Justice Committee on Feb. 26th, 2024

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I have two short points I want to make.

The first is that I've had a study on anti-Semitism on the table since December. I've politely waited to move it at committee until the steering committee has had the opportunity to consider it. My Conservative colleagues, who seem to want that, continue to put forward motions without going through the steering committee. I'm disappointed in that.

The second point is that I think it is absolutely unfair to start making claims that any party at this table has ever voted for anything that would change the parole eligibility of the individual mentioned in the motion.

I agree with everything Mr. Maloney said. I don't think anybody here thinks anything other than this man should be imprisoned for the rest of his life. This gentleman was sentenced in 2007, and he has the same eligibility he had when he was sentenced in 2007. There have been no legislative changes since 2015 that anyone here has voted for that have extended his parole eligibility. There have been court judgments that struck down laws that were passed before 2015, but nobody here has been part of anything that has extended this gentleman's parole eligibility. It's important to say that. To start claiming that one party or another party has been responsible for traumatizing people is exceptionally offensive.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I support the amendment.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lena Metlege Diab]

Thank you.

Mr. Fortin, you have the floor.

[Rhéal Fortin, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

This individual is a special case. I'm one of those people who hopes they never get out of prison. Of course, revenge is always possible, but I'm thinking above all of protecting the public. Unless someone comes and explains to us that they're completely cured—which would surprise me—I think they're a sick and dangerous person and they should stay in prison.

I have no problem with Mr. Maloney's proposal. That said, we do have a justice system. The motion calls on the government to ensure that this individual never gets out of prison. Does that mean that we want the government to relieve the Parole Board of Canada of its mandate? I take issue with that. I don't think it can be done that way. In my opinion, we need to trust in the system.

I think that individual should stay in prison. I get the impression that the motion expresses a wish that all of us around the table likely share. We all want that to happen. However, in our role as legislators, can we ask the government to ensure that this individual will remain in prison, regardless of what the Parole Board of Canada would say? That seems a bit questionable to me.

Although I agree with the spirit of what's being proposed, I find it hard to see how we could rationally ask the government to disregard the established processes in all cases. If it turns out that it can be done, we'll have to establish where to draw the line, to determine at what point existing parole measures will no longer be taken into account. That seems a little awkward to me.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lena Metlege Diab]

Go ahead, Mr. Caputo.

[Frank Caputo, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'd like to thank my honourable colleague Ms. Findlay for moving this motion and for remembering the names of the victims.

The reality is that we as parliamentarians have a duty. We have a duty to be proactive, and we also have a duty to be reactive. Rarely are we proactive and too often we have to be reactive. The reality is that nobody wants to discuss this, but in 2007 he was sentenced to life without parole eligibility for 20 years. We're not at 20 years yet—and a lot of people don't realize you can apply for day parole before the end of that period of ineligibility for parole—and it's incumbent upon us as parliamentarians to be reactive at times. This is one of those times. This is an emerging issue.

I'm sympathetic to Mr. Housefather, for whom I have great respect, and to the motion he put forward, but the reality is that this is a headline today. It wasn't a headline a week ago or a month ago, and we as parliamentarians have the duty, in my view, to speak and to speak with one voice and to speak firmly at the earliest opportunity. This is a timely measure, and I fully support its being reported to the House.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lena Metlege Diab]

Ms. Findlay, go ahead, please.

[Kerry-Lynne Findlay, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock, BC]

I would just add, Madam Chair, that we are not talking necessarily about changing the whole parole system. What we're talking about is dealing with serial murderers and torturers differently from others when it comes to parole hearings. There is the ability to make changes, legislative changes that would affect the way someone like this is treated through the parole system. That is what we're calling for. That's what we think needs to happen. We are asking this committee and Parliament to take a look at this type of situation with this type of convicted offender and to make changes that support victims and prevent their retraumatization through these parole hearings.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lena Metlege Diab]

Go ahead, Mr. Maloney, and again I remind everyone that we're speaking to the amendment.

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

I'm fine.

I would just move that we vote on the amendment.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lena Metlege Diab]

You are moving to vote on the amendment.

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

If there are no more speakers, I'm in favour of moving to vote on the amendment.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lena Metlege Diab]

No, that was it.

We will vote on the amendment. Would you please remind us again? I have the original in front of me.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I would remove the word “Liberal”, and I'm fine with capitalizing the “G” in government. I would also remove the words at the end, starting with “and that this be reported to the House”.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lena Metlege Diab]

I'm going to read the amendment that we are now voting on:

That the committee call on the Government to ensure that [RP] spends the rest of his life in prison and prevent any re-traumatization of the families of his victims through unnecessary parole hearings.

(Amendment agreed to: yeas 7; nays 4)

(Motion as amended agreed to: yeas 11; nays 0)

[Kerry-Lynne Findlay, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock, BC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lena Metlege Diab]

Thank you very much.

We will now move to the second panel of witnesses.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lena Metlege Diab]

We're calling it back to order. It's 10 minutes after the hour.

We will start our second hour with our panel of witnesses.

First, we welcome Emilie Coyle, executive director of the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies.

We also have Barbara Cartwright, chief executive officer of Humane Canada.

Shannon Ritchie is appearing by video conference.

She is founder and clinical director of Currents Counselling.

I welcome you.

Each one of you has five minutes to make your presentation. It will be followed by questioning. I will watch the time as best I can.

