Harper's hypocrisy on families

by DeadBroke Dad | March 21, 2009 at 04:39 am

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Politicians always think they have the answers. They heavily base their decisions on experts’ advice. Experts that are usually bias since their source of research money comes from groups with their own interests at stake. When money and special interest are factored into research papers, you can almost guarantee that the results involved are just a little bit “fudged”. Fudging data is a tactic most scientist and researchers do when their numbers don’t jive with what their conclusion should be, in their opinions anyway. Unfortunately, if their bosses (money holders), don’t like the results or conclusions, they pressure the research to reflect what is good for themselves. I know this from personal experience because I’ve worked in the science community and seen this happen.

Then our leaders and politicians, educated in different fields with their own special interests, take these research papers and regurgitate the fudged information to the public. Without reflecting on the consequences of their actions, they merrily go off thinking they’ve done their public duty. I’m sure all involved, in this process, are not like that. I gather most would diligently review and double check any conclusions before sharing it with a large group of people, especially when the information can affect lives.

Regardless, here is an example of this kind of action.

Quote

The biggest threat to families in Canada does not come from gay marriage, or abortion, or any of the other traditional social-conservative hobby-horses. It comes from divorce, or more generally, separation, which affects almost half of the children in Canada at some point in their lives. Specifically, the threat comes from how our courts routinely mishandle custody disputes upon separation. Courts of law have become the most destructive influence on families for one simple reason: judges have a fulsome disrespect for the value of fatherhood. That's why, in the vast majority of cases that come before them, they automatically relegate fathers to the status of visitors in their children's lives. They typically grant children access to their fathers every other weekend, and staunchly refuse to enforce even that trifling amount of contact when mothers abroate it. If mothers wish to relocate with the children to an inconvenient distance, judges eagerly oblige. What does Prime Minister Harper propose to do about this atrocious state of affairs? Absolutely nothing! For eleven years, the Parliamentary report "For the Sake of the Child," which advocates a legal presumption of equal shared parenting after separation, has sat in the gorgeous Parliamentary Library collecting dust. Anyone who had hoped a Conservative government might pick it up and use it to promote a family-friendly agenda has been sadly disappointed.

Grant Brown