You think NB Power costs the tax payers take a look at the divorce industry

Equal Shared Parenting Protects You The Canadian Tax Payer:

 
Since the introduction of the so-called “No Fault Divorce,” the divorce industry has evidenced unprecedented growth, and has become a multi-billion dollar business in Canada. After it’s introduction the divorce rate has steadily climbed from 8% to being among the world’s highest at about 50% of marriages. Each year there are approximately 75,000 divorces and 50,000 child custody orders. Of these approximately 90% of the time custody is awarded to mothers. There are approximately 2 million children in Canada who are now living life without their Father due to the adversarial Family Court System.
 
So, what is the financial cost of the adversarial Family Justice System to Canadian Taxpayers and Families? Here is a breakdown of the annual costs just for the operations of the Family Justice System only. You the Canadian Taxpayers are paying for this:
 
Cost of Judges Salary – $300,000,000 (Three Hundred Million)
Cost of Administration, Operations, $400,000,000 (Four Hundred Million)
Cost of Court Security - $100,000,000 (One Hundred Million)
Cost of Legal Aid - $200,000,000 (Two Hundred Million)
Cost of Enforcement - $120,000,000 (1 Hundred and Twenty Million)
Cost of Lawyers - $4,600,000,000 (4 Billion, Six Hundred Million)
 
These numbers are estimated, based on the Ontario numbers provided by the Ontario Provincial Auditor, as details for all of Canada were not available. With one third of the total population of Canada residing in Ontario, the totals for Canada were prorated accordingly. In those cases where input numbers included Civil and Criminal justice, the proportion to Family Justice was approximated. These costs do not include the many other associated costs such as mediators, social workers, police, children’s aid societies, etc. They are just the costs related to the Family Court portion.
 
References: Attorney General, Ontario Court Services Annual Report 2005, Ontario Provincial Auditor – Annual Report 2003, Federal Funding of Provincial Child Support enforcement, Department of Justice – Report on Plans and Priorities 2004-2005, Canadian Judicial Council, Profile of legal aid services in family law maters in Canada, CanLaw.
 
The Total Yearly Cost to Canadian Taxpayers and Families in Crises is approximately $6 Billion per year. Remember though, that is only the administrational costs.
 
For this huge expenditure, there is absolutely no value or benefit to our Canadian families, or Canadian Society as a whole. In fact, our Family Justice System only brings about harm and damage to our Families, and our Society. The only people benefiting from the court created family conflict are the Judges (Former Lawyers) and Family Law Lawyers, as well as the Assessors, who charge up to twenty thousand dollars to do an assessment.
What is the financial cost of the adversarial Family Justice System to Canadian society as a whole? When you add up the costs incurred by society for items such as; courts; legal subsidization; additional costs to healthcare; additional costs to education systems and other social institutions; the increase in crime, including juvenile delinquency; policing; welfare costs for those single parent families that fall into poverty; E.I.; support and enforcement agencies such as FRO; the impact on workplace productivity and placement, as well as loss of productivity on the part of affected adults; personal bankruptcies; crime; and the future costs related to be responsible for such a situation; the costs to Canadian society and Canadian Taxpayers is astronomical.
 
 Some estimates have been given as high as 10 to 12 Billion Dollars annually.
 
Although buried in our social fabric, these are real costs that impact the country’s bottom line, and from a global business perspective, they impact our competitiveness. For our society as a whole, the dissolution of marriage is a costly proposition.
Couldn’t this money be put to better use?
 
Can you imagine the benefit to society as a whole if these funds were used for healing families, or for dealing with poverty?
 
Couldn’t this money be used to speed up the wait times in our National Health Care system?
 
Wouldn’t this money be better spent on Education programs?
 
France has free University for its Citizens, to the extent that there is no tuition charged by public universities. Students are only responsible for their own housing, food and other expenses. Couldn’t the billions being wasted on our failing Family Justice System be used to put a similar Public University Program into service here in Canada?
 
 Wouldn’t such a Public Service be more beneficial to Canadian society???
 
Shouldn’t the Billions wasted be redirected for programs to:

-   Prevent family crises.
-   Help families on the edge recover.
-   Equitably address all issues of domestic violence regardless of gender.
-   Support families to help them survive divorce and help enable “New Beginnings”.
-   Focus efforts on legitimate cases of need and enforcement only where there is a         dereliction of responsibilities.
-   Initiate programs to help eliminate the poverty caused by the impacts of divorce.

As we, the Canadian Taxpayers support divorce, as well as the added cost to society of single parent homes, shouldn’t we be the most powerful lobbying group the Government should pay attention to?

 Unfortunately for the Children of Divorce, the Canadian Bar Association is the most powerful lobbyist group in Canada when it comes to the Family Justice System, and they don’t want things to change at all.