Author Archives: Jennifer Koshan

About Jennifer Koshan

B.Sc., LL.B (Calgary), LL.M. (British Columbia). Professor. Member of the Alberta Bar. Please click here for more information.

The Right to Support for Adult Children with Disabilities

By: Jennifer Koshan and Jonnette Watson Hamilton

PDF Version: The Right to Support for Adult Children with Disabilities

Case and Bill Commented On: Ryan v Pitchers, 2019 ABQB 19 (CanLII); Bill 28, the Family Statutes Amendment Act 2018

As Laura Buckingham noted in an ABlawg post in December 2018, Alberta’s Bill 28, the Family Statutes Amendment Act 2018, made three key amendments:

creating legislated rules for property division for separating common-law couples;
closing a gap in child support legislation for adult children with disabilities; and
repealing the Married Women’s Act, RSA 2000, c M-6.

The second of these amendments was recently considered in Ryan v Pitchers, 2019 ABQB 19 (CanLII). In this case, a mother brought a constitutional challenge to the pre-amendment version of the Family Law Act, SA 2003, c F-4.5 (FLA), which did not allow disabled children of unmarried parents to obtain child support once they turned 18 and were not attending school full-time. The mother’s argument was that the definition of child in the FLA violated the equality guarantee in section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The government did not defend the case given the pending legislative amendment in Bill 28, and although the father raised constitutional counter-arguments, the mother’s claim was successful.

Although the decision may seem like a foregone conclusion, the section 15 analysis of Madam Justice Carolyn Phillips has some interesting features that we will comment on in this post.

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The Adverse Impact of Mandatory Victim Surcharges and the Continuing Disappearance of Section 15 Equality Rights

By: Jennifer Koshan and Jonnette Watson Hamilton

PDF Version: The Adverse Impact of Mandatory Victim Surcharges and the Continuing Disappearance of Section 15 Equality Rights

Case Commented On: R v Boudreault, 2018 SCC 58 (CanLII)

It was just over one year ago that our former colleague Sheilah Martin was appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada (see our tribute on ABlawg). Justice Martin has now written her first decision for the Court, R v Boudreault, 2018 SCC 58 (CanLII) which was released in December 2018. The case concerns the constitutionality of victim surcharges, which are mandatory for persons who are discharged, plead guilty, or are found guilty of an offence under the Criminal Code, RSC 1985, c C-46, or the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, SC 1996, c 19. Writing for a majority of the Court, Justice Martin’s judgment holds that these surcharges violate section 12 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which protects against cruel and unusual punishment.

Our interest in this post is in exploring how equality infuses Justice Martin’s decision. Equality rights were not directly at issue in the case; rather, the constitutional challenge focused on section 12 as well as the guarantee of life, liberty and security of the person in section 7 of the Charter. Equality arguments were made by only two interveners (see here and here) and equality is mentioned explicitly only once in Justice Martin’s ruling (at para 28). Nevertheless, the discriminatory impact of the surcharge animates her entire judgment.

This leads us to reiterate a point we have made in previous writing (see e.g. here): section 15 of the Charter, the equality guarantee, is often overlooked in favour of other rights and freedoms as a result of the courts’ difficulties with and inconsistent treatment of equality rights. This has led to the analysis of other Charter rights – including section 7 and section 12 – that overlaps with equality, which muddies the content of these other rights. In turn, the lack of a robust equality jurisprudence perpetuates the tendency of parties and courts to avoid section 15. This is not necessarily a problem when other rights can be successfully invoked, as in this case, but it can be a problem when a successful claim depends on equality rights.

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Domestic Violence and Alternative Dispute Resolution in Family Law Disputes

By: Wanda Wiegers, Jennifer Koshan and Janet Mosher

PDF Version: Domestic Violence and Alternative Dispute Resolution in Family Law Disputes

Legislation Commented On: Bill 98, The Miscellaneous Statutes (Family Dispute Resolution) Amendment Act; Bill C-78, An Act to amend the Divorce Act, the Family Orders and Agreements Enforcement Assistance Act and the Garnishment, Attachment and Pension Diversion Act and to make consequential amendments to another Act

