahamas. This followed the Supreme Court's 9-0 decision to overturn an Ontario Court of Appeal decision about Dr. Dickie, the Court $250,000 bond he was previously ordered to pay to his ex-wife for the education of his grown children. I wrote about the reasons behind his failure to pay following an exclusive interview on Ottawa radio the Thursday before last.

If you type in the words Dr. Kenneth Dickie into Google, you will understand why I needed to write what I did. There are dozen's of articles written explaining why the Supreme Court is right to make "debtor's prison" now appropriate for matters of the family and why Dr. Dickie needs to be locked up. My blog last Saturday reporting on Dr. Dickie's interview is pretty much the only piece of retrievable information by Google that raises questions about the appropriateness of the Supreme Court's decision on Dickie vs. Dickie.

Or, at least it was the only information - now there is nothing. Where last weekend my blog about Dr. Dickie was on page one of any Google search containing his name, by mid-week all links to that post via Google had mysteriously vanished.

Was this caused by someone(s) intervening somehow to ensure that this information was contained? How important is it to some to prevent the popular understanding of Dr. Dickie's side of the story? The vanishing of all links to that post raises further questions about the objectivity of the judiciary. This is especially so in matters where "controversial and highly interventionist" jurisprudence is created by consensus where a primary beneficiary happens to be the legal industry and the well funded special interests who spin until discriminatory words like "deadbeats" becomes a part of our popular terminology where other slurs are frowned upon.

In the name of freedom of speech, gender equality and innocence before guilt, I republish the post to balance the information available to the public with an interest in understanding Dr. Dickie and what this Supreme Court decision really means for the rest of us.

If these universal principles are important to you, please give the post a careful read. If you disagree, please let me know rather than enlisting the search engines in conspiring to commit some type of cover up.

Saturday, February 24, 2007

Debtors Prison for Deadbeats: a Nuclear Bomb for women who choose divorce?

Last night I arrived in Toronto from Montreal. I did not plan to write a post, however, on my way to my first appointment this morning, while driving past Queen’s Park, I changed my mind and I took a detour to the Lakeshore and I shot some “views”, including the one attached.

The situation is this: most of us assume that if we play be the rules, we should be able to avoid our being put in jail. After all, if we work hard, act responsibly and honour our commitments, there should be no problems, right?

Sadly, history has shown there are noble causes perhaps where ultimately and in retrospect the State looks foolish or self-interested. When Cassius Clay / Mohamed Ali was put in jail for avoiding military service in the US, this represented a class / race struggle with respect military service that led to change and the objective of racial equality. There are also situations of injustice because of blatant racial biases, such as Nelson Mandela’s life in prison as a result of decisions made by discriminatory governments in South Africa trying to prolong a very unjust status quo. In these cases the State had no regard for equality or human rights and no qualms about locking up certain persons to perpetuate the self-interested agenda of the State or those who represent the State. This is how these decisions are now judged by history.

Well, this week I discovered that Canada’s judiciary may one day be seen in a way similar to how we lament the previous lack of integrity by the US and in South African governments. Because some of the worst family policy in Canada comes out of Ontario (as well as Supreme Court Justices who have the worst “discrimination ratings”) when it comes to the likelihood of women winning and men losing decisions they adjudicate, my hotel in downtown Toronto is the perfect place for me to explain why all men (even those who never foresee them being affected by a divorce) should be on alert.

This week’s Exclusive interview with Dr. Kenneth Dickie from exile in Bahamas

Did anyone else hear the exclusive radio interview with Dr. Ken Dickie on Chin Radio, 97.9 in Ottawa hosted by Ottawa lawyer and mediator Ernie Tannis? For those interested in exploring which situations in life could lead to one being wrongly incarcerated, I recommend your requesting a transcript.

In this interview, Dr. Dickie broke his silence about his family law case, following much media hysteria in recent weeks celebrating the Supreme Court’s decision about “deadbeat dads”. This was followed by Olivia Chow’s ignorant comments in the House of Commons this week blaming “deadbeats” for child poverty in Canada. Dr. Dickie finally told his side of the story. More than ever, there is no doubt in my mind term “deadbeat” is a euphemism placed in our terminology to legitimise gender biased public decision making by certain governments and the judiciary.

What’s this all about?

