Private bill for ‘equal parenting’ goes on Parliament’s order, July 15 , 2009

2009-07-15  Private bill for ‘equal parenting’ goes on Parliament’s order, has support from Laval-les Îles Liberal MP Raymonde Folco

‘This law if passed would make it mandatory for two parents who are divorcing to discuss with either a mediator or a judge how they would divide the time with the children’ – Raymonde Folco

In the weeks preceding this past Fathers’ Day, there were so many different interpretations of who is a dad, some may have found it difficult to distinguish just what is a father these days. Oprah featured a single dad with nine children, and the National Post didn’t do much for the idea of fathers as role models when it ran an article on the importance of sperm in child development.

Divorce Act amendments

F4J Canada New Year's Message - 2009, Kris Titus

Cookstown Bat Girl flags ON water tower on Parental Alienation, April 25

Full Story:  Fathers 4 Justice Canada - April 25/09 - PAAD - Ontario Bat Girl In Cookstown Action

Accused in lesbian axe-murder trial acquitted, Jun. 04, 2009

Jury finds 24-year-old woman not guilty of first degree murder in death of her female lover's long-time boyfriend

2009-06-04  Accused in lesbian axe-murder trial acquitted, Globe and Mail

Amid a torrent of emotion, a Toronto woman accused of using an axe to bludgeon to death her lesbian lover's possessive boyfriend  walked free from a downtown courtroom yesterday afternoon, acquitted of first-degree murder. <murdering a competitor isn't "possessive?>

The verdict from the seven-woman, five-man jury capped more than three days of tense deliberations.  Ashleigh Pechaluk, 24, and her parents embraced tearfully before stepping out into the bright sunshine to face a bank of microphones and television cameras.  Arrested the day of the murder, she spent more than two and a half years in custody.  But both she and her mother, Beverley Salton, said yesterday they never doubted the outcome and praised the skills and compassion of defence lawyers Peter Zaduk and Kristine Connidis.

“That's what got me through,” Ms. Pechaluk told the media throng.  “It's been a long time – hard, stressful, not knowing what's going to happen, and there was always that bit of doubt,” she said. “But I always knew it was going to be okay.”

She had pleaded not guilty in the Oct. 27, 2006 slaying of Dennis Hoy, a 36-year-old GO Transit constable and long-time boyfriend of her former lover, Nicola (Nicky) Puddicombe.  Ms. Puddicombe is set to stand trial beginning Monday. She too is charged with first-degree murder in Mr. Hoy's death.

During Ms. Pechaluk's two-month trial, the prosecution alleged the two women killed Mr. Hoy so they could be together.  He was found bludgeoned to death by an axe in Ms. Puddicombe's bed in the Queensway apartment shared by the two accused.  The jury also heard that Ms. Puddicombe, now 36, was the sole beneficiary of Mr. Hoy's $238,200 life insurance policy and his pension proceeds, and that she had convinced Ms. Pechaluk that Mr. Hoy was a high-ranking member of the Hells Angels motorcycle gang, a killer and a drug dealer.

The jury began deliberating Monday afternoon, after Madam Justice Mary Lou Benotto gave them her final instructions.

“[Ms.] Puddicombe had Ashleigh Pechaluk believing she [Ms. Puddicombe] was being forced to have sex with Dennis Hoy,” Judge Benotto said in outlining the case presented by lead prosecutor Maureen Bellmore.  “She wanted to pump up Ashleigh into a frenzy of hate, so that she could kill Dennis Hoy.”   But after deliberations punctuated by a temporary impasse, when they returned to court to tell the judge they were deadlocked and were urged to go back and try again, the jurors concluded otherwise.   In doing so they accepted Mr. Zaduk's contention that although his client had talked with friends about getting rid of Mr. Hoy, even in the last days before his death, she never went through with the plan.

The Crown's case against Ms. Pechaluk was almost entirely circumstantial. The gory crime scene yielded no physical evidence against her: no blood traces, no fingerprints, no DNA.  And also central to the verdict, in all likelihood, was Ms. Pechaluk's decision to testify on her own behalf, which she did for close to three days.  Wary of the rigours of cross-examination by the prosecution, defendants in murder trials rarely take the witness stand. But Ms. Pechaluk remained calm and articulate, turning in a performance that observers found compelling.

“I just answered the questions as best I could,” she said yesterday. “I wasn't really aware of anyone else in the room. You just try and get through it.”

