Bill S-205

Providing Alternatives to Isolation and Ensuring Oversight and Remedies in the Correctional System Act (Tona’s Law)

An Act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act

This enactment amends the Corrections and Conditional Release Act to, among other things,
(a) provide that a person who is sentenced, transferred or committed to a penitentiary or a person who is transferred into a structured intervention unit must be referred for a mental health assessment by a person qualified to conduct such an assessment;
(b) ensure that a person may only be confined in a structured intervention unit for longer than 48 hours on an order of a superior court;
(c) allow for the provision of correctional services and plans for release and reintegration into the community to persons from disadvantaged or minority populations by community groups and other similar support services; and
(d) allow for persons who are sentenced to a period of incarceration or parole ineligibility to apply to the court that imposed that sentence for a reduction if there has been unfairness in the administration of their sentence.

Protecting Victims Act

[Juanita Nathan, Liberal, Pickering—Brooklin, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am thankful for the opportunity to be here today to speak to Bill C-16, the protecting victims act, and to contextualize this legislation within Canada's broader efforts to confront and prevent gender-based violence.

Gender-based violence is a persistent and measurable reality affecting women, girls and gender-diverse people across this country. In 2024, 187 women were killed violently in Canada. That represents one woman every two days. Women are far more likely than men to experience severe forms of intimate partner violence, sexual violence and criminal harassment. More than one-quarter, about 28%, of all victims of violent crimes in 2024 were victimized by an intimate partner.

These are not isolated incidents, and our justice system has struggled to effectively address these crimes given the complex realities of gender-based violence and the patterns of coercive behaviour that often define abuse. The rate of intimate partner violence, one of the most prevalent forms of gender-based violence experienced by women and girls, is more than 3.5 times higher than it is for men and boys. Indigenous women, women with disabilities and young women face even higher risks.

The Government of Canada has recognized that addressing gender-based violence requires a comprehensive and coordinated response. In 2017, the federal government released a federal gender-based violence strategy and has since invested over $800 million, about $44 million per year, to coordinate federal actions under three pillars: preventing gender-based violence, supporting survivors and their families, and promoting a responsive justice system.

Since 2022, the federal government has invested in a national action plan to end gender-based violence, a 10-year framework aiming to end gender-based violence in Canada by supporting victims and survivors of crime and their families and improving their experiences with the criminal justice system. Significant efforts have been undertaken in this area. For example, the federal victims strategy works to give victims a more effective voice in the criminal justice system and to increase their access to justice.

Through the victims fund, which is part of the federal victims strategy, resources are made available to the provinces and territories for the implementation of the Canadian Victims Bill of Rights, including for the development of public legal education and information material and the provision of training on the legislation for criminal justice professionals.

Considerable efforts have also been made to strengthen the criminal justice system's response to gender-based violence. Canada's Criminal Code provides a broad-based response to all forms of violence, exploitation and abuse against all persons in Canada.

Over the past year, legislative amendments in Bill C-51 and Bill C-75 clarified and strengthened sexual assault laws and the criminal justice system's response to intimate partner violence, and Bill C-233 imposed stricter conditions for people charged with an offence involving intimate partner violence. In addition, Bill S-205, which came into force in April 2025, created a new peace bond designed specifically to provide better protection for victims of intimate partner violence and for children, including by allowing conditions such as electronic monitoring to be imposed on the defendant.

All these efforts reflect an understanding that provision, protection, accountability and survivor support must work together. Today, Bill C-16 is a critical part of that continuum. It would strengthen the criminal law in ways that respond directly to what survivors, advocates and frontline professionals have long told us about how gender-based violence actually occurs.

Bill C-16 would create a new offence, criminalizing a pattern of coercive or controlling conduct in intimate partner relationships. This would address the reality that this abuse takes place over time. It would align the law with the lived reality of survivors and allow for earlier intervention before coercive or controlling conduct turns into serious physical harm or death. It would also support more accurate police and prosecutorial responses by requiring a contextual assessment of power and exploitation.

Bill C-16 would also address the most extreme manifestation of gender-based violence: the killing of women because they are women. By explicitly naming and recognizing femicide in the Criminal Code, the bill would acknowledge that women and girls are disproportionately killed in specific contexts, including intimate partner violence, sexual violence, exploitation and hate-motivated attacks.

