Dec 5, 2016

Parental Recognition and Proposed Amendments to Ontario Legislation: Part 2

In February 2016, we wrote about the Cy and Ruby’s Act (Parental Recognition), 2015, which proposed a number of amendments to statutes dealing with parental recognition.   We noted that the proposed amendments (the main amendments being to the Children’s Law Reform Act ) dealt with various typical factual scenarios involving assisted reproduction with donated genetic material from a third party, surrogacy arrangements or the possibility that an intended parent’s own genetic materials would be stored and used at a later time.  One of the goals of the proposed amendments was to facilitate the parental recognition of same-sex partners who rely on assisted reproduction for the conception and birth of children they intend to parent.  Indeed, one of the significant proposed amendments was the replacement of all references to “mother” and “father” with references to “parent”.