Thank you.
On behalf of the South Asian Legal Clinic, we would like to thank you for allowing us to appear today in front of the committee. I'll be sharing my time with my colleague Silmy Abdullah.
The South Asian Legal Clinic is a legal aid clinic that serves exclusively racialized communities in Ontario. Of our work, 40% involves family violence and gender-based violence cases. We do a significant amount of work in family law. The number one questions we receive are on divorce, child custody and access, as the old terms were.
We're here today to speak about the lived experience of our clients and how that translates into the impact of these changes. Our recommendations are going to be limited to the cases we see and how we think those cases will be impacted by these changes.
I want to start by saying that we are very pleased that the government has decided to do a reform of family law. We are very pleased that you have framed that reform as a consideration of the best interests of children, and of family violence. This is really important work for the clients we see on a daily basis.
As I mentioned, our recommendations, which will follow in a second, come out of the cases, the on-the-ground work that we see. I mentioned in my brief, which you may or may not have before you, that just last week, I alone worked with six clients who faced family violence, and that was the reason that their marriages or partnerships ended.
One client in particular, who is still sitting with me, was chained to her bed and had her head shaved because a man talked to her when they were at the grocery store. I'm telling you that story because the work you are doing on these updates is so important to those lives.
That being said, our first recommendation is that the legislation itself should have a preamble. That preamble should recognize that family violence is both a gendered issue and an intersectional issue.
The truth is that the lived experience of SALCO's clients supports the understanding that family violence is gendered. Most often, the family violence that we see is perpetrated against women, transgender, queer and non-conforming people. They are subject to violence by people who often identify themselves as men. This is sometimes a hard thing for people to accept, but this is what we see.
We would like to echo the submissions of a sister organization called the National Association of Women and the Law, or NAWL, and Luke's Place, which will be in front of this committee later this week, in stating unequivocally that family violence is a form of violence against women.
We also recognize that violence is experienced in different ways by different women, based on their intersecting sites of oppression: age, disability, immigration status, religion and so on. These are very complex issues. We must take time and care in the way that the law addresses those issues. Nothing will be perfect, but we can take that time at committee to have care.
We strongly encourage you to consider a preamble. When you look at the submissions of NAWL and Luke's Place, they've drafted something that can give you guidance for the language. I'm not going to read and repeat it, but I encourage you to refer to it.
In my other work, particularly in immigration, we use the preamble of immigration legislation at the federal level for decision-makers to understand the intent. It recognizes the importance of the screen. It provides a framework, and it guides decision-makers when they are applying the specific sections.
Second, by extension, in the definition section, if the committee accepts that family violence is gendered by nature, you should also include a definition of violence against women. We have been working for many years on having our judiciary in the family courts, in the criminal courts, in immigration decision-making to have a broader understanding of violence against women. This is an opportunity to create that understanding by including that definition.