What is the impact of an amicus advising the court on custody decisions?

For my part, in spite of its warts and shortcomings, the additional information and insights provided through the intervention of an amicus is, in the vast majority of the cases, far better than the system of deciding these distressing and sometimes tragic cases purely on an adversarial basis as we tried to do before the concept was instituted in our court. Having publicly committed myself in favour of the system, I would hasten to add that I have not always followed an amicus’s recommendation on custody and Drapaka v. Drapaka, supra, is a case in point. It must never be forgotten by both the bench and the bar that, no matter how good a job the amicus does, the final decision involving custody and/or access is that of the courts and not the amicus.