Two Clicks Away

Topic: Family Law April 15, 2016 by Carol Cochrane

I mentioned in the Blog I posted on April 8th that I was attending a Continuing Education Program on April 8th and 9th along with approximately 175  other family law lawyers from the Ottawa area and the East Region.  The two day Conference was a great learning experience (and networking opportunity as well), with many informative and thought-provoking presentations and discussions.

On the second day of the Conference, Justice Heather McGee of the Superior Court of Justice in Newmarket spoke to us about the issue of privacy (or more specifically the lack thereof) in Family Court.  Her Honour expressed grave concerns about the lack of privacy in family law proceedings, not only due to the open nature of court hearings but also the easy access to Court decisions on such publicly accessible services as CanLII.  The broad access available to the public in matters of such high sensitivity led Her Honour to suggest that we should consider universal initializing of file names and removing all private information from the public record.

Some cases are already initialized, meaning that the case is not listed as “Amy Brown v. Christopher Duncan”, by way of example, but rather as “AB v. CD”.  By adopting that approach consistently, Justice McGee believed that far greater anonymity could be maintained – something that should be our collective objective.

In many Court decisions, in addition to financial specifics being identified (the parties’ income levels, asset values and liability balances), there is often extensive details given concerning the children of the separated couple.  It is not unusual to come across Court decisions where details of the children’s full names, birth dates, schools and extracurricular activities are all given.  Justice McGee expressed concern about such identifying information being so readily available.  It would not be difficult, she explained, for a child to be put at risk of stalking or predatory behaviour. For instance, if a person knows a child’s name birth date and the city where the child lives, it would not be much of a challenge to get onto the child’s Facebook page.  On that Facebook page, information as to where the child will be, whether the child’s parents will be out of town on a holiday, and other similar (concerning) information can be readily accessed.

As Justice McGee indicated, finding your child may be just “two clicks away”.

It may be time for us to accept that the benefits of privacy far outweigh the benefits of public access to information, and that as a result far greater restraints need to be adopted  to ensure the safety of not only the Family Court litigants, but more importantly, their young children.

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