Naming femicide matters. It makes visible a reality that has too often been obscured and affirmed: These killings are not random tragedies but are systemic failures that demand accountability. The bill would ensure that murders occurring in these circumstances are treated as first-degree murder. It would also require judges, when sentencing for manslaughter in the same context, to consider penalties equivalent to second-degree murder, including life imprisonment and parole ineligibility for 10 to 25 years.

Importantly, Bill C-16 also recognizes that gender-based violence increasingly occurs through technology. The rise of sexually explicit deepfakes, sextortion and online harassment has created new avenues for abuse, particularly targeting women and girls. These forms of violence can destroy reputations, livelihoods and mental health, and they often silence victims through shame and fear.

The bill would address these gaps by clarifying that non-consensual distribution of intimate images includes realistic deepfakes, as well as by criminalizing threats to distribute such materials and by increasing penalties for these offences. These measures would complement existing Government of Canada initiatives aimed at addressing online harms and protecting digital safety, particularly for young people.

The bill would also modernize the offence of criminal harassment. Data shows that striking and harassment are common precursors to serious violence, yet the current requirement to prove a victim's subjective fear has made early intervention difficult.

Further, Bill C-16 proposes reforms to the Canadian Victims Bill of Rights to better protect victims and expand access to testimonial aids for adult victims of intimate partner violence, sexual offences and criminal harassment, offences that disproportionately affect women and girls. These measures would improve justice system outcomes for victims by recognizing that court procedures themselves can be retraumatizing and that supporting meaningful participation is essential to justice.

The bill would also build on recent reforms to peace bonds and firearms controls, reflecting clear evidence that access to firearms significantly increases the risk of lethal intimate partner violence. By strengthening preventative tools and closing enforcement gaps, Bill C-16 supports the Government of Canada's broader commitment to keeping victims and communities safe.

Bill C-16 is a necessary step in Canada's ongoing commitment to confront gender-based violence with seriousness, clarity and resolve. It reflects the hard truths that violence is rarely a single act but often a pattern, that technology has created new tools for abuse, and that too many women and girls continue to lose their lives in preventable circumstances. By criminalizing coercive control, recognizing femicide, strengthening protections against online and intimate partner violence, and reducing barriers for victims and survivors of crime within the justice system, Bill C-16 would align our laws with lived reality and evidence.

For these reasons, I urge all members to support Bill C-16. Addressing gender-based violence is not optional. Protecting victims—

Message from the Senate

[The Deputy Speaker, Tom Kmiec]

I have the honour to inform the House that a message has been received from the Senate informing the House that the Senate has passed the following bill, to which the concurrence of the House is desired: Bill S-205, an act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act.

Protecting Victims Act

[Marianne Dandurand, Liberal, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Hamilton Mountain. Today's debate on Bill C-16 brings us to a topic that is both difficult and essential, a simple and fundamental question: Do our laws really protect women and children who are victims of violence as much as they should?

One of the Canadian values that is close to my heart is how we protect the most vulnerable. That is what we are talking about today. We must ask ourselves whether our justice system fully recognizes that gender-based violence is not always loud, that it is not always visible and, above all, that it is almost never a one-time event. Bill C-16 asks us to face this reality head-on.

Over the next few minutes, that is what I would like to explain. Why is this bill necessary? What does it change, in a meaningful way? Above all, why does the bill finally respond to what survivors across the country, including in regions like mine, have been telling us for far too long?

For too long, our criminal law has failed to grasp the true nature of gender-based violence, especially when it comes to domestic violence, which is, in fact, one of the most common forms. Even today, our legal framework focuses on isolated acts: a specific assault, threat or incident. However, in doing so, it misses the point, in that it misses the overall pattern of behaviour that defines most abusive situations. Survivors have made it clear that domestic violence, as I also said earlier, is almost never a single or sudden act. It is a gradual increase of control. It means isolation from loved ones, constant monitoring, financial dependence, humiliation, intimidation and manipulation. When we look at these actions individually, it is already unacceptable. However, taken together, it destroys a person's freedom, security and dignity.

These forms of violence remain largely absent from the Criminal Code. That is what we want to correct with Bill C-16. At the heart of the bill is an essential recognition: gender-based violence is not limited to physical abuse. It also impacts autonomy, freedom and dignity. The reforms we are proposing today are aimed at better preventing violence before it escalates, better supporting victims when they seek help and improving the justice system's response to their reality.

