Justice Committee on Feb. 4th, 2021

[Heidi Illingworth]

Thank you.

I would just agree with Andrea. We have to look at what the response of the criminal justice system is to these communities. Traditionally, it hasn't been positive. They are disbelieved and the violence they've experienced is minimized. The response of police in criminal justice has not been positive.

Very likely, people are not going to reach out, so we have to consider this when we're developing these programs and legislation. We have to figure out how we can provide a response that will be a criminal law response when a person wants that, but then also how we can provide them the support necessary to get through this if they don't want a criminal law response, if they don't want to go that route.

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Iqra Khalid]

Thanks very much, Mr. Virani.

We will now go on to Monsieur Fortin.

You have six minutes.

[Rhéal Fortin, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

First, my thanks to all the witnesses who are here today.

I think your testimony is important. We are addressing a sensitive topic. As I said earlier, there are many pitfalls, and we have to be very careful how we deal with these situations. So your insights are valuable to us.

My question is going to be for Ms. Gill.

I appreciated the part of your testimony where you help me to identify what needs to be addressed in our work. There are already offences in the Criminal Code for violence, assault, harassment, forcible confinement. All of those are already criminally prohibited and prosecuted when such incidents occur.

At the other end of the spectrum are the behaviours in relationships, sometimes stormy relationships, that are perfectly okay and should be allowed in a normal society. So we are somewhere in between when we talk about coercive and controlling conduct. What I take from your testimony, Ms. Gill, and from the other presentations, is that we are looking for some sort of model to determine what will be reprehensible controlling and coercive conduct that we want to avoid.

First, am I correct in saying that we are going to find what we want to avoid when controlling and coercive situations keep repeating?

Second, is it really necessary to make it a criminal offence, or do you think there may be other ways to better combat this type of harmful behaviour that is detrimental to everyone's life?

[Prof. Carmen Gill]

That's an excellent question, thank you.

I agree with you. A number of offences in the Criminal Code allow us to deal with different forms of violence. However, if we decide to make controlling or coercive conduct an offence, a paradigm shift is needed to deal with domestic violence in the criminal justice system.

With physical violence, the focus is usually on one incident. One incident is examined and—

[Rhéal Fortin, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

The offence will be limited to the particular incident.

[Prof. Carmen Gill]

Yes, that's right.

In my head, I'm thinking in English and I'm speaking to you in French.

[Rhéal Fortin, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Your French is excellent. This is good news for me because there will be less delay between questions and answers.

[Prof. Carmen Gill]

So we're talking about one incident. But when we talk about controlling or coercive conduct, we are talking about a series of behaviours, a situation, not a single incident.

Criminalizing controlling or coercive conduct forces us to look at the issue of domestic violence in all its complexity.

[Rhéal Fortin, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Isn't there a danger of censuring or criminalizing conduct that you and I might consider acceptable?

Take, for example, a couple arguing. They raise their voices. The woman doesn't want the man to go hunting and she hides the car keys. Whatever the situation, there are some behaviours that are a little extreme, but that are deemed to be okay. We don't want to criminalize it.

Where do you draw the line? How do you sort through and determine what must be criminal and what must be acceptable, even if it is a little harsh?

[Prof. Carmen Gill]

It is agreed that an argument between two adults is not an offence under the Criminal Code.

However, if you start seeing that a number of behaviours have accumulated in a relationship, then it can become an offence under the Criminal Code. Clearly, if we consider that it is normal for a man in a relationship to make major financial decisions or for a woman to leave her job to take care of the children—

[Rhéal Fortin, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

It's actually the opposite for some people I know.

[Prof. Carmen Gill]

Many of the behaviours that are associated with traditional gender roles are considered to be completely normal. However, some people will use those behaviours and roles to start taking control of another person.

As I said, in England, the Home Office has developed a number of situations that constitute coercive or controlling behaviour in the Statutory Guidance Framework. When the police intervene, they are not just looking at one incident. They are assessing what is happening in that situation.

[Rhéal Fortin, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

That can't be easy for the police.

Ms. Gill, I'm sorry for rushing you, I don't mean to be rude, but you know that our time is short. There are 30 seconds left.

In your opinion, are there any methods other than creating criminal offences to prevent unwanted situations from happening? Wouldn't other methods such as education be more effective?

[Prof. Carmen Gill]

It is important to be effective in all areas. I would say it starts with the Criminal Code.

If you criminalize coercive or controlling conduct, it's going to have a ripple effect on other sectors and it's going to raise public awareness about behaviours that people live with but that cannot be identified as criminal.

[Rhéal Fortin, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Thank you.

I am sure that we will return to this.

[The Chair, Liberal, Iqra Khalid]

Thanks very much.

We'll now go to Mr. Garrison for six minutes.

Go ahead, sir.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I want to express my thanks to the witnesses for being here today and also for their kind words.

