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Keeping Children Safe Act

An Act to amend the Divorce Act

Summary

  • Requires legal advisers in divorce cases to assess the risk of family violence and, if risk is present, develop an appropriate safety plan.
  • Directs courts to better recognize coercive control and its impacts when making parenting and contact decisions, prioritizing child safety and trauma-informed evidence.
  • Revises best-interests-of-the-child factors and clarifies relocation burdens, aiming to curb misuse of 'parental alienation' claims that could endanger children.
  • Enables existing orders that relied on parental-alienation-type findings to be revisited under the new standards once the Act is in force.

Builder Assessment

Neutral

Principles Analysis

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Canada should aim to be the world's most prosperous country.

The bill focuses on family-court safety and child protection; any economic effects are indirect and not its purpose.

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Promote economic freedom, ambition, and breaking from bureaucratic inertia (reduce red tape).

It adds duties for legal advisers but may streamline decisions by clarifying standards around coercive control and relocation; net impact on economic freedom is unclear.

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Drive national productivity and global competitiveness.

Reducing domestic violence can improve long-run human capital, but the bill is not a targeted productivity or competitiveness measure.

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Grow exports of Canadian products and resources.

No direct connection to trade or export growth.

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Encourage investment, innovation, and resource development.

Unrelated to investment or innovation policy.

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Deliver better public services at lower cost (government efficiency).

Mandatory risk assessments and expanded evidentiary considerations may increase case complexity and legal costs, at least in the short term.

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Reform taxes to incentivize work, risk-taking, and innovation.

No tax changes.

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Focus on large-scale prosperity, not incrementalism.

This is a narrow family-law reform with limited macroeconomic implications.

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Email [email protected]

C-223

PartyLiberal
StatusOutside the Order of Precedence
Last updatedSep 18, 2025
TopicsSocial Issues
Parliament45