The stakes in the trial could scarcely have been higher.  Conviction for first-degree murder carries an automatic penalty of life imprisonment with little chance of parole for 25 years.  But Mr. Zaduk said yesterday he was certain all along his client was innocent.  “There's not a fibre of her being that made her capable of this [murder].”  He conceded it was a bad moment when the jury returned to the courtroom on Wednesday and announced that it was unable to reach a verdict, which under Canadian law must be unanimous.  “That really rips you, you have the sense that you have to go through all this again. I'm just really glad that justice prevailed in the end.”

Ms. Salton and Ms. Pechaluk's stepfather, Keith St. John, attended the trial every day, seated in the left front row of the spectators' gallery.  Since their daughter's arrest, that was about as close as they had got.  “I haven't touched her in two years and seven months,” Ms. Salton said after the verdict.

The moment when the jury pronounced Ms . Pechaluk not guilty “was amazing,” Ms. Salton said, giving her daughter another hug.  “ I never, ever doubted this would happen but it was more wonderful than I thought.”  As for Ms. Puddicombe's trial, which will be prefaced next week by legal arguments, “We'll deal with that, we're not thinking about that right now,” Ms. Pechaluk said.  “She'll have a fair trial.”

She also commiserated with Mr. Hoy's parents, who were estranged from their son, did not attend his funeral and only occasionally visited the trial. 

“I'm sorry for their loss,” she said. “It's not fair.”  Her first post-custody pleasure?  “Seafood,” she said with a laugh.

Beyond that, she said her future will encompass working with children.  “It's a new slate, starting again, this is over for me now and I want to get on with my life,” she said.  And in the embrace of her beaming parents, still pursued by the cameras, she walked quickly away.

Trial Underway In 2006 Etobicoke Axe Murder, April 14, 2009

2009-04-19  Trial Underway In 2006 Etobicoke Axe Murder

The trial got underway Tuesday in the 2006 axe murder of a man in a west end apartment.  The body of 36-year-old Dennis Hoy was found in a building on The Queensway near Royal York in October of that year.  Ashley Pechaluk, who is in her early 20s, faces first degree murder charges in the slaying.  In an opening statement Tuesday the Crown alleged that the accused stood to make $250,000 in insurance money and was in a sexual relationship with another woman who's also accused in Hoy's death.

The second woman accused is also believed to have been in a relationship with Hoy and Pechaluk, with the latter scheming the murder after she sought an exclusive relationship with Hoy's long-time girlfriend.  Nicola Puddicombe, in her early 30s, faces an equal charge of first degree murder and will stand trial later this year. The Crown says she was the sole beneficiary of Hoy's life insurance policy.

<Ashleigh Pechaluk> Not guilty in axe-murder trial, June 4, 2009

A woman was acquitted today of murdering her lover’s boyfriend in a bizarre love triangle.  A jury found Ashleigh Pechaluk, 24, not guilty of all charges stemming from the Oct. 27, 2006, bludgeoning death of Dennis Hoy, 36, while he slept in the bed of his long-time girlfriend Nicola ‘Nicky’ Puddicombe. 

Pechaluk, who has been in custody since that day, almost 3 1/2 years in jail, was freed at 4 p.m. after the jury rendered its verdict.  She hugged her lawyers Peter Zaduk and Kristine Connidis and then embraced her mother Bev Salton for several moments as both women shook with emotion. 

In summing up the prosecution case earlier yesterday, Madam Justice Mary Lou Benotto called Puddicombe “a master manipulator who carried on sexual relationships with Dennis Hoy and Ashleigh Pechaluk at the same time.”  The jury, which began its deliberations at 3 p.m. Monday, returned its verdict after four days of deliberations. Crown attorneys Tom Lissaman and Maureen Bellmore argued that Pechaluk is the axe-wielding assassin who killed Hoy in a plot executed by her and Puddicombe, so that the lesbian lovers would be free of his meddling.

Pechaluk, 24, maintained her innocence, saying she never intended to kill Hoy. Once she rejected the scheme at the last hour, she testified that Puddicombe alone murdered him. Her co-workers universally liked the easy-going Pechaluk, who once aspired to become a police officer.

Benotto had said the jury members must first understand the dynamics of the love triangle of Puddicombe, Hoy and Pechaluk, her lover of 13 months, before they could decide if the prosecution had proved its case against Pechaluk.  “Puddicombe had Ashleigh Pechaluk believing she (Puddicombe) was being forced to have sex with Dennis Hoy,” said Benotto in her charge yesterday.  “She wanted to pump up Ashleigh into a frenzy of hate, so that she could kill Dennis Hoy,” said Benotto.

