“If the legislative scheme is no longer available to the appellants because they long ago ceased being children, I do not think that they can assert a right to some equitable remedy to obtain, in effect, what might have been obtained had the legal remedies been pursued in a timely fashion. La Forest J. dealt with that issue in Frame v. Smith at pp. 114-15 S.C.R.:
The Legislature created the rights of custody and access and, as we saw, provided a whole array of remedies for enforcing them, from directions for supervising access, to restraining orders against interference, to apprehending the child, if necessary by permitting entries into premises and searches by the police or the sheriff, to fines and imprisonment. Why the legislature should be thought to have intended enforcement by an action for breach of a fiduciary obligation when there is a failure to comply with an access order, when an intention to permit a tortious action will not be implied, I fail to understand. All the more so when the Legislature has taken pains to abolish all non-statutory actions that had any obvious relevance to the matter. Indeed there are in my view stronger reasons to doubt that the Legislature would have contemplated recourse to this action. It is extremely ill- defined and it would scarcely be one that would immediately leap to mind.
In this respect, I agree with the motions judge when she said the following [at p. 295 O.R.]:
Parents have an obligation to support their dependent children. There are serious consequences for those who default. They can lose their drivers’ license. They can lose their passport. They can go to jail. The stringent enforcement provisions reflect the moral outrage of a society that labels them “deadbeats”. But the laws are meant to provide for children. They are meant to ensure that children receive support for their day-to-day needs while they are dependent. Child support legislation was not intended to operate as a weapon in the hands of grown-ups who sue their parents for perceived deficiencies in their upbringing. That is why the Supreme Court of Canada [in Frame v. Smith] refused to allow persons to sue for damages for breach of a family law statutory obligation. The statutory scheme provides the entire remedy. If the legislature had intended to extend the remedy to damages, it would have said so.”
Louie v. Lastman (No.1), 2002 CanLII 45060 (ON CA) at 20-21