Shocked & Surprised to Learn Canada’s Dirty Dozen
12 Risks to those emigrating to Canada and to ALL families already living in Canada
This cautionary message is aimed at parents and foreign families emigrating to Canada or any couple already living in Canada. Considering the odds of separation or divorce in Canada, half of the married men in Canada or in a ‘3-month living-together relationship’ are at 50/50 odds of falling prey to these life-altering forces.
This report is based on provincial family laws, court records and real-life accounts by men prosecuted and persecuted by Canada’s Family Courts and those appointed as judges. For example, the Province of Ontario can impose human rights sanctions at the discretion of its agency called the Family Responsibility Office.
(References: click on links in red font.)
CANADA’S DIRTY DOZEN:
(1) Men – Seizure of 50% (half) of your income, your assets, and half your pension income.
Confiscated: Half of your earnings, half or more of your assets, plus half of your monthly income from your private or employer-based pension and the federal government pension (the national plan you are forced to contribute to while working in Canada). Plus, the government can force confiscation of 50% of provincial, municipal or local social assistance paid to men if they apply for social assistance to supplement their 1/2-pension income (actually the one-half becomes lessened due to income taxes taken from your assistance at the same rate “as if” the full pension was paid to the pensioner).
(2) Seizure of Passport, Professional & Driver’s Licenses
You are at risk of having your passport and your professional licenses seized including: pilot, pharmacy, medical, and licenses to operate a locomotive, bus, taxi, heavy equipment or commercial vehicle, plus common driver’s licenses. These seizures eliminate your freedom of employment choices and freedom of movement. And those seizures may eliminate your ability to earn and to pay support or to pay down arrears.
(3) Debtor’s Prison Reinstated in Canada
If you are in support arrears you are at risk of having a nation-wide warrant for your arrest being issued against you. And, you are at risk of being put in jail for up to 6 months per court appearance cycle, and at risk of being re-cycled back into jail the same day you get out to go to court.
Family courts in Canada can put you in jail and keep putting you back in jail until you make “satisfactory payment” of the debt to your former spouse. How or if or from where you can produce the money is never a consideration. Sometimes father’s relatives or current wives take pity upon the fathers and pay his debt for him just to get him out of jail (what the Enforcement Agencies like to call it, Magic Fountain, the money appears out of thin air). If you don’t pay, you may go back to jail until you do. Thereby, there is risk of your long-term incarceration for a (deemed) bad debt; hence, Debtor’s Prison. In effect, the Medieval law of debtor’s prison has been reinstated in Canada.
(4) No Academic Reporting In Forced Tuition Payments
You may also be at risk of being forced to pay for their college or university costs up to and including their first degree or to age 24.
Unlike jurisdictions in America, where in fairness to the one paying for it, in Canada there are no academic minimum achievement levels required for such students to determine if you continue to pay. So, if a court-ordered supported student fails to obtain passing grades in any semester or quarter term, you are still forced to pay. You are obligated to pay for their academic costs until they attain their 24th birthday or their first degree (if the student ever gets a degree).
Their only career choice could be simply to keep going to various post-secondary learning institutions. Their choice of Major Course of Study could continuously change and lead to no conclusion (just aimless drifting from one course to another). They may frequently change universities, downgrading to junior colleges and downgrading again to vocational schools (e.g., hair-and-nails beauty schools). The only limits to this aimless and endless wandering are: to age 24 or their first (if ever) degree. This leaves you likely to pay support to age 24 but the “child” (an adult by then) having nothing to show for it.
You will not be allowed to see their academic reports and you can not force anyone to provide them to you under Canada’s laws. Family Laws or the family courts will not obligate the custodial parent to regularly report the status of the children. The children’s academic progress or lack of it will not be ordered to be made available to the father. In contrast, fathers of intact families in Canada are not obligated by law to pay for such academic interests (creating two different categories of citizen; in other words, Canada condones social discrimination).
(5) Taxation Discrimination Legal in Canada
Separated fathers pay tax on income they never see. Any support you are ordered to pay is not tax-deductible. Paying support including your children’s university or college costs you are ordered to pay is not tax-deductible. Your former mate will not pay income tax on the amounts you pay her (whether she has a job or not).
In these cases, Canadian law permits the existence of two sets of rules in taxation of families, discriminating between “intact families” and “extended families.” College and university costs are deductible by fathers in one family (intact) while not in another (separated, extended). This, despite the courts linking members of an extended family (court records and orders linking fathers to custodial parent and children).
Income earned by support payers (men) is taxable, and income earned by single women is taxable, however, support income to divorced recipients (women) is not taxable. Thus, taxation discrimination is lawful in Canada on multiple levels.
