2022-10-03 BCCLA Intervenor Factum (02224741-2)

As an organization that advocates to defend, sustain and promote civil liberties and human rights, including the protection of privacy rights, the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA) has a strong interest in issues raised in this appeal, and specifically the constitutionality of the state’s access to and use of private medical information in the context of interference in the pare. [...] 96 of the CFCSA must consider not only the privacy of medical records, but also the use of those records by the state in the context of the significant 3 T. [...] D., 2022 SCC 24, the Court confirmed the importance of the “supervisory function of the courts” in child protection proceedings in light of the important interests at stake: [65] Section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms “requires that this dramatic form of state intervention only take place in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice” (Winnipeg Child and Family Service. [...] The overlap between the interests in privacy and in the security of the person in child protection proceedings are not incidental, but rather, are fundamental in the context of the “gross intrusion” of the state into the “private and intimate sphere” of the parent-child relationship. [...] The interests at stake in the parent-child relationship are protected not only under provisions of the Charter, but are recognized by and underlie the guiding principles of the CFCSA itself, which include: 2 …(b) a family is the preferred environment for the care and upbringing of children and the responsibility for the protection of children rests primarily with the parents; (c) if, with availabl.