Thank you to the committee for your invitation to have Women and Harm Reduction International Network—WHRIN for short—speak about Bill C-28.
My name is Rhiannon Thomas. I'm here as the representative to speak about considerations similar to the previous speaker's.
Here is an introduction and our context. WHRIN was formed in 2009 as a response to a worldwide scarcity of services, research and training programs that are inclusive of women, female-identified and gender-diverse people who use drugs, by the global community of women who use drugs, as well as drug policy and human rights activists. WHRIN has spent the past 15 years working to improve the availability, quality, relevance and accessibility of health, social and legal services for women who use drugs.
WHRIN reminds the committee that drugs, including alcohol, while sometimes associated with violence, cannot be seen as the direct cause of violence. WHRIN would argue that drug dependency is not a disease or illness, nor does drug use per se negate free will and intention.
I am certain that the honourable members on this committee will be very aware that women are most often the victims of violence, including physical, sexual and socio-economic. By that, I mean that women in relationships in which gender-based violence occurs often do not have the economic means to freely or safely exit them. Children, as the committee knows, are often caught up in these situations as well.
As the previous speaker said, it is most likely that men who engage in intimate partner and gender-based violence will attempt to use this defence if it is made available to them.
For some men, both drug use and intimate partner violence may be expressions of a need for power and control related to gender-based insecurities. Intimate partner violence is usually inflicted by men who, buoyed up by patriarchal contexts, believe that violence is apposite in certain situations. Such violence occurs in settings where the perpetrator is in control. It must be understood as deliberate and, at some level, premeditated, independent of the amount of alcohol or other drugs consumed, if any.
Incidentally, this insight has implications for services designed for violent perpetrators, in which drug use should evidently be considered as a secondary factor in violence prevention interventions, given that the intention to inflict violence invariably precedes alcohol or other drug use.
Sexual violence is a place where we must be particularly careful with the use of this defence. Women are overwhelmingly the victims of sexual violence. This type of crime is one of the most under-reported, due to the burden of not having police believe narrative evidence. Even when cases get to court, survivors are cross-examined without trauma-informed approaches. If a survivor is a noted person who uses drugs, for example, their memories of the events are often discredited. In this way, a survivor can be blamed for a sexual assault, while the perpetrator—using this defence—has the potential to be acquitted for being intoxicated.
Additionally, if we consider gendered socio-economic realities, women have less access to legal supports. In most provinces, legal aid supports have been slashed for many years, so they are accessible only to the accused who are facing jail time, and not to survivors. Further, as parents and, often, the primary caregivers, women who may want to invoke such a defence may be reluctant to do so, due to the threat of losing child custody.
Importantly, due to the criminalization of many commonly used drugs, research on their physiological effects is limited, which would also impact the limitations of the use of this defence. To properly study if and how many drugs affect perceptions and the ability to make informed decisions is difficult, if not impossible, given the exemptions required. One drug we know a lot about is alcohol, since it is legal. We know that it affects inhibitions, perceptions, judgment and so on, and it has been clearly linked to violence—perhaps not causally—in many studies.
Finally, the criminalization of drugs, drug use and people who use drugs must also be considered. How will this affect communities that are most impacted by prohibition? Black, indigenous and poor people in this country—who are most often disproportionately incarcerated and have less access to pricey lawyers—certainly are not going to be in a position to pay for expert witnesses who can make assertions about the levels of intoxication and their relation to criminal intent.
I also would refer to the rising numbers of women, particularly indigenous women, in the federal prison system. You can easily find these numbers on the Canadian government website. I would encourage the honourable members of this committee to also read the report from the Office of the Correctional Investigator that was released last week, which pointed to how those numbers are increasing and how indigenous prisoners, especially female prisoners, are in prison longer and in maximum security more often. I ask this: Will this defence be accessible to these Canadians?
In summary—