(6) Un-tested Beneficiary says “When Okay” to stop court-ordered support
In Canada, there are no legal demands on the custodial support recipient to regularly and periodically provide hard-copy proof of the children’s status to anyone: (i) Not to the support payer, and (ii) Not to the support maintenance-enforcement agency, whose sole reason for existence we are led to believe is “responsibility” and “accountability.” She can quite literally “phone it in.”
A former wife in Canada is entitled to support payments until SHE tells the courts when to stop enforcing payments from a former husband. Unlike other countries where the recipient is required to provide periodic proof of her eligibility for these payments, women in Canada are not required by any legislation to do so.
There exists no provincial legislation compelling the custodial parent to periodically send in or produce testable proof of eligibility for continuing support, despite if:
- a spouse remarries (spousal support) or
- any of the children leave the custodial home (child support), or if they attain a certain age, or if
- custodial post-high school student has flunked out of college or trade-school one or more terms or if
- anyone co-habits with the custodial spouse of the “children” meaning they began living with an added adult.
During the court case there may be or may not be “suggestions” and “discussion” but under the law there are no mandatory requirements upon the custodial parent to report routinely, no “or else lose support” if one monthly report is late or missing. Translated into real-life terms, this is coerced payment without justification.
Yet men are often court-ordered to report if income increases but are not required to report if their income decreases. If men’s incomes decrease, and men hope to pay less monthly support then they are required to petition the opposite party through the courts to have support adjusted. If support income is disputed and if men lose then the court costs and lawyer’s fees of his side plus those of the opposite party (see court transcripts).
If the man has no cash with which to pay, he may have those costs added to his support account. That addition may put him into “instant arrears” and he may suffer added fees plus additional interest charges until paid in full. There could be a lot more fees appearing suddenly during any of his returns to court.
The custodial parent is often represented at no cost to her because men are going to court against “the state” and she is the state’s witness. The “state” enforcement agency has legal teams to fight men in court. In effect, her legal fees are paid by taxpayers while men’s legal fees are paid by the individual man. Even when she may hire her own lawyer, courts have seen the state agency’s lawyers consulting during the session (actively participating). In those cases, men may be challenged by a tag-team of opponents and in an environment shown to be pre-disposed towards the custodial parent (see Gender Bias section report by sworn witnesses in a Special Parliamentary Joint Senate and House Committee Report). Again, men’s opposition may consist of tag-teamed efforts from (i) opposing counsels, (ii) gender bias at the judicial level, and (iii) statutory bias at the legislative level (see next).
(7) Arrears Deemed in Chambers Despite Legislated Reverse Onus On Support Payer to “Disprove a Negative” (Guilty Until Proven Innocent)
A fiction cannot rule over reality, or can it? In Canada it can. A judge in court or alone in his chambers (including while denying your call for a hearing to defend yourself) can order a support payer into an automatic arrears position by deeming income to be at any level without having to accept factual proof to the contrary (pay stubs or income tax filings).
There are no regulations upon the judge or the courts to accept and rely upon any aspect about of a respondent’s (typically fathers) evidence in any case. Disclosure does not guarantee acceptance or consideration. The Ontario Court of Appeal has decided judges may ignore evidence and then impute at will when it comes to determining support payer’s income (ignoring the facts, judges are making groundless legal decisions).
Your actual level of income may have no bearing upon what level the judge chooses to set your income. You may be deemed by the court as under-employed. An example: If you lose your job in your regular vocation and have to take a job flipping hamburgers to stay alive you may be deemed as “under employed” for your qualifications (no matter if alternative employers are not hiring anyone, or not willing to hire you, or despite providing proof you are seeking traditional employment). The reality of a new lower income may not be considered by a family court judge (seen, court transcripts). Judges can arbitrarily set your income level for support purposes “AS IF you are making the same earnings at the job you lost.”
Respondents Guilty Until Proven Innocent – Under these laws, counter arguments from you or your representative can go unrecognized or unaccepted or be dismissed by the judge (without question by any standing review board). In other words, even if you provide factual evidence in your defense it can be arbitrarily dismissed (seen done in court transcripts).
Under these laws, there is a Reverse Onus of Proof where the obligation is on the payer to disprove a negative. A judge arbitrarily sets a respondent’s income whether he may be gainfully employed at a lower level or not working at all. The respondent is obligated to fight that (onus) to prove he is not either at that income level or working (proof of a negative). Hence, he is “guilty until proven innocent” despite providing “proof” (providing pay stubs or unemployment records or tax returns have all been seen ignored in decisions by the courts, ref. court transcripts). In other words, the payers’s evidence carries no weight when it comes to a court’s decision. However, the reverse, the woman’s evidence or allegations appear to carry the weight for judges’ decisions (seen in transcripts) and in the sworn testimony of hundreds of witnesses to the Joint Senate-Parliament Committee Report (1998).
