Justice Committee on Feb. 4th, 2021

[The Chair, Liberal, Iqra Khalid]

Mr. Lewis.

[Chris Lewis, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I am speaking in the House at 1:30 today, so if we go to 1:25 it's going to be very tough for me to log off this and then log back on to the other one. I wanted you to be aware. I didn't know that I had to bring somebody to cover for me.

[The Chair, Liberal, Iqra Khalid]

That's absolutely fine.

Would members be okay with it if we just went through one member per party, which would bring us to about 15 minutes? Is that okay? Okay.

We'll go ahead to Mr. Cooper for five minutes.

Go ahead, sir.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to the witnesses.

It's certainly helpful to look at what other jurisdictions have done as we consider Bill C-247 as well as the issue of coercive control more broadly.

Ms. Illingworth, you noted that several U.S. states have passed laws in this area. I actually wasn't aware of that. I understood that there is a bill in the New York general assembly. As well, in the State of Tennessee, it's my understanding that its law on false imprisonment has been amended to include categories of behaviours that constitute domestic false imprisonment.

Can you point to the other states so that we could give those laws consideration as we study this very important issue?

[Heidi Illingworth]

Yes. I'm happy to.

Hawaii was the first state to enact anti-coercive control legislation. My understanding is that New York and Connecticut legislators have introduced similar laws. I don't know if they have passed there. That is the information I have from my awesome policy team.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Thank you for that.

I will direct my question to you, Ms. Illingworth, as well as Dr. Gill. Perhaps both of you could address this issue.

It's certainly one important step to pass a law, but it's another to make it operational in terms of making it an effective tool for law enforcement. When we look at upper jurisdictions, we have not seen a significant uptick in the way of prosecutions and convictions. For example, in the United Kingdom at the end of 2018, there were only just over 9,000 offences of coercive control in the context of two million incidents of domestic abuse in that year, and only 308 convictions.

I guess there are some practical issues at play in terms of how law enforcement can lay a charge and how the Crown can successfully prosecute these cases. Can you speak to some of those challenges and how, if this or a similar bill were passed, this tool could be an effective one to deal with this serious issue?

[Heidi Illingworth]

Would you like Carmen to go first?

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

It's for whoever wishes to answer first.

[Prof. Carmen Gill]

Okay. I will respond, because we have to be quick.

If you go through the England and Wales situation, you are going to find that the Crown prosecutors have developed a handbook on how they are using the coercive control offence. As well, police officers do have a risk assessment tool that they are using and that they call the DASH.

Of course, developing an offence like this will mean that there will be some resources needed to train those people to be able to implement this particular offence. It's the same thing with judges. If it moves forward, they will need to understand the offence of coercive control.

[Heidi Illingworth]

Yes, and I would just echo that. I know the last witnesses emphasized this as well, but implementation of the law is a separate challenge. There needs to be judicial education, training of police and Crown counsels and policies to accompany that ongoing training. You can't just pass criminal law and hope that the situation is going to change. There have to be resources behind implementation—monitoring, evaluation and ongoing training.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Thank you.

It seems to me that there are significant challenges and difficulties in operationalizing emotional abuse in a legal context. Even though you speak to some of the things that have happened in the U.K., the fact remains that we have seen very few convictions. I think Professor Gill, in your paper, you noted only 308 convictions. Was that since 2015?

[The Chair, Liberal, Iqra Khalid]

That concludes your time, Mr. Cooper.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Could I just get a yes or no to that question?

[Prof. Carmen Gill]

I believe it was for one year, 2018.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Thanks for that clarification.

[The Chair, Liberal, Iqra Khalid]

Thanks very much.

We'll now go to Ms. Damoff for five minutes.

Go ahead.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thanks to all the witnesses.

I don't know, Ms. Gill or Ms. Silverstone, if you've done any research on this, but I've spoken to three women in prison, all of whom had arrived in prison for drug trafficking because of coercive control. Emily O'Brien locally here, who's now out, had travelled with her partner. He seized her passport—he had been threatening her throughout their relationship—and forced her to bring back drugs in return for getting her passport back and being able to see her family again. She served time because of mandatory minimums. I met women at the Edmonton Institution for Women who were in exactly the same boat. I'm wondering how often you see women who end up in prison themselves because of coercive control from their partner.

Professor Gill, perhaps you can start. I see you shaking your head.

[Prof. Carmen Gill]

Yes, I've seen this in Saskatchewan. When I was working at the University of Regina, I did a study of victims of intimate partner violence, and I've seen cases in which the woman was forced to prostitute herself, was locked in the house. There were all sorts of behaviours that she was subjected to, and she ended up being incarcerated because of what she was doing. In reality, she was victimized, but we have not necessarily seen this.

There are other examples I could give, but I will let Andrea speak.

[Andrea Silverstone]

I think you've hit the nail on the head. Part of what twigged my understanding of coercive control and why it was so important is that I actually started my career working in a halfway house for women coming out of federal corrections. Although they were there for federal corrections reasons, I would say that the majority of clients who were in the halfway house ended up in conflict with the law because of abusive partners who had coercively controlled them into drug trafficking, prostitution, theft and a whole variety of activities. That's why I think it's really important that we understand that coercive control is so much more than just domestic violence. It can also pertain to what I'll call modern slavery essentially—prostitution, non-consensual drug trafficking, sex trafficking and all of those things.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

I think my colleague Mr. Maloney wanted some time as well, so I'll pass it on to him.

[James Maloney, Liberal, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

Thanks very much, Ms. Damoff.

I don't think anybody disagrees with the fact that a law of this nature is vital and necessary, but it's the application that I'm struggling with.

Mr. Moore, Mr. Cooper, Mr. Fortin and others have touched on this. Professor Gill, you described it as an abstraction.

Ms. Illingworth, you said the application is more challenging, and I agree with that. What you're doing is criminalizing behaviour that individually may not be criminal while collectively it is. That puts a great burden on a police officer who's called into a situation and asked to investigate a complaint by a spouse for behaviour that, on its own, may seem sort of innocuous. I think this is what Mr. Fortin was getting at earlier.

Professor Gill, in your paper, you set out what the Home Office statutory guidance framework is. You can easily pick three or four things off of that list that, on their own, don't seem troubling, but collectively they are.

Maybe my question is for you, Ms. Silverstone, because I know you're in the business of training and working with groups. Do you feel confident that you could sit down with a group of judges, a group of police officers or any other group to train them in how they can apply this law so that you don't have difficulties at the expense of victims?

[Andrea Silverstone]

My answer is absolutely, yes. I think it has to be done with care and caution.

I'm very lucky in that two years ago I got to spend a month and a half in the United Kingdom meeting with the College of Policing and the Crown Prosecution Service to talk about exactly this issue, as they were trying to do training as well as enculturate people to use the law.

One of the things that has happened, because their training has gotten better and better and because they've had some statutory reviews on how they're doing it, is that the incidents of police officers using it as they become better trained and more comfortable with using it means they bring better evidence into court, which means the Crown is better able to do its job, etc. If you look year over year, the course of control legislation as used by police and Crown prosecutors is going up 30% every year. Although the number is very small and it was only about 3% in 2019, I think we're heading in the right direction.

We're very lucky in that other jurisdictions have done this work and are already doing it, so we have a model we can look at. I know that police want to use a tool like this and we would be giving them something they want, not something they'd be resistant to.

[The Chair, Liberal, Iqra Khalid]

Thank you very much.

That concludes your time, Mr. Maloney.

[James Maloney, Liberal, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Iqra Khalid]

We'll now go to Mr. Fortin for two and a half minutes.

Sir, go ahead.