Canadian Lawyer

w w w . C A N A D I A N L a w y e r m a g . c o m J u l y 2 0 1 4 43 lEgal rEport/FaMIly law Broader border concerns g uidy Mamann was at a former employee's wed- ding when he received a phone call. "The com- munity called me to tell me that one plane made it to Guatemala and the other one was stuck in Trinidad and the Canadian government had gone out, chased them down, and brought them back," says the senior partner with Mamann Sandaluk & Kingwell LLP. The "community" was Lev Tahor, a Haredi Jewish sect that had recently fled from Quebec to Ontario in an attempt to evade child protection authorities. A handful of the approximately 40 families had then tried to go to the Caribbean, but only a few made it successfully. When Mamann arrived at the air- port, four children had been taken into protective custody, but he was able to arrange for the release of the parents. Mamann, who is himself Jewish and fairly observant, says he's known many Haredi families and was skeptical the allegations against the group could be true. "What I could say is that at the very least there is great suspicion about this community and a tremendous lack of cultural knowledge and cultural sen- sitivity of this community," he says. "There just simply was a lack of trust on both sides of the table. And of course, when you have that, you have people doing crazy things like running away." Lev Tahor arrived in Canada over a decade ago, settling in the Ste-Agathe -des-Monts area of Quebec. Like most Haredi communities, they eschewed the modern world, instead focusing on studying the Torah. Their fundamental- ist leanings meant morning prayer last- ed for hours, people spoke only Yiddish, and women and girls wore a chador-like garment in public, covering everything but the oval of their face. Quebec child protection authorities, who had been investigating the group for two years, allege some of the 129 children were being deprived of a proper education and were subject to harsh abuses, including corporal punishment and child marriage. The relationship between the community and the agency began to deteriorate, and when a court instructed the families of 14 of the chil- dren to appear for a hearing, the com- munity decided to flee. On Nov. 17, they filed into a number of rented buses and went to Chatham, Ont., leaving behind most of their belongings. But when they arrived in Ontario, neither the problems of Lev Tahor nor the dealings with child Neither legislation nor the common law in Canada has kept pace with the increasing family law issues arising from international mobility. by arShy Mann kim rosen

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