This lack of integrity in procedure and evidentiary rules and regulations in family law and courts is contrary to all other forms of law, including criminal law and tort law. Canada’s family law and what appears as law in family courts remain irrational: In practical terms, one cannot rationally prove a negative. Again, respondents often cannot prove themselves as innocent because courts simply dismiss the facts in favour of arbitrary decisions abstracted from the minds of Canada’s family court judges. Effectively, this describes a “Kangaroo Court” or a “Catch-22″ or a “Kafka-esque” reality. How else could such an irrational situation be described? See Lack of Due Process, next.
(8) Absence of Justice – Lack of Due Process
Lack of Consistency in Federal v. Provincial Statutes and Regulations and Evidentiary Rules. Testimony Not Tested. Lack of Due Process.
There are instances of former spouses lying under oath to the judge, while in his defense the payer produces factual proof to the contrary, and then the sitting judge issues no penalty to the offending spouse perjuring herself to the court. Additionally, a former spouse may sign her affidavit and swear to it under oath despite such affidavits containing: misinformation, deceit, and outright lies from these former spouses, from third-party hearsay, and half truths from inept investigators (who are not under oath). There is evidence of family courts accepting these without diligent or vigorous probing and then incorporating these in their ‘reasons for judgement’ while at the same time questioning but not accepting the true facts of payers’ submissions (i.e., gender bias in the courts, report here).
Even if payers or their legal representatives file a request for a hearing to defend their submissions or to submit supporting or related evidence in a hearing, the judge can deny a hearing (lack of due process). In examples of disputed amounts of your income, the judge may deem your case any way that s/he wishes without your opportunity to provide a counter argument in a hearing.
One of many inconsistencies in supplying evidence is this example: While Canada’s Family Laws and Regulations clearly state one spouse cannot submit evidence from prior events that may jeopardize a later case, the standard evidence submission forms ordered for use in Provincial Family Court contain spaces to be filled in with known prior cases. By illustration, if a former spouse attacked her husband with a kitchen knife and he is sent to the hospital that evidence would not be allowed, whereas, Provincial family court forms call for the last 3 appearances and descriptions if the payer is applying for a material-means adjustment in support level (unequal, unfair rules for submissions). What purpose does the latter serve if not to jeopardize an unbiased appreciation of one side?
When case transcripts are compared where the roles of offending parties are reversed in gender, the family courts issue very different decisions. By illustration, if a man is heard and convicted of stalking his ex-spouse, he is likely to go to jail. But, if a woman committed the same act of stalking, she was more likely issued a verbal warning or if “professionally” represented, perhaps she has had her case dismissed. Similarly, no matter if the covenants of their separation agreement (a contract) stated they mutually agree they are to go on in separate lives and to live unfettered or bothered in any way by the other. If she violated the covenants, there are no consequences to her, but if gender-reversed (he bothers her), courts become excited. Here, then, provincial family laws and courts fail to measure up to standard contract law for breach of agreement or equality under the law.
Some see family law precedents and courts as having their own circular evolution in an unsupervised or unregulated manner, to the point of the absence of fair and equal treatment under the law being the standard of justice in Canada’s provinces. Case transcripts reveal this absence of justice, and the lack of due process, to be perfectly legal in Family Courts in Canada. This is a departure from all other jurisprudence in Canada, including criminal law or contract law (tort law).
(9) Permanent Arrears, Permanent Debt, Permanently Poor, Put onto a Deadend
Your new “instant” arrears may grow to become such a large amount. Arrears increased by monthly interest charges may put you into “permanent” arrears (forever) because you may never earn enough to repay the arrears from out of the one-half of your income you may be permitted to keep each pay day. The debt is never forgiven by the courts unless the former and distant spouse agrees to this. There are no means tests for her to see if she needs any part of your pension. Thereby, you can be forced to pay your former mate one half of your pension income until you die whether she pre-deceases you or not (her estate continues to have claim on you even though she may expire before you do).
(10) Tripped by Three-Strikes Trigger
Any arrears in support occurring just 3 times, at any 3 points in time, can trigger these risks. Even if not completely true, her claim to the authorities can seemvalid enough to the authorities. A mere phone call may be all that is required to have you “marked” by the enforcment agency (agency operates without oversight). You may be ordered into court with all of your defense costs to be paid by you. Case Records show us that men, not women, paid court costs of the women even when women were decided in the wrong. For a more complete discussion on gender bias and unethical practices see Chapter 1, Section E – Gender Bias in Courts, and see, Section F – Unethical Practices by Family Lawyers, found in a Joint Senate and House report here.
