[19] I will deal next with Dr. Peterson’s report entitled “Multiple rater response to play assessment description From Kawartha Family Court Assessment Service Report”. It is dated May 4, 2009. This is perhaps the most interesting of all of the reports that counsel for the respondent wishes the court to consider.
It comes as close to “junk science” as anything that I have ever been asked to consider. Dr. Peterson’s evidence was that he did not consider himself to be an objective observer, if only because he only saw the respondent. Therefore, he took excerpts from the Kawartha Family Court Assessment Service Report dealing with the observations of the play sessions with the children and each parent. He then designed a questionnaire to explore the actions of the parents therein. He then sent all that to what he describes as “22 colleagues, psychologists, social and child care workers”. We know nothing of their experience. Five persons responded to his questionnaire. The following is Dr. Peterson’s description of those five:
Three of these were psychologists. Two were developmental clinical psychologists. One was a former professor who had done gestalt therapy. One was a child welfare worker with a degree in social work. Once was a private neuropsychological rehabilitator with a bachelor’s degree in psychology and extensive experience dealing with children with severe behavioural difficulties.
[20] Even if Dr. Peterson testified as to why he choose those 22 people or what he understood to be the qualifications of those who responded, we would have no first-hand knowledge of any qualification that any of them might have to give evidence regarding custody and access assessments, or as to observations of the parties during the play sessions which would factor into such an assessment. It is astonishing in my opinion that Dr. Peterson would feel that this was good science.
[21] The final nail in the coffin on this issue is that Dr. Peterson himself agreed with counsel for the applicant that if the observations of the first play session with the applicant and the children were affected by the fact that one of the children had slept poorly the night before, to only use that one play session in any comparison would be “apples and oranges”.