Vancouver dad wants B.C. Supreme Court to put a stop to ‘helicopter parenting’
Posted October 13, 2018 1:49 pm.
Last Updated October 13, 2018 5:29 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) — A Vancouver father at the centre of a controversy for letting his five kids — some as young as six years old — ride the bus unsupervised last year now wants to bring his case before the B.C. Supreme Court.
Adrian Crook’s goal is to set a precedent for the rest of B.C. after the Ministry of Children and Family Development directed him in 2017 to stop letting his kids take the bus alone to school in North Vancouver. The ministry told Crook kids under the age of 10 are not allowed to take transit on their own, although admitting that his two-year effort to teach them how to do so safely is exemplary.
Because the directive is place until his youngest turns 10 in 2022, he says it will negatively impact all of their lives.
RELATED: Children’s Ministry investigates Vancouver dad whose kids took the bus alone
Crook says that he is after putting a stop to “state intervention” when it comes to parenting, and as long as parents are not putting their kids in harm’s way, they should be allowed to instruct and teach their kids as they please. His key argument is that the provincial government stepped on his Charter rights.
“That’s what I feel is exactly what’s happened in this case, where there was no specific incident the ministry was responding to, and the ministry also made it clear it wasn’t a case of neglect,” Crook tells NEWS 1130. “It was instead just sort of a values judgement that the ministry made, and that’s not really their place.”
In a Friday Facebook post, Crook writes that after a successful GoFundMe campaign to raise $40,000, he is ready to get the B.C. Supreme Court involved and have it definitively decide how parents can parent.
“So since that decision in 2017, we’ve had to abide by this unduly restrictive, flawed and broad ruling,” he writes. “This has meant my kids have lost basic freedoms they’ve had for years. We also had to stay indoors after school for much of the past year, as I can’t afford childcare and could not leave the kids alone, or bring them all out with me every time I needed to leave the house.”
He says the parents who expressed their support for his efforts are more fearful of letting their kids conduct their lives more independently
“They’re more fearful about the sort of micro-freedoms that they are giving their kids in an effort to raise responsible kids would be under scrutiny. I want us to get to the point where parents who are informed and rational responsible and making decisions based on evidence and not fear, that they have nothing to be afraid of from the state, from ministry intervention,” he adds, not discounting the ministry’s role in ensuring the general well-being of B.C.’s kids.
Adrian Crook is a candidate for Vancouver city council in this year’s municipal elections.
— with files from Taran Parmar
