In Quebec, each year, 170 babies are born as a result of rape. And until Bill 12 was tabled last week by the Minister of Justice, Simon Jolin-Barrette, the law provided that the aggressor father had full rights over his child, in the same way as the raped mother. Fortunately, this aberration will be corrected thanks to a new advance in family law, which eliminates its blind spots one at a time.
This progress was made possible thanks to the shock testimony delivered by Océane to The Press last summer. The young woman, raped by her roommate when she was 17, found herself faced with a situation as absurd as it was revolting: having given birth to a little boy nine months after the attack, Océane was forced to accept the request for confirmation of paternity made by his attacker from prison, despite his conviction and his registration in the register of sex offenders. The Superior Court ordered that the DNA test be done on the toddler, the paternity was confirmed, and the father could dream of being involved in the life of his child.
It took this nightmarish tale to come to light to uncover a gaping hole in the law. Mr. Jolin-Barrette’s project will plug the breach.
The law will also allow the establishment of a device forcing the aggressor to pay financial compensation to the mother in order to provide for the needs of the child. Be careful that this recourse, with laudable merits, does not turn into a lever of control for the sexual aggressor. The good intentions of the ministry will have to take into account this factor of absolute prudence, in particular by protecting the personal data of the mother and her child.
As the family is a social subject in constant evolution, it is normal for the law to evolve in order to embrace its new contours. In recent years, the Government of Quebec has thus refined several of its laws in order to better protect the interests of the child at the heart of the family nucleus.
Last year, the Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ) found itself in turmoil after the tabling of a first version of its Bill 2, which tackled, among other things, issues of gender identity, a matter as essential as it is delicate – Minister Jolin-Barrette learned this the hard way! As the original legislation suggested that people wishing to change their civil status sex designation would have to undergo genital-altering surgery, protests soon erupted from the LGBTQ+ community, and with good reason. The revised text had taken the grievances into consideration.
However, it seems that the CAQ remains stuck in a certain traditional conception of the family, despite the notable advances of recent years.
The family is no longer exclusively a nucleus made up of mom and dad, and the law must adapt to the new definitions of the family to avoid exclusions and injustices prejudicial to children. Unfortunately, Bill 12 remains stuck on the idea that only “two spouses form the parental project” and excludes the idea of multi-parenting, this family situation where at least three people have a parental link with the child. The Coalition of LGBTQ + families has been asking for a long time that this reality be enshrined in the Civil Code. The Minister of Justice is not ready to take this step, but he nevertheless echoes a social reality in Quebec.
Quebec takes refuge behind the fact that “no study” confirms that it is in the interest of the child to have more than two parents. It is true that, in its report published in 2015, the Advisory Committee on Family Law concluded that the legislative framework could not be modified in favor of three-parenting or multi-parenting, for lack of data. But wouldn’t 2015 start to date a bit? The evolution of the family and social fabric has been grandiose in recent years. In 2018, faced with an exceptional situation which would have required that more than two parents be listed on the birth certificate of a minor child, Judge Gary Morrison concluded that “the impossibility of a child having more than two parents is problematic given the social reality of 2018. […] The Court invites the Quebec government to reconsider the recognition of three-parenthood or multi-parenthood, and this, for the best interest of minor children like X”.
In the courts, the law is the law. No judge could oppose the request for recognition of paternity of Océane’s attacker before the legislator considered changing the law, however horrified on the merits he was. The same applies to all those situations where the presence of a third parent in the life of a child is confirmed not only emotionally, but also socio-economically, without finding the slightest legal recognition.
The government missed a great opportunity to show that it was of its time.