Thank you for inviting us to participate today.
We wish to acknowledge and express our gratitude to the indigenous peoples upon whose traditional lands we reside.
The Redwood provides programs and services, including shelter services, to support women and children to live and thrive without abuse, homelessness and poverty. We work for social change through learning, collaboration and advocacy.
We are deliberate with our language, which is informed by an anti-oppressive, feminist, trauma-informed and attachment-informed lens. It is compatible with a transformational justice framework. As opposed to the language of “perpetrator” or “abuser”, we refer to these people as people causing harm, or causers-of-harm. We recognize that harm manifests itself in a variety of ways, including torture and murder.
Our principal concern is rooted in ensuring the safety of our clients, their children and the community at large. We operate on a harm-reduction basis, in which we meet concerns by listening to, educating and respecting the wishes of survivors, as they are the experts in their own lives and their own needs.
Coercive control is a serious issue that contributes to the harm against and homicide of women and children. It also contributes to the causers-of-harm's own death by suicide. We are pleased to see the federal government taking this issue seriously, as evidenced by amendments to the Divorce Act and the bill being contemplated today.
Coercive control is the most lethal form of intimate partner violence. You've heard from our colleagues today about it in great detail. However, I wish to draw your attention to coercive control and violence's counterpart, violent resistance. For brevity, I will simply point out that violent resistance is a form of violence that responds to coercive control. It can therefore be seen where coercive control exists, but coercive control is the cause and any criminal measure should acknowledge this.
Criminalization of any form of family violence has its benefits and harms. Among the benefits we recognize that criminalization of any social ill sends a signal to society that the elected government as representatives of this society take the issue seriously and find the conduct morally reprehensible.
What we reportedly hear from our clients is that—