Evidence of meeting #17 for Justice and Human Rights in the 43rd Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was pandemic.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Director General, Communications and Public Affairs Branch, Research, Results and Delivery Branch, Department for Women and Gender Equality
Matters of courts and the law are outside of my expertise, so I cannot comment.
Bloc
Senior Legal Counsel and Director, Department of Justice
I just got an email from my colleague Nathalie Levman. She said that she is on the call, but you don't seem to be able to hear her.
Senior Legal Counsel and Director, Department of Justice
She would be the best person to answer your questions.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Iqra Khalid
Thank you, Ms. Bouchard.
Ms. Levman, can you hear us?
I'm stopping your time, Monsieur Fortin.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Iqra Khalid
Okay. I understand that Ms. Levman is just joining us now, and she has not heard your question.
Nathalie Levman Senior Counsel, Criminal Law Policy Section, Policy Sector, Department of Justice
I can hear you perfectly.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Iqra Khalid
Thank you very much.
Monsieur Fortin, could you repeat your question briefly so that Ms. Levman can answer?
Bloc
Rhéal Fortin Bloc Rivière-du-Nord, QC
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Ms. Levman, I started by commenting on the importance of the topic we are studying. Obviously, we are talking in terms of federal jurisdiction—hence where the Divorce Act comes in—but the most significant part of our discussion probably relates to a Criminal Code amendment. The code already includes offences that target harassment and domestic violence, and now the idea is to establish a new offence that deals with controlling or coercive conduct.
Could you please explain how you think the courts will differentiate between a case that involves violence, a case that involves harassment and a case that involves controlling or coercive conduct?
Senior Counsel, Criminal Law Policy Section, Policy Sector, Department of Justice
Mr. Fortin, if you don't mind, I would like to answer in English.
Senior Counsel, Criminal Law Policy Section, Policy Sector, Department of Justice
That would be easier for me.
Thank you for your question.
If I'm understanding correctly, you want to know the difference between incident-based offences like assault or other offences that involve violence, criminal harassment and then this new proposed offence of coercive control that is aimed at capturing a pattern of behaviour.
I want to make sure that I have your question right, Monsieur Fortin.
Senior Counsel, Criminal Law Policy Section, Policy Sector, Department of Justice
My colleague, Stéphanie Bouchard, already gave our comments and tried to make some of those distinctions.
You know, of course, that traditional criminal law focuses in on incidents, so it's an incident-based approach. That said, there have been some exceptions to that rule in terms of more modern offences. The criminal harassment offence is in fact a very good example of that. It aims to address the overall impact or cumulative impact of behaviour that takes place over a period of time. That's precisely what this coercive control offence being proposed by Bill C-247—and which is also place in the United Kingdom, Scotland and Ireland—attempts to do. It is broader than our criminal harassment offence, but it takes a very similar approach to it in the sense that the legal test would be to look at the overall impact on the victim or the recipient of that type of conduct and to criminalize it and recognize that spousal abuse or intimate partner violence takes place over a period of time and often involves more subtle types of behaviour that serve to subjugate.
Evan Stark, who is one of the leading sociologists on this issue and has done a lot of research on it, talks about it being a kind of liberty crime resulting in the subjugation of the victim.
Liberal
Bloc
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Iqra Khalid
I stopped your time when we were dealing with our challenges.
Ms. Levman, as we're going to the next person, can I ask you to please unplug and re-plug your headset in? Your sound is not coming from your actual microphone.
Mr. Garrison, you are up next for six minutes. Go ahead, sir.
NDP
Randall Garrison NDP Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC
Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
As this is the first day of our study on coercive and controlling behaviour, I just want to take a second to put on the record how we got here. If we were doing a normal study of a private member's bill, as the sponsor of Bill C-247 I would get to make an introductory remark. Let me just say a couple of things briefly.
At the beginning of the pandemic I did a phone-around to the two independent police forces and two RCMP detachments in my riding. All four of those police commanders, when asked what the main thing was that they were seeing in the pandemic, first remarked on the increase in domestic violence calls. It was interesting that it was across the riding. It was interesting that it was the immediate response of all four.
When I had a discussion with them about how police felt about that, they very quickly raised their frustration that their ability to act was limited only to the most serious physical violence and their frustration at their inability to address issues of coercive and controlling behaviour, which quite often—almost always, in fact—are associated with more direct forms of physical violence.
I did a call-around, then, to the service providers for women's groups and women's shelter organizations in my riding and, of course, found the very same thing, that they reported a very sharp increase in demand for their services. Interestingly, they reported the same frustration. In the attempt to try to keep their clients safe, they were frustrated by the inability of the police to act until it was much later on in the relationship.
As a result of those conversations, I began to look at what more we could do as a society to address this problem. The British example was brought to my attention by Mitzi Dean, a local MLA who is now the Minister of Children and Family Development in British Columbia.
I drafted a private member's bill, Bill C-247, which is modelled on the British law, so that we could look at whether this addition to the Criminal Code could help provide another tool for addressing the problems of domestic violence in this country.
The second part was to try to get more people to discuss and be aware of what's being called by some a “shadow pandemic”. I then decided to put forward a motion to this committee to conduct this study.
For me, the study has two parts. One is to raise the profile of this very significant increase in domestic violence and intimate partner violence during the pandemic. The second is to look for solutions, which may involve my private member's bill, but there may be other solutions that we could adopt that would help address this problem.
That's how we got here this morning, from my point of view, and I'm really pleased to have the department officials here to help us try to address this problem. I'm certainly looking forward to the wide variety of witnesses we will have coming forward in later sessions.
We've had an attempt by the federal government to come forward with a strategy to reduce and address gender-based violence.
Ms. Smylie, has that strategy taken into account the phenomenon of coercive and controlling behaviour?
Director General, Communications and Public Affairs Branch, Research, Results and Delivery Branch, Department for Women and Gender Equality
As the member notes, the Government of Canada does have a federal strategy to address and prevent gender-based violence. To date, there has been over $200 million in investments and an ongoing commitment of $40 million per year.
In that strategy, we consider various forms of gender-based violence, including forms related to coercive and controlling behaviour. One of the key things that we're doing under this strategy relevant to this study is an investment of over $24 million in new data and research to date. Part of that is so that we can better understand the phenomenon and all of the various forms of intimate partner violence. It is so complex and for various reasons it's very difficult to measure.
We're also making investments in programs. To date, there's been almost $17 million and 54 projects across the country, which are helping service providers and organization better support survivors and their families. That includes survivors of the types of behaviours we're focused on, coercive and controlling behaviours.
Also of note under this strategy, the Department of National Defence has invested $1.5 million to date in family support services and military member services, as well as sexual assault centres in close proximity to Canadian Armed Forces bases.
Those are just some of the things under this strategy that we are doing. I think one more important thing, since it was mentioned, is that through the RCMP there's been an investment of $4.6 million in policing operations and support. They are undergoing cultural competency training to make sure that officers are able to support victims and survivors appropriately.