“Section 15.1 of the Divorce Act states:
Child support order
15.1 (1) A court of competent jurisdiction may, on application by either or both spouses, make an order requiring a spouse to pay for the support of any or all children of the marriage.
Section 1(d) of the Child Support Guidelines states that the objectives of the guidelines are:
(d) to ensure consistent treatment of parents or spouses and their children who are in similar circumstances.
Pursuant to section 16 of the Child Support Guidelines, the starting point in determining income for support purposes is the payor’s line 150 of their Income Tax Return.
The Child Support Guidelines provide for different methods of determining income when the starting point is not the “fairest determination of that income” (Section 17 of the Child Support Guidelines), does “not fairly reflect all the money available to the parent or spouse” (Section 18 of the Child Support Guidelines) or when a court “imputes such amount of income to a spouse as it considers appropriate (Section 19 of the Child Support Guidelines).”