Dr. Ken Dickie is the Ontario plastic surgeon and alleged “deadbeat dad” who lives in the Bahamas. He was officially placed in exile two weeks ago by the Supreme Court's decision 9-0 to overturn an Ontario Court of Appeal. The Court of Appeal would not hold Dr. Dickie in contempt for not putting up $250,000 in financial security for the education of his grown children because his claims that he cannot pay had not been heard by the Court. The Supreme Court says that doesn’t matter, so now there is jurisprudence saying that matters of civil contempt when information is still missing by a respondent are now punishable by jail. This is unbelievably bold jurisprudence because matters of criminal contempt would never result in jail under similar circumstances.

Now, Dr. Dickie will be put in jail if the Canadian authorities actually get their hands on him. He has lost his passport, which prevents him from leaving the Bahamas. And, perhaps most importantly, the State has made an example out of him personally so that all Canadian men who might consider getting married and/or having children one day should be on alert that any failure to “pay up“ if one‘s marriage ends up in divorce could mean jail.

Rightly or wrongly, decisions like this should cause a decline in the number of marriages and the number of children who are born. Furthermore, because individuals do not have exclusive control over whether their marriages work or not, it might also be prudent for all married and divorced men to now practice how to prudently and defensively pick up the soap in the shower. Or at the very least to be completely safe, just make sure you never drop that soap again.

Why doesn’t Dr. Dickie not just put up the ‘freaking’ money?

Even if it is ‘way over the top’ to put people in jail for civil matters, why does Dr. Dickie just pay? Could it be true that he cannot? Also, was he always a deadbeat? Did he ever pay for his kids?

Apparently, Dr. Dickie and his ex-wife signed a separation agreement at the time of the divorce in the early 1990s that made him responsible to pay her $1.25 million dollars over 10 years plus a $120,000 educational account for the kids. Both parties had sought independent legal advice at the time.

He contends that he paid his ex wife the agreed $1.25 million and the $120K for the kids education. He also claims that after making all these payments and after the ups and downs of his plastic surgery business in both Canada (which he shut down) and now in the Bahamas, he does not have the money/ equity to secure with a bank a “guarantee” to pay in security another 250K for the future education of children.

If it has been 15 years, how old are his kids? A deal is a deal, right?Dr. Dickie was one month away from having fulfilled that separation agreement when his wife’s legal counsel sought to re-open a ten year agreement on the eve of its completion. After receiving monies from her ex that amount to what many people don’t earn in a lifetime, Mrs. Dickie retained Toronto family divorce lawyer, Mr. Niman, who went after more money to pay for the education of Dr. Dickie’s children. By this point, his kids were all in their late teenage years and early twenties. Some of them had jobs, even though the mainstream media covering the story continues to publish pictures of Mrs. Dickie with young children leading most readers and viewers to believe Dr. Dickie left his family in the lurch.

Dr. Dickie’s lawyer, Rochelle Cantor, explains that Dr. Dickie’s children are now all in their 20s. They have been in and out of school, they all have “trust funds” set up previously by Dr. Dickie to pay for their education. They have all been close to being adults since before Mrs. Dickie sought to reopen the separation agreement - for example, at least one has taken 6 years to pursue 3 year degrees, etc; and another is travelling the world in lieu of attending school using monies from savings and a “trust fund” to fund the experience.

Mr. Niman by reputation is a lawyer who specialises “lifestyle family law“. Some call this the exclusive practice of helping wealthy, sometimes angry divorcees take their ex-husbands for everything they are worth. Because collecting legal fees on a contingency basis is not accepted practice in Canada, Mr. Niman allegedly took on Mrs. Dickie’s case pro-bono. After all, further jurisprudence in family law that would create even more incentives for women to divorce would logically help Mr. Niman’s practice. Would this be an alternative way for Mr. Niman to recover fees in the future for the time put into Mrs. Dickie’s case?

Well apparently, Mrs. Dickie also declared bankruptcy, which, if he were to choose, would have allowed Mr. Niman to write off “paper receivables” from his income tax . So, it seems Mr. Niman not only may pay less tax to Canada and Ontario by representing Mrs. Dickie, he got very valauable jurisprudence (for someone who practices this kind of law) by the Supreme Court of Canada preserving and extending the profitability of his genre of law in the future.

