5. Conclusions and recommendations

5.1 Conclusions

5.1.1 Relevance

The evaluation found that the CFJF is a relevant program due to the high and increasing prevalence of family violence, high conflict families, self-represented litigants, and ongoing need to expand support for out-of-court resolution, child support recalculation, maintenance enforcement, and supervised access. There are also continued needs and gaps with respect to accessing family justice services for diverse and underserved groups, particularly Indigenous peoples, individuals living in rural and remote communities, newcomers, 2SLGBTQI+ individuals, and persons with physical or mental disabilities. The CFJF was generally responsive to the current and emerging needs. There is a low likelihood that activities/projects would have proceeded as planned in the absence of the CFJF.

The CFJF is consistent with federal and PT government priorities. The Fund is also consistent with federal roles and responsibilities since family law is a shared responsibility between federal and PT governments.

5.1.2 Effectiveness

The CFJF was effective in contributing to its intended outcomes. It supported improved PT capacity to provide and deliver family justice services, particularly through enhanced funding to ongoing family justice services and funding pilot projects for new services. The CFJF supported increased awareness, knowledge, and understanding of family law and children’s law issues among targeted audiences through the development, update, and delivery of PLEI materials, particularly in response to Divorce Act amendments, the delivery of one-on-one engagements, and the delivery of parent education programs. The CFJF contributed to increased access to family justice for Canadians through the services delivered and materials developed which help families navigate the family justice system. Further, the CFJF contributed to improved family justice services for diverse and underserved populations through innovative projects and activities which target these groups. The CFJF is generally flexible in addressing the needs of diverse groups. The COVID-19 pandemic caused a shift to offer more services virtually that were previously in-person. The shift online had both positive and negative impacts on effectiveness. 

5.1.3 Efficiency

Overall, the CFJF is managed efficiently due to good working relationships between funding recipients and CFJF staff, reasonable reporting, and multi-year funding. Some constraints were identified regarding communication, the availability and consistency of performance data, and the limited program budget.

Best practices and lessons learned were identified as part of the evaluation. For CFJF activities/projects, these included engaging diverse and underserved stakeholders when developing services for these groups, ensuring sufficient time for meaningful engagement and collaboration, implementing strategies to mitigate negative impacts of virtual service delivery, and ensuring services are accessible in both Official Languages (among others). For the management of the CFJF, best practices consisted of maintaining flexibility in working with funding recipients and keeping reporting simple. Best practices are well-communicated and shared across FPT stakeholders.

5.2 Recommendations

Based on the evaluation findings described in this report, the evaluation offers the following two recommendations:

Recommendation #1: Work with provincial and territorial partners to identify gaps and needs relating to family justice services.

The current CFJF budget levels raise challenges for its effectiveness going forward. The evidence suggests that the CFJF budget limits the impact it can have, given that the funding has not increased since 2002-03. When inflation is considered, it means that in real dollars, the amount of funding has decreased over the years. This situation created challenges for some jurisdictions to address identified gaps in services. This suggests that there is an opportunity to work with partners to identify gaps and needs relating to family justice services.

Recommendation #2: In collaboration with partners, build on recent improvements to performance reporting by finding opportunities to further standardize and refine performance reporting mechanisms and information. The utility of performance data for program management should be a key consideration.

CFJF reporting mechanisms and performance data have improved compared to the last cycle. However, the evaluation still identified gaps with respect to the CFJF program performance data. Gaps remained in terms of the consistency and completeness of annually reported data by PTs and projects. The data is not always captured in a standardized manner to facilitate fulsome monitoring and reporting on outcomes. This poses challenges in using performance data to manage how funding is prioritized and approved. Justice Canada should explore new approaches to refine performance reporting and monitoring to improve the utility of performance data in program reporting and program management. A refinement of performance reporting and monitoring processes should balance internal strategic needs for such data and the burden for partners to provide it.