A case comment on the Court of Appeal for Ontario
decision in Godard v.
Godard1
The Court of Appeal's recent decision in
Godard has sent a firm message to parents: access orders
are not simply a suggestion. A parent's failure to facilitate
court-ordered access could give rise to a finding of contempt.
Indeed, in Godard, the Court of Appeal upheld Justice
Tremblay's finding that the mother was in contempt due to her
failure to do all that she could to attempt to comply with the
access order. Simply put, the access order required the mother to
deliver the child to the paternal grandparents'
home2 and the mother's failure to do so contributed
to a finding of contempt.
In Godard, the mother had demonstrated a prior pattern
of frustrating the father's access to the child, S., who was 12
years of age at the time of the father's contempt motion. In
fact, in a prior court order, Justice Cornell noted that he had
"serious concerns that the [mother] is engaged in a pattern