To top it all off, federal monies allocated to the Status of Women funding paid for Mr. Niman to take this case to the Supreme Court. This dangerous jurisprudence was funded by the Legal Education Action Fund (Leaf) which was set up in 1985 following the Charter to push for equal rights for women.

The irony is, this decision makes Canada less equal for men who are “totally exposed” if they choose to marry or to have children. Therefore, federal monies were used to put the interests of women forward at the expense of men who become divorced, which is arguably when advocacy monies become a violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The “Nuclear Bomb” for Women and continued profits for the legal industry

According to Rochelle Cantor, one of Mr. Niman’s arguments to the Supreme Court in pleading for them to allow for this jurisprudence via the Dickie vs Dickie case, was that it “gives women a “nuclear weapon in matters of the family”.

Does anyone else have trouble with how this has developed? What is the real point of all of this? Is this really about poor Mrs. Dickie, who is currently working as a nurse in Alberta? Or, is this about those deprived Dickie children who are grown, who have trust funds barely depleted and who are either working or have been in an out of school this entire millennium?

Or, is this about feeding the pockets of the legal industry who have more tools to terrorise further the lives of those men who end up getting divorced, their second families and the children of second families?

After my previously posting this and this about gender bias by our judiciary, I am starting to wonder whether the politicisation of judicial appointments and the controversy surrounding this issue currently raised by the Liberals about the Conservatives does not need to be looked at more holistically. Previous judicial appointments by Liberal governments are failing it seems and are no better than the anticipated results from the current process proposed by the Conservatives to select judges.

If judges individually or collectively make decisions while on the bench implicitly or explicitly because of their own preferences, way of viewing the world, or a subliminal desire to indirectly facilitate more future business to the legal industry at the expense of gender equality, human rights and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the whole system (as well as those currently presiding) requires a complete overhaul.

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I repeat again, if you disagree with this post, please let me know. Do not seek to enlist the search engines in conspiring to commit some type of cover up.

Edgewater Views
12:36 am, March 9th, 2007

What do Leper's Island, Debtor's Prison and "deadbeat dad" have in common?: online censorship shows that it is mostly about "the spin".

Over the last couple months I have learned a little about search engines and what makes them work. For the most part, information is sorted and is accessible regardless of content (unless objectionable). In the 21st century with so much information being shared by so many persons via much new technology, it is essential that principles such as "freedom of speech" be extended and preserved when these new forms of communication are the media.

Well, last week I told the other side of the story about Dr. Kenneth Dickie, the alleged "deadbeat dad" who is in exile on an island in the Bahamas. This followed the Supreme Court's 9-0 decision to overturn an Ontario Court of Appeal decision about Dr. Dickie, the Court $250,000 bond he was previously ordered to pay to his ex-wife for the education of his grown children. I wrote about the reasons behind his failure to pay following an exclusive interview on Ottawa radio the Thursday before last.

If you type in the words Dr. Kenneth Dickie into Google, you will understand why I needed to write what I did. There are dozen's of articles written explaining why the Supreme Court is right to make "debtor's prison" now appropriate for matters of the family and why Dr. Dickie needs to be locked up. My blog last Saturday reporting on Dr. Dickie's interview is pretty much the only piece of retrievable information by Google that raises questions about the appropriateness of the Supreme Court's decision on Dickie vs. Dickie.

Or, at least it was the only information - now there is nothing. Where last weekend my blog about Dr. Dickie was on page one of any Google search containing his name, by mid-week all links to that post via Google had mysteriously vanished.

Was this caused by someone(s) intervening somehow to ensure that this information was contained? How important is it to some to prevent the popular understanding of Dr. Dickie's side of the story? The vanishing of all links to that post raises further questions about the objectivity of the judiciary. This is especially so in matters where "controversial and highly interventionist" jurisprudence is created by consensus where a primary beneficiary happens to be the legal industry and the well funded special interests who spin until discriminatory words like "deadbeats" becomes a part of our popular terminology where other slurs are frowned upon.

In the name of freedom of speech, gender equality and innocence before guilt, I republish the post to balance the information available to the public with an interest in understanding Dr. Dickie and what this Supreme Court decision really means for the rest of us.

If these universal principles are important to you, please give the post a careful read. If you disagree, please let me know rather than enlisting the search engines in conspiring to commit some type of cover up.

Debtor's Prison for Deadbeats: a Nuclear Bomb for women who choose divorce?