The victims ombudsman made reference to my personal situation. I just want to say that I did grow up in a family where coercive control and behaviour many years ago was seen as the rule and normal. Unfortunately, I think what we're finding in these hearings is that it's still quite often seen as natural or the rule that should apply in families.

My reason for bringing this forward really is in direct response to the many women who have reached out during COVID for assistance and help as the already-existing problem of intimate partner violence, domestic violence and coercive and controlled behaviour has become worse during the pandemic as access to services have been more restricted.

I want to go to Ms. Silverstone. She talked about people staying in abusive relationships because of the loss of independence and how that's related to coercive and controlling behaviour. Maybe she could just tell us a bit more, in her experience and the organization she works with, about the significance of the loss of independence.

[Andrea Silverstone]

Thank you so much. I would be happy to talk about that.

What's most important to recognize about coercive control is that it's a pattern of behaviour that is low-level, repetitive, often doesn't involve physical violence and takes away a person's sense of personal agency. They no longer make decisions based on what their own best interests are or what their driving motivators are, but they make decisions based on fear of what the other person in the relationship is going to do to them if they don't make a decision in a certain way.

The questions that were just asked to Carmen are really pertinent questions also in relation to that loss of personal agency because, when a couple fights, if neither one of them changes their behaviour as a result of the fight, it's not coercive control. It is a mutually conflicted relationship, but if one of the parties starts to change their behaviour, lose their personal agency and lose decision-making that is in their own best interest, where their identity becomes assumed by the other individual's identity, that is how we define coercive control.

There's a wealth of research around identity theories and how coercive control takes away a person's identity, and that is the defining factor more than anything else. It means that when I wake up in the morning instead of eating cornflakes, I eat bacon because my partner has told me to, even if I don't like it.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Thanks very much for your clarity on that.

I want to turn to Professor Gill and her work with police, because it was actually the local police forces who brought my attention to this spike in domestic violence during COVID. Quite often people say police don't recognize this is a problem, but I also heard from police that they don't feel like they have tools once they do recognize this is a problem.

Professor Gill, would you comment on your work with the police on this question?

[Prof. Carmen Gill]

Thank you, Mr. Garrison.

Absolutely. Police officers are aware of what's going on when they respond to different situations, but they have the tools they are working with and they are called risk assessment tools.

In Canada, one of those risk assessment tools is called ODARA. In many places, they are going to use this particular risk assessment tool. This assessment tool is used when there is physical violence or a threat of physical violence. They perform an assessment when they see that, when there is evidence of physical violence. If there is evidence of other things, it's not necessarily going to be assessed.

I did a survey in New Brunswick with police forces. We were asking about their perceptions around intimate partner violence. I had two camps: those who are more traditional in their way of viewing IPV, and those who are more progressive. Those who are more conservative and more traditional are going to use the terminology from the Criminal Code of Canada, so they talk about assault and sexual assault, while those who are more progressive are going to talk about coercion, jealousy and oppression in the relationship or even isolation.

Police officers know that something is happening, but they do not necessarily have the leverage to really do something about the situation besides sending a victim to a shelter, or maybe to issue an 810 so that there will be a distance between the two partners. There's not much they are going to be able to do in terms of intervening. They can separate the parties, they can arrest a party, but there will be no charges that are going to be laid toward this particular person.

You need to find some evidence. In order to find that evidence about coercive control, we need to give them the tools to be able to identify what is coercive control. That's what I would say.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Thank you very much, Professor Gill.

Very quickly in the little time remaining I would like to ask Ms. Illingworth a question.

It turns out last year your office and my office were working on this issue independently, and I only found out when you wrote to the minister.

Can you tell us briefly why you wrote to the minister on this issue at the time you did?

[Heidi Illingworth]

Yes. Very briefly, this is a concern of mine that comes from my background in front-line services, working with survivors. It's an issue I continue to hear about in my role as ombudsman. Survivors don't feel there's an adequate criminal law response when they come forward to police. They feel they cannot get assistance, that the person cannot be charged for the serious psychological, emotional and financial violence they are suffering, and that the system doesn't view this as violence, this coercive and controlling behaviour.

I see it as a real gap that still needs to be addressed in Canada.

[The Chair, Liberal, Iqra Khalid]

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Mr. Garrison. That concludes your time.

Members, I see that there are three minutes left before 1 p.m. Do I have consensus from members to go into the second round of questions, which will take us about 25 minutes to get through? I leave it to members. I understand that this is a very important topic.

Mr. Garrison would like to go ahead. Mr. Cooper would like to go ahead, as well as Mr. Virani and Mr. Moore.

Mr. Fortin.

[Rhéal Fortin, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

I have things to do before question period at 2 p.m. Perhaps we can extend the meeting by 15 minutes instead of half an hour. That's my suggestion.

It's a really important topic. We have too many witnesses to hear in a short period of time. Whether we are for or against it, it's a passionate and very important topic.