“I agree with Justice Pazaratz that “[s]upervised access is not intended to be a long-term solution to access problems”, but that it may be an appropriate intermediate step in situations where, for instance, there are substance abuse issues that need to be addressed and/or where the child is being introduced or reintroduced to a parent after a significant absence. Izyuk v. Bilousov, 2015 ONSC 3684, at paragraphs 52-53.
At the same time, however, it must be remembered that supervised access is a short step away from complete termination of any relationship between a parent and a child, and thus it should be seen as the exception and not the norm, as a last resort and not as a knee-jerk reaction to one parent’s allegations against the other. There is a very helpful article on the subject written by Nicholas Bala, Michael Saini and Sarah Spitz, found at 2016-085 of the December 2016 edition of the Queen’s Law Research Paper Series, titled Supervised Access as a Stepping Stone Rather Than a Destination: A Qualitative Review of Ontario Services & Policies for Assisting Families Transitioning from Supervised Access, 2016 CanLIIDocs 4597.”