CHILD SUPPORT PROCESSES
OPTIONS FOR CANADA

CONCLUSION

A certain tension between competing philosophies characterizes the various approaches canvassed in this report. This multi-layered tension relates to whether the child support issue should be facilitated through a decisive model focused on an expedited hearing to settle the issues or, rather, whether a more conciliatory approach should be adopted where the focus rests on the parties' input rather than on the third party decision-making process.

However, there are some interesting approaches that have been incorporated with relative success in various areas and these approaches are general enough to be modelled to a certain extent in a given Canadian province. Further, through the various approaches which have already been developed in other places, common themes emerge. This report represents an attempt to identify some of those themes and to highlight some of the more interesting features of those ideas, which would potentially be incorporated, to a certain extent, into a "Made in Canada" child support model.