Thank you.
Good morning. My name is Pam Hrick. I'm the executive director and general counsel of the Women's Legal Education and Action Fund, also known as LEAF.
I am grateful to appear before you today from Toronto or Tkaronto, which is within the lands protected by the Dish With One Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant. I'd like to thank my colleagues Jen Gammad and Kat Owens for helping me prepare for this appearance today.
Founded in 1985, LEAF is a national charitable organization that advocates for the substantive equality of all women, girls and trans and non-binary people. We do this through litigation, law reform and public legal education that is feminist and intersectional.
LEAF was an intervenor in the Supreme Court case of R. v. Brown, which struck down the former section 33.1 of the Criminal Code. We intervened in that case to advocate for the equality of survivors of sexual and intimate partner violence, who are overwhelmingly women. When the Supreme Court released its decision, we were glad to see that it reiterated that intoxication alone is not a defence in sexual assault cases.
We were, however, deeply concerned to hear the confusion and misinformation circulating online after the decision was released, particularly among young people. People were worried about whether saying “I was drunk” was now a legitimate defence to sexual assault. The Supreme Court clearly said it was not.
LEAF was at the forefront of efforts to stem this tide of misinformation, alongside other gender justice advocates like Ms. Khan. Accurate information about what this decision meant was tremendously important, as is accurate information about what Bill C-28 means.
The Supreme Court's decision created a very narrow gap in the law, something that would not be relevant to the overwhelming majority of cases where an accused person was drunk or otherwise intoxicated. The court laid out constitutionally compliant options for Parliament to consider if it wanted to address this very small gap. Bill C-28 was intended to fill this gap. As we said when it was introduced earlier this year, LEAF supports the amendments in Bill C-28. The changes to the Criminal Code represent a tailored and constitutional response in line with the Supreme Court of Canada's guidance in R v. Brown.
Education and training for justice system participants will be needed to ensure the law's proper application. Moving forward, however, we encourage committee members and all parliamentarians to resist focusing on the criminal law as an effective response to gender-based violence, including sexual violence. Canada's criminal legal system is a site of systemic discrimination. It disproportionately criminalizes Black, indigenous and racialized people while at the same time failing to effectively respond to the high levels of violence faced by members of these same communities.
In addition, the criminal legal system too often fails and retraumatizes survivors of gender-based violence. We urgently need a fully funded intersectional national action plan to end gender-based violence and violence against women. As part of that plan, we need survivor-centred approaches to addressing and ending gender-based violence and violence against women. Survivors must have agency and choice in every step of the process.
It is imperative to study, develop and implement survivor-centred alternatives that move beyond existing legal systems. Alternatives like restorative and transformative justice models broaden the possibilities for justice, accountability and healing. LEAF is committed to supporting this work through our own alternative justice mechanisms project, which will identify legal barriers to alternative justice mechanisms for sexual violence and propose law reform measures to address those barriers.
While this committee's current review serves an important purpose, I want to reiterate that the Supreme Court decision preceding Bill C-28 created only a very narrow gap in the law. Bill C-28 implemented a minor, constitutionally compliant response that follows the Supreme Court's guidance.
The bigger issue is what this committee, this government and this Parliament must do to more meaningfully address violence against women and gender-based violence. More criminal law is not the answer. The answer is properly supporting and funding education, prevention, frontline services and alternative accountability mechanisms that respond to the needs of survivors while working to end gender-based violence and violence against women entirely.