A Father Is No Longer A "Legal Parent"

According to some government departments (Canada Revenue Agency in particular) a child can only have one parent who is authorized to make decision on his behalf - which is the mother. So even though the law still mentions "parents", rather than just "parent" - the father is no longer considered as such; not even as a "legal parent".

Today, my husband had an unpleasant experience.

Canada Revenue Agency got the name of my third daughter wrong.

My husband is working on getting this corrected.

So he phoned up Canada Revenue Agency.

And during a nasty conversation, they told him that they will not discuss the files of any of our three daughters.

It's illegal.

Because he's not the mother.

He's the dad.

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Apparently in the eyes of the CRA bureaucrats, a father is no different than a mere boyfriend or a sperm donor. Sure they could check their files and see that Suzanne and her husband are officially married. Still - why would they risk it? They know what those "civil marriages" are worth nowadays. So, just to play it safe they won't let the father access any of his children's information.

Interestingly enough, parenthood was redefined by the very same bill which finalized the redefinition of marriage. Apart from rubber-stamping the courts, Paul Martin's bill C-38 amended few other pieces of legislation, replacing "natural parents" with "legal parents". Since then - not only we no longer have brides and grooms, wives and husbands (we have "spouses" and "conjugal partners" instead,) but fatherhood too has apparently become thing of the past.