Canada’s Parliament is now debating Bill C‑223 — the Keeping Children Safe Act — a private member’s bill introduced by Liberal MP Lisa Hepfner that would amend the Divorce Act to reshape how courts handle child custody in high‑conflict separations.

The bill is being pitched by its sponsors and allied feminist and anti‑violence organizations as a way to protect women and children from coercive control and post‑separation abuse by requiring lawyers to screen for family violence and ensuring children’s voices are heard in custody decisions.

It would also remove “parental alienation” as a legal consideration in many cases and bars judges from ordering remedies like reunification therapy or reducing a child’s time with a parent simply to restore a damaged relationship.

Critics warn these changes will leave judges with fewer tools to address situations where one parent deliberately drives a wedge between a child and the other parent.

Parental alienation happens most often in high‑conflict divorces — those drawn‑out cases where every issue becomes a battleground, and children get caught in the crossfire. One parent, driven by anger, fear or a desire for control, begins to denigrate the other in front of the children, to feed them a narrative that the rejected parent is dangerous, uncaring or unworthy of love.

Over time, the child’s rejection of that parent becomes less about their own feelings and more about a learned loyalty to the “preferred parent.” This is not a simple disagreement over visitation or school schedules. It is emotional manipulation that severs parent‑child bonds, sometimes permanently.It should not surprise any Canadian that in the worst separations, abuse allegations fly — and they do so on both sides.

Women will sometimes raise concerns about violent or controlling behaviour by their husbands; men have to fight back against accusations crafted to hurt them and control custody outcomes, and are more likely to include allegations of sexual abuse.In some cases, these allegations are legitimate, and courts must take them seriously. In others, one parent intentionally uses claims of danger to alienate their children from the other parent.

What Bill C‑223 does is blur these distinctions by virtually outlawing the concept of parental alienation from court consideration — treating it as “junk science” and insisting it be removed from custody decisions.That is a mistake. Parental alienation is real. Family law judges in Canada have for years recognized that children who are taught to reject a loving parent suffer deep psychological harm.

Courts already consider family violence, coercive control and a child’s expressed views when making decisions about custody and contact; they should also be able to consider evidence that a parent is undermining a child’s relationship with the other parent. Removing this option does not make courts more child‑centred — it cripples them.

Consider the reality of many families: the mother who raised her children and spent their childhood with them, finds that after a nasty separation, that phone calls go unanswered, that the children speak of her with fear and hostility they never once expressed before. These shifts are not random. They are the product of repeated bad‑mouthing, misrepresentation of history, selective storytelling and manipulation.

They are the essence of parental alienation — observed in Canadian courts and documented by family law practitioners.

Judges have, in some cases, reversed custody or ordered therapeutic interventions when alienation was proven, not because they are ideological, but because children were being harmed by one parent’s conduct.

Bill C‑223’s supporters will say they want to protect mothers and children from being silenced by alienation claims. That argument has traction where real domestic violence has been dismissed or minimized by courts. But the answer is not to eliminate the concept entirely.

It is to teach courts to differentiate real abuse from manipulative tactics — to give judges the tools and training to identify coercive patterns and respond appropriately, not to hand politicians the job of redefining complex human behaviour.

Children deserve both parents whenever it is safe and in their best interests to maintain those relationships. Bill C‑223, as currently drafted, pushes Canada in the opposite direction — limiting courts’ ability to respond when one parent turns a child against the other.

In doing so, it risks leaving children isolated from loving parents and creating more harm in the very situations it claims to want to fix.