Thank you, Chair.
I want to thank all of our witnesses for being here.
Mr. Garrison, I really want to thank you for bringing this forward and highlighting such an important issue.
On January 28, 2020, Dr. Jennifer Kagan went to court with an urgent motion to suspend access by her ex-husband to her daughter. On February 9, 2020, little Keira Kagan was taken by her dad to Rattlesnake Point. He jumped off the cliff, killing them both.
I've had numerous meetings with Dr. Kagan and her husband, who is a lawyer in family court, and we've had several conversations about exactly this: coercive control and the lack of knowledge by the judicial system about intimate partner violence, particularly coercive control. She had been trying for three years to convince judges what this ex-husband was like and was continually denied. That resulted in the death of this wonderful little four-year-old girl.
Having laws in place is one thing, but one of the things that Keira's stepdad has expressed concerns about, because he's a lawyer in the Ontario family court, is that putting it in law does not solve the problem if we don't have the education.
I see Ms. Koshan shaking her head and also Professor Benedet.
I wonder if you could comment—not just on judges but on the police and the Crown—on how critical that is so that we can protect little girls like Keira and women like Jennifer.