Author Archives: John-Paul Boyd

About John-Paul Boyd

John-Paul Boyd is the executive director of the Canadian Research Institute for Law and the Family, a non-profit organization associated with the University of Calgary. The main work of the Institute involves undertaking research related to law and the family, public legal education, promoting evidence-based law and policy reform, and improving access to justice. John-Paul practiced family law in Vancouver, British Columbia for thirteen years before joining the Institute. He took his training as a mediator in 2005, his training as a parenting coordinator in 2007 and 2008, his training as an arbitrator in 2011 and his training as a collaborative practitioner in 2012. John-Paul has particular interests in law and process reform, children's rights and involvement in the justice system, the conflicts of laws and jurisdictional issues in general, heuristics and decision-making processes, and the psychology of separation and divorce.

Second CRILF Report on Polyamory Studies Sociodemographic Attributes and Attitudes

By: John-Paul Boyd

PDF Version: Second CRILF Report on Polyamory Studies Sociodemographic Attributes and Attitudes

Report Commented On: “Perceptions of Polyamory in Canada”, Canadian Research Institute for Law and the Family

The Canadian Research Institute for Law and the Family completed its second report on polyamory in January. The Institute’s first report, completed in April 2017, addressed how the legal issues arising from the formation and dissolution of polyamorous relationships are dealt with under the domestic relations legislation of Canada’s common law provinces, and included a preliminary analysis of the data gathered from a national survey administered over the course of seven weeks in the summer of 2016. The new report takes a much deeper look at the survey data and examines the sociodemographic attributes and attitudes of people identifying as polyamorous, with the goal of obtaining a better understanding of the prevalence and nature of polyamorous relationships to inform the development of family justice policy and legislation. Continue reading →

CRILF Reviews Federal Divorce Data for Alberta

By: John-Paul Boyd

PDF Version: CRILF Reviews Federal Divorce Data for Alberta

Report Commented On: Analysis of Data from the Federal Justice Divorce File Review Study: Report on Findings for Alberta, 2011

The Department of Justice undertook the Federal Justice Divorce File Review Study in 2003, a project which wound up gathering enormous amounts of information about families going through divorce from courts across Canada. Three waves of data were collected, in 2005, 2008 and 2011. In 2015, the Canadian Research Institute for Law and the Family (CRILF) was granted access to the third tranche of data collected from the Calgary registry of the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench.

The Institute has now released its report on that data, focusing on the timelines between separation and key events in the divorce process, parenting orders and child support orders, and analyzing the data by gender and the mention of family violence. Although the Institute’s findings are interesting, the data collected are not representative of divorce files in Canada, nor of divorce files in Alberta, for two main reasons. First, it appears that many of the 328 court files reviewed for the Study were uncontested desk order divorce applications; 75.9% of cases only had one order in the court file and 95.7% of those orders were final orders. Second, the coders who gathered the data were instructed to ensure that every third or fourth file they reviewed was “thicker,” thus oversampling files expected to have a higher degree of complexity. Continue reading →

Polyamorous Families in Canada: Early Results of New Research from CRILF

By: John-Paul Boyd

PDF Version: Polyamorous Families in Canada: Early Results of New Research from CRILF

Report Commented On: Canadian Research Institute for Law and the Family, Perceptions of Polyamorous Relationships: Preliminary Data

On 20 June 2016, the Canadian Research Institute for Law and the Family began a study on Canadian perceptions of polyamory, advertised with the assistance of the Canadian Polyamory Advocacy Association, gathering preliminary data with a public survey. The information gathered thus far, from the 547 people who answered our survey, paints a nuanced picture of polyamorous individuals and their family arrangements.

The polyamorous families we are looking at are those created by three or more freely consenting adults, in distinction to faith-based, and often patriarchal, forms of polygamy that exist in much of Africa, the Middle East and North America, the latter of which have been popularized in shows like Big Love and Sister Wives. The polyamorous population we are studying places a high value on equality and honesty, and the rights of individuals to leave a relationship when and how they wish. Continue reading →

Family Justice 3.5: Fostering a Settlement-Oriented Legal Culture

By: John-Paul Boyd

PDF Version: Family Justice 3.5: Fostering a Settlement-Oriented Legal Culture

This is the note on rethinking our approach to family justice that I never thought I’d find myself writing, and as a result I need to begin with an explanation and an apology. In this short post, I describe what I see as lawyers’ duties to promote settlement, to respect informed compromise and to refrain from litigating family law disputes without good and sufficient reason. First, however, I’ll explain the circumstances that have provoked me to write.

I’m involved in a number of the present efforts to reform family justice. In one particular group, I have received a certain amount of kickback when I suggest that lawyers should play a larger role at the front end of family law disputes, in order to steer as many of those disputes away from court as possible. (Well, perhaps not kickback so much as dismay.) I would invariably respond that the early involvement of lawyers would result in the parties receiving an explanation of the law and the range of likely outcomes, thereby minimizing unreasonable positions and moving the parties toward settlement, as I have described elsewhere. Although this struck me as self-evident, it is not.

Continue reading →

A Remarkable, Plain Language Judgment from the Ontario Court of Justice

By: John-Paul Boyd

PDF Version: A Remarkable, Plain Language Judgment from the Ontario Court of Justice

Case Commented On: R v Armitage, 2015 ONCJ 64 (CanLII)

A few weeks ago, Mr. Justice Nakatsuru of the Ontario Court of Justice released a remarkable judgment in the case of R. v Jesse Armitage. A flood of decisions in criminal matters are released every day, and in that sense Justice Nakatsuru’s sentencing decision in Armitage was not exceptional. What sets the judgment apart are the judge’s decisions to direct his opinion to the offender and to write that opinion entirely in plain language.