Hoy was found bludgeoned to death by an axe as he slept in Puddicombe’s bed.

Puddicombe convinced Pechaluk that Hoy, a GO Transit officer and her boyfriend for 11 years, was a high-ranking member of the Hells Angels motorcyle gang, a killer and a drug dealer, said Benotto. Pechaluk also believed that Hoy “controlled Puddicombe,” although there’s “no evidence of that (or Hoy’s criminal activities),” said Benotto.

The lesbian couple also indicated the timing was perfect since Hoy had recently had his car tires slashed and was sleeping at their home. The women wanted the police to search for an assassin who’d invaded their home to kill Hoy.  Pechaluk divulged details of the murder scheme to co-worker and confidante Sarah Sousa, who became a key Crown witness. Sousa knew inside details of the plan, including what Puddicombe would tell the 911 operator and police and where the assassin would have found a murder weapon inside their Queensway Ave. home. 

Puddicombe, now 36, will go on trial, starting on Monday at Superior Court in front of Benotto. The trial is expected to last six weeks.   sam.pazzano@sunmedia.ca

Law societies under fire, Kate Lunau, April 30, 2009

SPECIAL REPORT: Critics say there’s a problem with how lawyers are regulated

2009-04-30  Law societies under fire, Kate Lunau

2009-04-30  Law societies under fire, Kate Lunau - Google Search

Cora MacPhail doesn’t dislike lawyers. She has close friends who are lawyers; family members, too. MacPhail considers the law to be an honourable profession. Which helps explain why her dealings with the Law Society of Upper Canada (LSUC) left her shaken.

In 2006, MacPhail was confined to a wheelchair for eight weeks following ankle surgery. The retiree, who lives alone in London, Ont., asked for help at home from a local care centre, but due to a mix-up, was at first denied (the centre later apologized, and provided her with services including a personal care worker). MacPhail’s son fired off a letter of complaint to the local MPP, and copied it to the centre; days later, the elderly woman got a knock on her door. It was the care centre’s “director of quality and contracted service delivery,” who questioned her and her son about the letter, she says. The meeting left her feeling uneasy. Weeks later, her son typed the care centre employee’s name into Google and discovered he was a lawyer, not a social worker, as they had believed. On Dec. 4, 2006, MacPhail filed a complaint with the LSUC, which regulates Ontario’s lawyers and paralegals. “He did not disclose who he was—a lawyer,” she wrote in her letter. “I trust you will take action.”


MacPhail, who was hoping for an apology, figured it would be an open-and-shut case. In fact, the process dragged on for almost two years. Her complaint was at first dismissed; when she requested an independent review, it bounced back to the law society instead, where it was rejected again. MacPhail appealed to a higher power, the complaints resolution commissioner, who is funded by the law society to conduct impartial reviews of their investigations. Then she learned the commissioner had a conflict of interest and had to withdraw. When her complaint was finally reviewed, the commissioner’s delegate found in MacPhail’s favour, asking the law society to reconsider. It did—and rejected her complaint a third and final time, deciding the man was not working in his capacity as a lawyer at the time of the visit. (For confidentiality reasons, the LSUC declined to comment on the case.)

MacPhail’s story is just one small example of what critics call a fundamental problem with the way the Canadian legal profession is regulated. Law societies, the regulatory bodies to which every practising lawyer must belong, have the authority to investigate and discipline their own members. But if you feel you’ve been bamboozled by a lawyer, complaining to his or her membership group can quickly undermine faith in the system. A bright, vivacious woman, MacPhail becomes visibly deflated when discussing her case. “It makes you feel very powerless,” she says. “They’re all such pals.”

In other countries, concerns like MacPhail’s have become an impetus for change. In England and Australia, for example, law societies are having some powers stripped away, and independent bodies have sprung up to deal with complaints. Among the Commonwealth countries, Canada’s system of lawyer discipline is fast becoming the exception instead of the rule. “People think it’s Caesar judging Caesar, when it’s the legal profession [handling complaints] itself,” says Steve Mark, legal services commissioner for Australia’s largest state, New South Wales.

In England and Wales, a new law came into effect in 2007 aimed at taking power away from lawyers and putting it in consumers’ hands. The profession’s self-regulating bodies, like the Bar Council and Law Society of England and Wales (which represent barristers and solicitors, respectively), no longer have free rein: the Legal Services Act created an independent body, chaired by a non-lawyer, to watch over them. The complaints process has also been revamped. Instead of seeking redress from the law society or bar council, members of the public will soon be able to go directly to the independent Office for Legal Complaints (OLC). Having a separate body perform this function is crucial to bolster public confidence, says Mary Seneviratne, director of research at Nottingham Law School and one of the OLC’s recently appointed members.