Access to justice in the family law sphere has received a lot of attention in recent years. One recurring theme is the large number of self-represented litigants and the need to explore mandatory out-of-court dispute resolution. Alberta does not currently mandate any type of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) for family law or child welfare matters (see here), but some other jurisdictions do. One issue that arises in this context is whether ADR is appropriate in cases involving domestic violence. In Saskatchewan, Bill 98, The Miscellaneous Statutes (Family Dispute Resolution) Amendment Act, will amend the Queen’s Bench Act, 1998, SS 1998, c Q-1.01, to require parties to participate in family dispute resolution (s 44.01(3)), but the parties may be exempted from that requirement if there is a history of interpersonal violence between them (s 44.01(6)(c)). We submitted a brief to the Saskatchewan Ministry of Justice in August 2017, prior to the enactment of Bill 98, which discussed the importance of considering domestic violence in this context (see here). The issue is once again alive as Parliament debates Bill C-78, An Act to amend the Divorce Act, the Family Orders and Agreements Enforcement Assistance Act and the Garnishment, Attachment and Pension Diversion Act and to make consequential amendments to another Act. In its current iteration, Bill C-78 would amend the Divorce Act, RSC 1985, c 3 (2nd Supp), to create duties (1) on parties to “try to resolve the matters that may be the subject of an order under this Act through a family dispute resolution process” (proposed s 7.3) and, (2) on legal advisers to encourage their clients to use family dispute resolution processes (proposed s 7.7(2)(a); Bill C-78 defines “legal adviser” as “a person who is qualified, in accordance with the law of a province, to represent or provide legal advice to another person” in any proceeding under the Divorce Act). Although the amendments recognize that the duties may not apply where “the circumstances of the case are of such a nature that it would clearly not be appropriate to do so,” they do not explicitly exempt cases involving domestic violence at present.

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Alberta’s Family Violence Laws: Intersections, Inconsistencies and Access to Justice

By: Jennifer Koshan, Irene Oh and Kristin McDonald

PDF Version: Alberta’s Family Violence Laws: Intersections, Inconsistencies and Access to Justice

Attached Summary Chart

November is Family Violence Prevention Month in Alberta. Law has an important role to play in prevention efforts through the ways it defines family violence, which may have educative and normative influences on the public. Law can also contribute to prevention in more material ways by providing remedies to enable victims to protect themselves and their children and by requiring perpetrators to seek counselling and other programming. But laws are only useful where they are accessible. This post describes and analyzes all of the Alberta laws and government policies pertaining to family violence, paying particular attention to the intersections and inconsistencies between them and how these might impact victims, perpetrators, children and their access to justice. While the map of laws in a single province is complex in itself, there are also federal laws relevant to domestic violence that add to this complexity – for example, for families seeking remedies under the Divorce Act, RSC 1985 c 3 (2nd Supp), and for First Nations victims of violence living on reserve, who may not have access to provincial protection order remedies (see here). The research set out in this post is part of a larger project on domestic violence and access to justice, funded by SSHRC and the Law Foundation of Ontario’s Access to Justice Fund, which is mapping legislation and government policies relevant to domestic violence across Canada. We will eventually make our research available on a website that is aimed at trusted intermediaries, those who provide services to victims and perpetrators in domestic violence cases. We also hope that this research is useful to litigants, lawyers, judges, policy-makers and other professionals who work in this area. The Alberta research is also available in a chart format that is attached above.

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“Marriage is not a rugby match”: Choking, Consent and Domestic Violence

By: Jennifer Koshan

PDF Version: “Marriage is not a rugby match”: Choking, Consent and Domestic Violence

Case Commented On: R. v Gardiner, 2018 ABCA 298 (CanLII)

Sexual violence – how it is perpetrated and how allegations are handled by those in power – is at the forefront of public consciousness at the moment as a result of #MeToo and, most recently, the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings. But discussions about the legal definition of consent have been happening in Canada for a long time. The current definition of consent dates back to 1992 and was the result of a law reform process that included consultations with groups representing the interests of survivors as well as accused persons. Consent is defined in s 273.1 of the Criminal Code, RSC 1985, c C-46, as “the voluntary agreement of the complainant to engage in the sexual activity in question” and it is to be assessed from the complainant’s subjective perspective (R v Ewanchuk, [1999] 1 SCR 330, 1999 CanLII 711 (SCC)). Among several important principles that are well accepted in the case law (even if they are not always properly applied), consent cannot be implied or given in advance, can always be revoked, and must be present for each sexual activity in a particular encounter as well as the degree of force used for each activity (see e.g. Ewanchuk, R. v. J.A., [2011] 2 SCR 440, 2011 SCC 28 (CanLII); R v Barton, 2017 ABCA 216 (CanLII); leave to appeal granted, 2018 CanLII 11543 (SCC)).

How does this approach to consent change when the offence is one of domestic violence rather than sexual violence? For a majority of the Alberta Court of Appeal in a recent case, R. v Gardiner, 2018 ABCA 298 (CanLII), the answer is – wrongly, in my view – quite a lot.

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