Last night I arrived in Toronto from Montreal. I did not plan to write a post, however, on my way to my first appointment this morning, while driving past Queen’s Park, I changed my mind and I took a detour to the Lakeshore and I shot some “views”, including the one attached.The situation is this: most of us assume that if we play be the rules, we should be able to avoid our being put in jail. After all, if we work hard, act responsibly and honour our commitments, there should be no problems, right?

Sadly, history has shown there are noble causes perhaps where ultimately and in retrospect the State looks foolish or self-interested. When Cassius Clay / Mohamed Ali was put in jail for avoiding military service in the US, this represented a class / race struggle with respect military service that led to change and the objective of racial equality. There are also situations of injustice because of blatant racial biases, such as Nelson Mandela’s life in prison as a result of decisions made by discriminatory governments in South Africa trying to prolong a very unjust status quo. In these cases the State had no regard for equality or human rights and no qualms about locking up certain persons to perpetuate the self-interested agenda of the State or those who represent the State. This is how these decisions are now judged by history.

Well, this week I discovered that Canada’s judiciary may one day be seen in a way similar to how we lament the previous lack of integrity by the US and in South African governments. Because some of the worst family policy in Canada comes out of Ontario (as well as Supreme Court Justices who have the worst “discrimination ratings”) when it comes to the likelihood of women winning and men losing decisions they adjudicate, my hotel in downtown Toronto is the perfect place for me to explain why all men (even those who never foresee them being affected by a divorce) should be on alert.

This week’s Exclusive interview with Dr. Kenneth Dickie from exile in Bahamas

Did anyone else hear the exclusive radio interview with Dr. Ken Dickie on Chin Radio, 97.9 in Ottawa hosted by Ottawa lawyer and mediator Ernie Tannis? For those interested in exploring which situations in life could lead to one being wrongly incarcerated, I recommend your requesting a transcript.

In this interview, Dr. Dickie broke his silence about his family law case, following much media hysteria in recent weeks celebrating the Supreme Court’s decision about “deadbeat dads”. This was followed by Olivia Chow’s ignorant comments in the House of Commons this week blaming “deadbeats” for child poverty in Canada. Dr. Dickie finally told his side of the story. More than ever, there is no doubt in my mind term “deadbeat” is a euphemism placed in our terminology to legitimise gender biased public decision making by certain governments and the judiciary.

What’s this all about?

Dr. Ken Dickie is the Ontario plastic surgeon and alleged “deadbeat dad” who lives in the Bahamas. He was officially placed in exile two weeks ago by the Supreme Court's decision 9-0 to overturn an Ontario Court of Appeal. The Court of Appeal would not hold Dr. Dickie in contempt for not putting up $250,000 in financial security for the education of his grown children because his claims that he cannot pay had not been heard by the Court. The Supreme Court says that doesn’t matter, so now there is jurisprudence saying that matters of civil contempt when information is still missing by a respondent are now punishable by jail. This is unbelievably bold jurisprudence because matters of criminal contempt would never result in jail under similar circumstances.

Now, Dr. Dickie will be put in jail if the Canadian authorities actually get their hands on him. He has lost his passport, which prevents him from leaving the Bahamas. And, perhaps most importantly, the State has made an example out of him personally so that all Canadian men who might consider getting married and/or having children one day should be on alert that any failure to “pay up“ if one‘s marriage ends up in divorce could mean jail.

Rightly or wrongly, decisions like this should cause a decline in the number of marriages and the number of children who are born. Furthermore, because individuals do not have exclusive control over whether their marriages work or not, it might also be prudent for all married and divorced men to now practice how to prudently and defensively pick up the soap in the shower. Or at the very least to be completely safe, just make sure you never drop that soap again.

Why doesn’t Dr. Dickie not just put up the ‘freaking’ money?

Even if it is ‘way over the top’ to put people in jail for civil matters, why does Dr. Dickie just pay? Could it be true that he cannot? Also, was he always a deadbeat? Did he ever pay for his kids?

Apparently, Dr. Dickie and his ex-wife signed a separation agreement at the time of the divorce in the early 1990s that made him responsible to pay her $1.25 million dollars over 10 years plus a $120,000 educational account for the kids. Both parties had sought independent legal advice at the time.