One of the key measures in the bill is the creation of a new offence that criminalizes coercive control in intimate relationships. This is a major step forward. This offence will allow us to recognize that violence often manifests itself through a series of repeated acts which, taken together, deprive a person of their independence, safety and decision-making power. Criminalizing coercive control sends a clear message: psychological domination is a serious form of violence.

The bill also addresses the most extreme form of gender-based violence: the murder of women because they are women. Bill C-16 explicitly recognizes femicide where the victim is female. It provides that murders committed under four specific circumstances will automatically be classified as first degree murder, the most serious offence in the Criminal Code, punishable by life imprisonment with no possibility of parole for 25 years. These circumstances reflect realities that women and girls disproportionately face, namely, homicides committed in situations of coercive control, sexual violence, exploitation or gender-based hatred.

We also understand that fighting gender-based violence is not just about creating new offences. It also involves making justice systems more accessible, safer and quicker to respond before the violence becomes irreversible. In this regard, former Bill S-205, which came into force in April, was an important step forward and created a new protection order, namely, a peace bond specifically designed for situations of domestic violence.

Bill C‑16 strengthens this tool. It could allow justices of the peace, who are often more available than judges in many regions of the country, to hear applications and impose protection conditions of up to two years. For women living in rural areas, like my region, where access to the courts can be limited and delays can become dangerous, this measure is especially crucial.

In my riding, I had the opportunity to welcome both the Minister of Public Safety and the Minister of Women and Gender Equality. Together, we held round tables with organizations that are on the front lines, every day, working with women and children who are victims of violence.

I want to list those organizations, which do outstanding work in my riding. They are La Méridienne, the Haut-Saint-François Women's Center, Phelps Helps, the CDC du Haut-Saint-François, CALACS, ConcertAction Femmes Estrie and the Lennoxville & District Women's Centre. The discussions reminded us of the unique realities facing people in rural areas, including transportation problems, isolation and a lack of anonymity because everyone knows each other. They also reminded us of the essential role that multi-faceted organizations play in meeting almost every need and in providing support for women that goes well beyond helping them deal with domestic violence.

I want to share something that a worker at the Haut-Saint-François Women's Center said when I showed her Bill C-16. She said that she was very pleased to finally see a bill that seeks to criminalize coercive control, that this is an extremely important step forward, that criminal harassment is one of the most common issues experienced by the people she works with and that it is very difficult to file a complaint and to have the conditions enforced. She also said that court delays and a lack of protection are two major reasons why victims decide not to report what is happening to them. Bill C-16 responds to those exact issues.

Beyond creating new offences, the bill also improves the courtroom experience for victims. It expands access to testimonial aids—screens, remote testimony, support persons—for victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, human trafficking and criminal harassment. For many survivors, the courtroom can be a place of revictimization. These measures will reduce trauma and promote meaningful participation in the judicial process.

The bill also modernizes the response to technology-facilitated violence. It increases the severity of the offence related to the non-consensual distribution of intimate images to explicitly include deepfakes of a sexual nature. It also adds extortion for sexual purposes, known as sextortion, as an aggravating factor and increases the maximum penalties for certain summary conviction offences. This recognizes a simple reality: digital violence can follow a woman everywhere, at all times.

Bill C-16 also modernizes the offence of criminal harassment. Rather than requiring proof that the victim actually feared for their safety, it will now suffice to demonstrate that a reasonable person in the same circumstances would also have feared for their physical or psychological safety. This change will allow for earlier intervention, before violence escalates.

The bill would also amend the Firearms Act to require chief firearms officers to deny or revoke a licence when there are concerns related to domestic violence or harassment. The data is clear. Access to firearms significantly increases the risk of death in domestic violence situations.

Lastly, the bill strengthens the rules that govern trials for sexual offences. It restricts access to therapeutic records and simplifies sexual history procedures to reduce delays, avoid duplicate hearings and ensure that decisions are based on facts rather than myths or stereotypes.

Taken together, these changes mark a turning point in how Canada understands and addresses gender-based violence. Although the scars left behind by coercive control are not always visible, they are deep. Digital violence knows no borders and when the system is slow to act, the consequences can be irreversible. Bill C‑16 responds to these realities by improving the recognition of this violence, increasing protection, providing real support for survivors and clearly recognizing the seriousness of femicide.

No law alone will end violence against women. However, laws shape culture. They show what we are willing to tolerate and where we draw a red line. When survivors come forward, they are not seeking compassion only. They want a system that understands the reality of the situation and acts before it is too late, as we are doing with Bill C-16.