Citizenship and Immigration committee  You know, 33 years ago there were people who were offended by people calling non-consensual sex between married people “rape”. There were people who were offended by this. Now there are people who are offended by calling honour violence, which is legal in parts of the world based

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Legislation has played such an important role throughout our history in defining what is abuse against women and what is socially and morally wrong. Words are important. If we're too afraid to call these heinous, inhuman, terrible practices what they are in the House of Commons,

Citizenship and Immigration committee  That's an interesting point. If you look at the law around sexual assault, the notion of consent is extremely important. That's a legal construct. There's a whole legal test that goes into determining whether informed consent was given. I think everyone should be on guard withi

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think the bill already does a pretty good job by codifying the age of consent and also creating a provision for peace bonds. One of the issues when we're looking at domestic violence situations is that people are afraid of going to the police because they don't want their loved

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The bill will provide many tools by clearing up some of the ambiguities that exist within common law when it comes to some of these issues. It is really important to codify things like the legal age of consent for marriage. That's something that should be in our Civil Marriage Ac

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'd like to thank the committee for inviting me here today to speak about what can be done to better protect women and girls from violence. My name is Kathryn Marshall. I am a lawyer in Vancouver and also a columnist. I have spent many years writing and researching the issue of

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Absolutely. Familial support can be crucial as a bridge to seeking assistance and support, and I think that has to be true, generally. There are many different potential sources of support and family is one of them, for sure.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think ensuring that the woman is of age of consent.... I know right now the age is 16. I think it should be raised to 18. I think having some kind of minimum means test for the individual doing the sponsoring is important. They're already taking a large undertaking to financial

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Well, I think the issue doesn't seem to be so much the conditional status, it seems to be the issue of women being able to access the help and resources they need when they're in positions where they are being abused. A huge barrier for women who are in these vulnerable situation

Citizenship and Immigration committee  That area is not really my focus of expertise, but I think ensuring that there's a very good screening process would be very important, as would maybe having a very full interview process and strengthening that process. But again I'm really going back to the core issue here of ho

Citizenship and Immigration committee  With respect to the two-year conditional status, this does bring Canadian policy in line with that of many other countries. The U.K., Australia, and the United States all have some form of conditional status. It's an important deterrent against marriage fraud. Frankly, deterrin

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'd like to retain it, and I think we can strengthen the mechanisms to help women who do find themselves in abusive situations to get help.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, certainly. I think when people are given information.... While it's nice to give them a brochure or booklet, that's what I would call a passive delivery of information. There's no guarantee that someone has actually read that information or really understands what their righ

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you. I would first like to thank the committee for inviting me here today to speak about what can be done to better protect sponsored spouses in the immigration system. My name is Kathryn Marshall. I'm a practising lawyer here in Vancouver. I have an honours degree with a