England isn’t the first to move away from pure lawyer self-regulation. In Australia, most states have an independent legal services commissioner to handle complaints. Steve Mark has been in the role in New South Wales since 1994; his office has proved so successful it’s served as a model elsewhere, including in England. As the “sole port of call” for complainants, he can decide whether to handle them in his office (about three-quarters of complaints stay with him), or refer them to the law society or the New South Wales Bar Association. “As an independent body, I can advocate for the consumer and not seem to have a vested interest,” Mark says. And when he chooses to dismiss a complaint, he adds, “it’s not assumed I’m trying to protect the profession.”

In both England and Australia, it wasn’t just bad optics that brought about change; law societies’ track records at investigating complaints were notoriously awful. Prior to reform, Zahida Manzoor, a non-lawyer who serves as legal services ombudsman and legal services complaints commissioner for England and Wales, issued a series of scathing reports criticizing the law society’s complaints-handling arm for being slow, poorly run and providing bad service. When it failed to submit adequate plans to improve, she imposed a hefty fine. “It wasn’t just a problem of perception; they were performing badly,” Manzoor says. In the Australian state of Queensland, where lawyer self-regulation came to an end in 2004, legal ombudsman Jack Nimmo concluded the lawyers’ complaints-handling body was “nothing but a post office box” that forwarded complaints to the lawyer in question, then sent the response back to the complainant.

Canadian law societies don’t have the same problems, argues Stéphane Rivard, a Montreal lawyer and president of the Federation of Law Societies of Canada, an umbrella for the 14 provincial and territorial bodies (Quebec has two). “What triggers government intervention is when you have a lack of rigour [in regulating the profession and investigating complaints],” he says. “That’s not the case here.”

That, however, is up for debate. Canada hasn’t seen reforms comparable to those abroad, but “I’m skeptical it’s because lawyer self-regulation works here,” says Alice Woolley, an associate professor with the University of Calgary’s faculty of law. “There’s been insufficient scrutiny to assess that.” Unlike Australia or England, Canada has no independent legal ombudsman; members of the public must appeal to a law society-funded commissioner. And while the Law Society of England and Wales was criticized for receiving one complaint for every six of its members, turns out the Law Society of Upper Canada, the largest in the country, doesn’t have a much better record. In 2007, the LSUC had 38,879 lawyer members, and got 6,157 complaints, a ratio roughly equal to its English counterpart.

Philip Slayton is a former Bay Street lawyer and author of Lawyers Gone Bad: Money, Sex and Madness in Canada’s Legal Profession. He calls the disciplinary record of our law societies a “patchwork quilt” that varies from province to province, and even from one case to another. “I think the idea of a law society disciplining its own members is contrary to the basic principles of justice,” he says. Beyond that, “they’ve done a bad job.”

Take the case of former Law Society of Upper Canada treasurer George Hunter, which Slayton discusses in his book. In 2004, Hunter sat on a law society panel that for the first time disbarred a lawyer for sexually harassing a client (the disbarment was later overturned on appeal). In 2007, after Hunter admitted he himself had engaged in a relationship with a client—one of three extramarital affairs he’d been juggling—the prominent lawyer found himself back before the panel, this time on the opposite end.

Hunter’s former client was not at the hearing, but her impact statement told of depression, anxiety and a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder, the Lawyers Weekly reported. Hunter’s counsel presented the panel with a stack of 27 “glowing reference letters” on his behalf, many of them penned by prominent benchers (members of the law society’s governing board). “Spectators remarked on the irony of benchers urging three fellow benchers to mete out the mildest possible sentence to a former bencher guilty of conflict of interest,” the lawyers’ newspaper reports. Hunter was suspended from practice for 60 days.

Whether it creates a conflict of interest when law societies investigate their members is “open to question,” says Paul Paton, vice-chair of the Canadian Bar Association’s national ethics and professional issues committee, and associate professor at the University of the Pacific’s McGeorge School of Law. But, he adds, “a perceived conflict of interest is often equal, in the public mind, to an actual one.” Most dangerously, that perception can put people off from complaining at all. In one British survey, 81 per cent of people who’d used a solicitor in the previous three years said they’d rather complain to an independent body; if it had to be to another lawyer, 52 per cent wouldn’t complain at all.

