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September 28,2004
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Vancouver Province Editorial
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Fathers 4 Justice, a burgeoning pressure group crusading for fathers' custodial rights to their children, may have a valid concern about Canada's inconsistent family justice system.
But if the group is seeking to win the sympathy and support of Lower Mainland residents, it should rethink its strategies.
It's one thing to dress up like a comic book superhero and hang a banner off a crane or stage a placard protest at the steps of the B.C. Supreme Court, but it is quite another to tie up traffic on the Pattullo Bridge for five hours.
Fathers 4 Justice Canada -- the Canadian branch of F4J in Britain -- did just that last Saturday, to the anger and frustration of thousands of early-morning motorists who got stuck in gridlock when three costumed protesters scaled the narrow bridge and a nearby overpass.
The activist fathers -- with an estimated 2,500 aggrieved members nationwide -- undermine and marginalize their own cause with such stunts. Indeed, their criminal acts comprise behaviour unbefitting a responsible father.
The Pattullo Bridge stunt echoed recent public protests in Britain, where one F4J member breached security to scale a Buckingham Palace wall and others threw condoms filled with purple-stained flour at Prime Minister Tony Blair in the House of Commons.
A local "foot soldier in the cause" told The Province such radical measures are necessary to raise public awareness and affect changes to laws currently favouring mothers in custody battles.
"We've tried every other way to get the message out," argued Rob Stone, adding the courts allotted him 2.5 hours access to his infant son each week, and two hours every second Christmas following an "amicable separation" from the child's mother.
"Some fathers have been pushed over the edge and will go that extra length to get the word out. We're treated as a chequebook in our children's' lives."
While F4J argues that mothers are granted sole custody in almost 90 per cent of Canadian cases, surely there are other legal routes and official processes for fathers frustrated with the status quo.
F4J Canada members in B.C. have begun lobbying candidates who are seeking voter support in the upcoming B.C. election race and MLAs currently in office for changes to family law, said Stone.
These measures are more apt to win the group sympathizers and supporters than they will closing down arterial roads and bridges with silly stunts.
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F4J Canada © 2004
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