(11) Women’s World-wide Web (paid for by “the State”)
A woman who was married in Canada and living in Canada but then later moving to any where in the world can at her will start enforcement proceeding against you simply by contacting the Enforcement Agency of the Canadian province in which she was divorced. From a mere phone call from her, that government may attempt to hunt you down.
Support enforcement agencies using their pre-approved “carte blanche” pad of court orders can, at their whim, put you into the same class as Canada’s extremely dangerous criminals, launch a manhunt, monitor communications networks for you, and issue a nation-wide arrest warrant against you. A provincial Enforcement Agency may force any of your friends, relatives, or employers to reveal all information about you (compel by court order, and hold in contempt those ordered who fail to reveal all). Some support enforcement agencies have paid contractors to review ATM Bank Machine photo records from around the country for images of your face. Thereby, for all intents and purposes, you have become an “enemy of the state,” subject to arrest on sight and incarcerated until a court sees you for sentencing, which could become a continuous loop. Thereby, Canada forces fathers into being felons (subject to continuous incarceration as mentioned above, Debtor’s Prison).
(12) You May Appear in Wanted Postings
A Wanted Posting About You may be published on the world-wide web on a government’s website. Provincial governments may post on their website a notice including a photograph and description of you and that you are wanted by them for their purposes.
This facilitates the creation of “watchers” or “hunters” any where in the world.Professional bounty hunters or amateurs motivated by money may hunt you down, hoping for a reward from your former mate or others. That search tool is conveniently provided to these watchers by Internet so that they can better recognize and know more about their target: You. However, there are no built-in safe-guards if in their zealousnous they “chase” someone who happens to look like you. That error on their part may result in very costly or even fatal errors for some any where in the world. (Are world economic conditions ripe for amateurs to join the hunt? Could Canada be contributing to accidental deaths in cases of mistaken identity?)
“The State” as Belligerent Litigant
Canada’s provincial Family Courts have been shown to accept false testimony and untested affidavits while ignoring true facts in defense submissions. Some child-spousal Support Maintenance Agencies have been seen to withhold the status of the children from a remote court ordering the report and that remote jurisdiction’s prosecutor (acting on behalf of the original jurisdiction) being charged with contempt for failing to report as ordered.
It is readily apparent to those who study transcripts that courts have frequently issued arbitrary renderings resulting in prejudiced prosecutions of former husbands and fathers. – See Gender Bias and Unethical Practice in Special Canada Joint Committee Report “For The Sake of the Children.”
Additionally, a significant number of prosecutions have been shown to be out of the purview of the originating court, their having ripped apart the remote court’s case and rearranged the facts to suit the originating court so it could dispense pernicious and punitive, life altering rulings, and in some cases, life-ending.
The Genesis of Canadian Family Laws:
Executive Summary Abstract
Canada’s Family Laws are different from laws elsewhere and after you read this, ask your family lawyer to explain this to you (not your immigration lawyer because that immigration agent may not always tell you about all of the bad with all of the good).
In their present form, the laws are set against rational treatment of families struck by the unfortunate (yet natural) occurrence of separation or divorce. Family Laws in Canada are so hostile to those family members snared by the provincial family courts that the laws may be in part responsible for a measurable decline in qualified trades people and to some extent a decline in immigrants seeking permanent residence in Canada.
In May 1997, the Federal Liberal Government made sweeping changes to Family Laws in Canada. The Federal Liberal Government induced Canada’s provinces to immediately adopt the same laws, despite the Province’s original objections that the new retroactive law would jamb their courts and deplete their justice department budgets.
Retroactive effect means all settled cases before could be re-opened for new trials.
Federal Liberals’ stated aim was to reduce women’s poverty and focussed on single-parent females and then called a national election (June 1997). But women did not get what they expected in turn after voting for the Liberal Party. Instead, after reviewing the cold, clear facts, one reads how women’s poverty persists. Sadly, it remains unchanged from levels in 1997 to present day, a decade and a half after that promise made in June 1997.
Families have been decimated by Canada’s Family Laws and Family Courts…. Read more of Executive Summary and Genesis of Canadian Family Laws. If you may think you already know the genesis, think again.
Some Final Thoughts on Family Life in Canada
Again, common law (living together) or legal marriages are viewed to be the same in Canada. If either one severs the relationship, the above court orders and rules may suddenly apply.
Once you are “tagged” by the state under these orders and rules, you are at risk, and you will be found, controlled, and prosecuted as described above, including being separated from your income, your assets, your pension, and separated from your children (to their detriment as noted by professionals in a post below).
All of the above report is based on statutes and case law reports and available to any attorney if he or she wishes to research it.
Additionally, there are the court transcripts on file of what are termed by the Family Courts as unreported cases (but on file) about men who have undergone these “renderings” by Canada’s Family Courts.
And sadly, there are also media reports about some men who have taken to drastic measures, including suicide as a way out.