It’s unfortunate, says Manzoor, the legal services ombudsman for England and Wales, because a lack of public confidence can undermine the entire legal system. “We’re talking about the rule of law. We’re talking about access to justice,” says Manzoor, who supports independent complaints resolution. “It’s not ‘lawyer knows best’; it’s a service that’s being provided,” she says. “We’ve got to make sure it’s of the highest standard, because it affects the public in such a way.”

Yet, unlike in Australia or England, the Canadian public—and its elected officials—have been surprisingly mute on the subject of legal reform. MacPhail can’t help but wonder whether meek acceptance is part of our culture. “I can recall going to a movie once,” she says. “The lights went out, but the movie didn’t start. Everybody just sat there.” After sitting quietly in the dark for several minutes, waiting in vain for the movie to begin, she says, “we finally got up and told someone.”

With so many Canadians losing faith in the justice system—or feeling shut out of it entirely—change seems inevitable. Legal reforms abroad were intended to empower the public, instead of lawyers; in England and Australia, “change came for good reasons,” Woolley says. “Those reasons exist here.”

Before widespread reform can happen in Canada, though, Paton suggests that public confidence in our legal system might have to hit an all-time low. “I think it will take one more scandal,” he says.

Tags: Law, Law Society of Upper Canada, self-regulation

Giving parents equal parenting time by law, Bill Harrington, Feb 25, 2009

2009-02-25  Giving parents equal parenting time by law, Bill Harrington

For the third time in 22 years, Washington state is leading the nation in family law reform. This time, the report is called the Residential Time Summary Report prepared by the state Office of the Administrator for the Courts. This is a first-in-the-nation compilation of post-divorce breakdown of parenting time for children, mothers and fathers. The numbers are collected case-by-case and county-by-county.

Amazingly, 46 percent of children of divorce, statewide, are ordered to spend a minimum of 35 percent parenting time with their biological fathers. Parenting time is broken down by large percentages, and meaningful shared parenting starts in the range of 30-35 percent. This is about 300 percent better results than anyone could have expected from the time the Parenting Act was first approved. If there ever was any doubt, Washington state is now an official shared-parenting state for families impacted by parental separation.

In 1987, Washington required divorcing parents to detail parenting schedules in Parenting Plan documents that are filed with the court. Over 30 states have adopted this family law reform. Again, in 1991, Washington Department of Social and Health Services first developed and used the Paternity Affidavit for unwed, never-married, fathers. Staffers were pleasantly shocked and surprised with how forthcoming fathers were to provide financial information used to help create child-support orders.

However, the question has always been placed — how much post-divorce parenting time are children of divorce actually spending with their male parents? Now we see some actual results statewide and county-by-county.

The King County and Pierce County numbers are higher than the statewide average at 50 percent with Snohomish close by at 49 percent. The two highest counties are Whatcom at 66 percent and Skagit at 59 percent. Yakima County comes in the lowest at 28 percent.

The summary report and study was advocated for by fathers' organizations and shared-parenting advocates as a way of documenting why an official shared-parenting law is needed in Washington. Sen. Jim Kastama introduced Senate Bill 5342 addressing this issue but it has not moved out of committee.

The 46 percent is a great number. However, there are probably another 30 percent where the fathers and some mothers arbitrarily are restricted to the typical every-other-weekend. In these cases, the fathers and mothers with limited schedules actually feel more like aunts and uncles than meaningfully involved parents. The children are the biggest losers. The new law is needed for these other parents to avoid decisions that are strictly perceived winners and losers.

The report statistic that rings the loudest and truest is that 93 percent of the final decisions are by agreement of the parents. This means that good mothers and fathers are operating with one reality most in mind: These children had two involved parents before separation and this should be the end result as well. These good parents are sending society and our courthouse officials a loud message.

Unfortunately, our elected superior-court judges, appointed court commissioners and family law lawyers seem stuck in 1987. This is the time before the positive and encouraging language of the Parenting Act was approved and the Tender Years Doctrine was still operational.

Children of divorce are our most fragile social statistics: over 70 percent of high-school dropouts and pregnant teen girls come from fatherless homes as well as the 80-85 percent of male teens in juvenile justice centers and more than 90 percent of men in prison, all from fatherless homes. Society has paid a huge price to keep fathers away from their children. Now we see good dads fighting to stay involved and our children are better off for this effort.

The time has come for children of divorce to be guaranteed continuing parental involvement such as the children in the above numbers coming from homes where both parents are legally fit. It is time to stop divorcing children from one of their parents, most often the father. We can do better.

Bill Harrington from Pierce County was a commissioner with the US Commission on Child and Family Welfare.