There are a few details in this article, along with a timeline of events:Church vs State: Battle over surviving sextuplets

Supposedly a 1995 Canadian Supreme Court ruling gave parents the right to a hearing before authorities seize their children. The ruling was apparently affirmed in a 1999 Supreme Court ruling stating such hearings are a fundamental right of Canadian society.

The actions taken by the government and hospital will be measured against these rulings in the upcoming litigation. It's scheduled for later this month, so we'll probably hear the outcome pretty soon.

Just for reference, here's the 1995 case:
Supreme Court of Canada - Decisions - B. (R.) v. Children's Aid Society of Metropolitan Toronto
(Whether the Child Welfare Act allows the state to override parental rights and religious freedoms in certain circumstances. Answer: Yes, as long as due process is followed.)

And the 1999 case:
Supreme Court of Canada - Decisions - New Brunswick (Minister of Health and Community Services) v. G. (J.)
(Whether parents are required to be afforded gov-paid cousel during Child Welfare Act cases involving a hearing. Answer: Yes.)

In both cases, Sec 7 was ruled to allow the parents a hearing in a custody case.

Child, Family and Community Service Act

This will be an interesting case, as the Child, Family and Community Service Act of BC allows a Director to seize a child without court order (sec 30), and authorize medical treatment, if he/she believes the child's life is in immediate danger. But the act also says the Director needs to apply to a court with the opinions of two doctors, and hold a hearing in which the parents must be allowed to attend, if the child is to be seized for medical treatments that the parents refuse (sec 29).

I'm guessing the judge interpreted this to mean that if the child's life was in immediate danger, he could skip the hearing until after the treatment (sec 29 of the act allows this as well, sec 29 does not overrule section 30...) At that point the province dropped the custody order, and so the hearing became moot (until the appeal to the BC Supreme Court that is, they are allowed to consider the custody order as still in effect when they proceed to rule).

Anyway, since the parental rights of religion are not supported already (the 1995 case), it will boil down to whether the inclusion of the "no-hearing seizure" part of the Act is considered constitutional. I suspect that Section 1 (reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified) will be the judgement line for this case.

It sure looks to me like the BC gov't overstepped the guidelines set forth by the SC previously. IF, and I say IF, that is the case, the individuals involved (gov't and doctors and any medical and judicial staff involved) need to be charged accordingly for the illegal activity they took.

They want the parents acting within the law, and they should act within that same law as well. The law that regulates the public also restricts the gov't.

Not necessarily. I notice you're from the US, so I'll point out that our "rights" are a lot more flexible than yours. Section 1 of the Charter of Rights & Freedoms basically allows reasonable restrictions of any Charter rights (the key being reasonable).

This is why even though the parents religious and parental rights were violated in that 1995 case (sec 2 & 7), the SC ruled that section 1 allowed the Child Welfare Act to override those rights. It did rule that under sec 7, the parents were required to be given a hearing first. (In that case, there was no medical emergency, so there's a loophole.)

In this case, BC's version of the Child Welfare Act allows the gov to seize & treat children IF there is a danger to the child's life, without a hearing. The judge likely ruled that refusing emergency medical treatment likely constitutes a danger to the child's life. (A hearing is required for all other medical treatment that parents refuse.)

So it's not whether the doctors acted illegally, it's whether BC's law is a reasonable restriction of rights under Section 1.

2 things will be argued before the court. 1) Were the children's lives in danger? (alternative treatments may play a part in arguing one way or the other) 2) If yes, is the BC Child, Family and Community Service Act Sec 29 & 30 a reasonable restriction of parental rights under Sec. 1 of the Charter?

Thanks for the clarification there Jabrwock. It's very informative.

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Douglas Phillips

My pleasure.

It's funny, but I look up US SC rulings a lot more often than Cdn SC rulings, but that's because on another board I post on, we discuss US 1st Amendment issues regarding media.

Am I right in assuming that details regarding this case will not be released as long as there is a pending court ruling? The thing I was wondering about is that since there was ample time in this case to plan ahead what went wrong? Did the doctors try an alternative treatment first and then conclude that the babies were not responding?

You are correct in your assumption. Most of the time details of such a high-profile case will not be revealed for legal reasons (and the fact that people tend to take the details and jump to the wrong conclusions), until the case is over, and even then not always.

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Douglas Phillips

I agree with Doug. As a former paralegal, I am always grateful for someone who has taken the time to research the legal details to the extent possible. Medicine, law and ethics don't always see eye to eye. In this case, especially because it is involving infants, a great deal of emotion is invested in the outcome on the part of participants and observers alike. Human laws and their interpretations are not likely to be satisfying to all parties. Nonetheless, your comments have added a great deal of clarity to this thread, which I appreciate.

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Jan Grossberg, RN, BSN
Editorial Team

Interesting comments in this article: Government delays hearing into seizure of Jehovah Witness sextuplets

"Three of the four surviving babies were seized by the ministry over the parents' refusal to allow blood transfusions."

"The lawyer for the family says court precedent dictates the parents be given a chance to appeal that decision, but the children were taken before that was allowed to happen."

"In a surprise move, the government then handed control over the children's medical futures back to the parents as their lawyer showed up at court to argue the decision."

All of this, to me, speaks volumes. They knew what they did was wrong as evidenced by their surprise move of returning the children to parental care when the lawyer showed up.