IN THE SUPREME COURT OF CANADA (ON APPEAL FROM THE COURT OF APPEAL FOR BRITISH COLUMBIA)

This was acknowledged by the Minister of Justice in his letter to the chair in the following terms: “In the case of a child, any exposure to family violence is family violence in and of itself; that is, exposure to family violence is a form of child abuse."6 9. [...] In this case, the BCCA did not engage in such an exercise, with the effect of minimizing the significance of the trial judge’s findings of family violence to the mother’s need for support and ultimately, to the best interests of the children. [...] First, the BCCA assumed that the issue of family violence was “not a significant concern” to the mother, and not very severe, because the appellant and her counsel “were not significantly concerned about it at trial.”34 This ignores not only the instances of violence disclosed during trial, but also the social and legal barriers to women disclosing family violence in family law proceedings discuss. [...] Second, the BCCA suggested that because several of the abusive events occurred at or around the time the parties separated, and because adversarial litigation is often associated with acrimony between the parties, the abuse was not likely to continue.35 The Court of Appeal’s use of mutualizing language such as “hostility between the parents,” to describe family violence of one parent perpetrated a. [...] This overlooks the harms of their indirect exposure to family violence (despite the explicit recognition of those harms in the FLA and Divorce Act), as well as the trial judge’s specific concerns about the father’s “continuing animosity” towards the mother, and the “significant risk” of conflict spilling over and directly impacting the children.38 34 Appeal Reasons, at paras.