Jodi Lazare: Ensuring Economic Equality Across Provincial Borders

This summer, the Paul-André Crépeau Centre for Private and Comparative Law is once again presenting a series of Summer Seminars in which the whole McGill Law community is invited to take part. The main purpose of this seminar series is to offer a forum to younger scholars to present their ideas and to engage with those of others in an informal setting.

Cookies and cold drinks will be served.

Speaker: Jodi Lazare, McGill University

Abstract: This paper examines the opposing attitudes of the Quebec courts, on the one hand, and Canada’s common law courts, on the other, toward the use of the Spousal Support Advisory Guidelines, a set of non-binding guidelines establishing ranges for amount and duration of spousal support awards. The Advisory Guidelines are meant to provide consistency and predictability in the determination of spousal support and to effectively minimize the habitual discretion in family law.

Outside of Quebec, the Advisory Guidelines have been a genuine success. Since their first release in 2005, appellate courts throughout country have endorsed them as a useful tool for ensuring economic fairness in the granting of spousal support. They have thus become the central tool in determining spousal support and a vital part of the practice of family law.

Quebec’s approach to the Advisory Guidelines is markedly different. The Quebec Court of Appeal has gone from completely unreceptive to the Advisory Guidelines to open but cautious, while Quebec trial judges have questioned their legitimacy and described them as conceptually defective.

This paper explores the divided reception to the Advisory Guidelines. It examines the distinctive understandings of the role and function of spousal support in Quebec and other provinces and argues that Quebec’s approach is rooted in outdated social principles, not reflected in the legislation or case law. It suggests that Quebec adopt a comparative approach to spousal support, as it did relative to the family law reforms of the 1980’s. Such an approach would better ensure economic equality and fair outcomes for divorcing spouses.