Joy Nneji

The accused, Dustin Fahey, faced five criminal charges arising from domestic incidents with his former spouse, Andrea Randell, and her mother, Jeanette Randell.

The charges included threatening, unlawful confinement, criminal harassment, and assault.

The court found Mr. Fahey guilty of threatening Andrea Randell and criminally harassing her, based on credible testimony and extensive text message evidence demonstrating a pattern of manipulative and relentless communication.

However, the court dismissed the charges of unlawful confinement and assault due to insufficient or unclear evidence.

The judge rejected the accused's claim of memory loss, finding it untruthful and not a valid defence.

The father sought costs following a contempt motion and competing motions regarding parenting time.

Although the court declined to find the mother in contempt, it found she had breached prior orders and reinstituted the status quo of week-about parenting time.

The court determined the father was the more successful party and awarded him costs fixed at $15,000, noting the mother's failure to comply with court orders and the father's reasonable offer to settle.

The father brought a motion for contempt, alleging the mother intentionally withheld their 11-year-old child and unilaterally enrolled her in private school, contrary to a 2017 consent final order for week-about shared parenting.

The mother argued the child did not want to visit the father.

The court found the mother breached the orders by failing to apply normal parental authority to encourage the child's compliance and by making unilateral decisions.

However, the court declined to find the mother in contempt, noting it is a remedy of last resort.

The court reaffirmed the week-about parenting schedule and deferred issues of primary residence and decision-making to trial.

The paternal grandmother, S.V., moved to be added as a party to child protection proceedings concerning her grandchild, A.M., and for access.

The court found that S.V. met the definition of "care provider" under the federal Act Respecting First Nations, Inuit and Métis Children Youth and Families, and therefore had a right to party status from the outset.

The motion to add S.V. as a party was granted, but her request for access was dismissed without prejudice as she lacked standing to seek substantive relief prior to being added as a party.

The court noted the agency's failure to name S.V. as a party initially caused prejudice.

The respondent father brought a motion for the court to reconsider its previous decision appointing a psychological assessor in a child protection proceeding.

The father argued the court made legal errors and that the assessor had a conflict of interest.

The court dismissed the motion, finding that Rule 25(19)(b) and the court's inherent jurisdiction to reconsider are limited to clerical errors or inadvertent omissions, not substantive legal errors which are the domain of appeals.

Furthermore, the Child, Youth and Family Services Act explicitly prohibits appealing an assessment order.

The court also finalized the terms of the assessment, adopting the agency's open-ended instructions while ensuring the father's indigenous heritage is considered.