Lauren Wilson

The appellant mother sought to change a custody order following her relocation from the Niagara region to the Ottawa area.

The trial judge rejected a proposed settlement, dismissed the motion to change, and ordered the children's primary residence to remain with the respondent father in Niagara, a decision upheld by the Court of Appeal.

One week before the Supreme Court hearing, the parties jointly advised that changes had occurred affecting the record, including that the daughter had been residing in Ottawa for over a year.

The parties had not filed a motion for new evidence regarding the children's current best interests, leaving the record incomplete.

The Court unanimously dismissed the appeal without costs, directing any ongoing dispute to be resolved in the Superior Court through a variation order.

The applicant father brought a motion to have the parties' three-year-old child enrolled in a junior kindergarten French immersion program, while the respondent mother preferred a French-only program.

The court found that neither parent was francophone and that the father, a unilingual anglophone, would be marginalized from the child's education in a French-only school.

Given concerns about the mother's tendency to exclude the father, the court determined it was in the child's best interests to be enrolled in French immersion to ensure both parents could fully participate in her education.