He contends that he paid his ex wife the agreed $1.25 million and the $120K for the kids education. He also claims that after making all these payments and after the ups and downs of his plastic surgery business in both Canada (which he shut down) and now in the Bahamas, he does not have the money/ equity to secure with a bank a “guarantee” to pay in security another 250K for the future education of children.

If it has been 15 years, how old are his kids? A deal is a deal, right?

Dr. Dickie was one month away from having fulfilled that separation agreement when his wife’s legal counsel sought to re-open a ten year agreement on the eve of its completion. After receiving monies from her ex that amount to what many people don’t earn in a lifetime, Mrs. Dickie retained Toronto family divorce lawyer, Mr. Niman, who went after more money to pay for the education of Dr. Dickie’s children. By this point, his kids were all in their late teenage years and early twenties. Some of them had jobs, even though the mainstream media covering the story continues to publish pictures of Mrs. Dickie with young children leading most readers and viewers to believe Dr. Dickie left his family in the lurch.

Dr. Dickie’s lawyer, Rochelle Cantor, explains that Dr. Dickie’s children are now all in their 20s. They have been in and out of school, they all have “trust funds” set up previously by Dr. Dickie to pay for their education. They have all been close to being adults since before Mrs. Dickie sought to reopen the separation agreement - for example, at least one has taken 6 years to pursue 3 year degrees, etc; and another is travelling the world in lieu of attending school using monies from savings and a “trust fund” to fund the experience.

Mr. Niman by reputation is a lawyer who specialises “lifestyle family law“. Some call this the exclusive practice of helping wealthy, sometimes angry divorcees take their ex-husbands for everything they are worth. Because collecting legal fees on a contingency basis is not accepted practice in Canada, Mr. Niman allegedly took on Mrs. Dickie’s case pro-bono. After all, further jurisprudence in family law that would create even more incentives for women to divorce would logically help Mr. Niman’s practice. Would this be an alternative way for Mr. Niman to recover fees in the future for the time put into Mrs. Dickie’s case?

Well apparently, Mrs. Dickie also declared bankruptcy, which, if he were to choose, would have allowed Mr. Niman to write off “paper receivables” from his income tax . So, it seems Mr. Niman not only may pay less tax to Canada and Ontario by representing Mrs. Dickie, he got very valauable jurisprudence (for someone who practices this kind of law) by the Supreme Court of Canada preserving and extending the profitability of his genre of law in the future.

To top it all off, federal monies allocated to the Status of Women funding paid for Mr. Niman to take this case to the Supreme Court. This dangerous jurisprudence was funded by the Legal Education Action Fund (Leaf) which was set up in 1985 following the Charter to push for equal rights for women.

The irony is, this decision makes Canada less equal for men who are “totally exposed” if they choose to marry or to have children. Therefore, federal monies were used to put the interests of women forward at the expense of men who become divorced, which is arguably when advocacy monies become a violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The “Nuclear Bomb” for Women and continued profits for the legal industry

According to Rochelle Cantor, one of Mr. Niman’s arguments to the Supreme Court in pleading for them to allow for this jurisprudence via the Dickie vs Dickie case, was that it “gives women a “nuclear weapon in matters of the family”.

Does anyone else have trouble with how this has developed? What is the real point of all of this? Is this really about poor Mrs. Dickie, who is currently working as a nurse in Alberta? Or, is this about those deprived Dickie children who are grown, who have trust funds barely depleted and who are either working or have been in an out of school this entire millennium?

Or, is this about feeding the pockets of the legal industry who have more tools to terrorise further the lives of those men who end up getting divorced, their second families and the children of second families?

After my previously posting this and this about gender bias by our judiciary, I am starting to wonder whether the politicisation of judicial appointments and the controversy surrounding this issue currently raised by the Liberals about the Conservatives does not need to be looked at more holistically. Previous judicial appointments by Liberal governments are failing it seems and are no better than the anticipated results from the current process proposed by the Conservatives to select judges.

If judges individually or collectively make decisions while on the bench implicitly or explicitly because of their own preferences, way of viewing the world, or a subliminal desire to indirectly facilitate more future business to the legal industry at the expense of gender equality, human rights and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the whole system (as well as those currently presiding) requires a complete overhaul.
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If anyone has a problem with this post, please let me know why. When one first opts to censor a very important perspective in all of this, it just makes the family law conspiracy seem that much more plausible.