I will now ask you to proceed. We will start with Ms. Coyle.

[Emilie Coyle, Executive Director, Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies]

It is a great honour and responsibility, as always, to appear in front of this important committee. Thank you very much for having us here.

We at the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies, or CAEFS, have a statement of purpose that I want to bring to you today. It is to address the persistent ways that criminalized women and gender-diverse people are routinely denied their humanity and excluded from considerations of community.

I felt it was important to read that statement of purpose in the context of the discussion around Bill C‑332.

Intimate partner violence, including coercive control, is—as we all agree—a social issue of epidemic concern. Many inquiries and reports on coercive control, including one from this very committee, have emphasized the necessity of a comprehensive, all-government effort to eradicate pervasive and fatal forms of intimate partner violence. The Mass Casualty Commission, which I'm sure you are all aware of, specifically highlights the vital need to prioritize women's safety by shifting funding away from carceral responses towards primary prevention.

Unfortunately, we see Bill C‑332 falling under the category of a carceral response, and we do not support it.

I'll ask this: Who are we protecting with this bill? CAEFS is particularly concerned about the continuing reliance on carceral approaches to social issues like intimate partner violence, because we see the failure of this type of response every day in our work. I ask that you query this: Why do we believe adding another law to our Criminal Code will guarantee people who have experienced coercive control safety? These are people like an 18-year-old who is now under a life sentence because she was coercively controlled by her violent boyfriend, who then forced her to participate in the killing of his rival. Would it protect her, or the young woman who was forcibly taken out of the limits of her probation order to be sexually exploited, only to be charged with and found guilty of breaching her conditions when she turned to the police for help?

In our work, we encounter these stories regularly. So many of the criminalized women and gender-diverse people we work with and alongside have endured ongoing and often appalling levels of control and violence throughout their lives, beginning at very young ages. When they defend themselves, when they push back or when they do something that puts them “in conflict with the law” because they are trying to survive, we punish them.

Criminalization has unequal and often destructive impacts on indigenous peoples, Black people, trans people, sex workers and others who struggle under the weight of poverty, addiction, mental health disabilities, precarious immigration status and more. Unfortunately, these are not the people who will benefit from the protection of this law or other criminal legal reforms enacted with the express purpose of keeping women and gender-diverse people safe. In short, those with whom we work are not the picture of the ideal victim.

I would be remiss if I did not narrow in specifically on two interconnected but important issues in this country.

Indigenous women in Canada are more likely than non-indigenous women to have experienced intimate partner violence in their lifetimes. We have a crisis of mass incarceration of indigenous women and gender-diverse people in our provincial and federal systems. This means we are not only under-protecting indigenous women and gender-diverse people but also regularly criminalizing them. In a country committed to reconciliation, this has to be part of the intimate partner violence conversation and cannot be ignored.

When it comes to children, when you see mandatory and dual-charging laws, women and gender-diverse people can themselves be and are charged with intimate partner violence. When we criminalize women and gender-diverse people, we are also punishing families.

Our legal system responds after harm has happened. It is not prevention. I think we all care here about victims of harm. On that we can all agree. If we take that to be true, we should centre people who have or will experience harm in everything we do. A response after the fact is never going to be as good as prevention.

I completely understand the instinct to use the criminal law as a tool to assist in responding to harm. However, when it is the only option presented time and again as a solution, of course women and others may feel compelled to support it. What we are essentially saying is, “Please pay attention to this issue. This is not the answer.” Unfortunately, the criminal law has been proven at best to be ineffective and inconsistently used, and at worst to cause irreparable harm to people who are already routinely denied their humanity and excluded from considerations of community.

I have several other solutions I'd like to propose. I'd like to bring them up during the question period, if I may.

Thank you so much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lena Metlege Diab]

We have Ms. Cartwright, please.

[Barbara Cartwright, Chief Executive Officer, Humane Canada]

Thank you, and good afternoon.

Humane Canada is the Canadian Federation of Humane Societies and SPCAs, with members in all 10 provinces and two territories, from the largest urban centres, like B.C. SPCA, to the smallest coastal communities, like Happy Valley-Goose Bay SPCA. These are the organizations in your ridings that Canadians depend upon to care for abused and abandoned animals, to enforce the law, to advocate for greater care and protection, and to provide resources to their communities.

Humane Canada is the founder of the Canadian violence link coalition, which brings together more than 40 stakeholders, from both human and animal services, who are interested in the links between animal violence and human violence, and the weaknesses in our justice system that often ignore this link, especially in the intimate partner and family violence contexts.

We are also the founders of the National Centre for the Prosecution of Animal Cruelty and a trusted partner of Women and Gender Equality.

We are here today to advocate for animal-owning survivors and their animals.

More than 60% of houses in Canada own a companion animal. Women and younger Canadians are more likely to have a pet, and of those, 70% identify that pet as a family member. That makes those animals vulnerable to being used as a tool of coercive control, and it makes the human victim more vulnerable, because of their love and dedication to that animal.

As part of our work with pet-owning women survivors of violence and with family lawyers and prosecutors, we are aware that animals are commonly and effectively used as a tool of coercive control, and even more effectively because the link goes unnoticed by enforcement and often the courts, even if a criminal animal cruelty charge has been laid.

As previous witnesses have shared, legislation to criminalize coercive control is necessary, because it reflects a pattern of behaviour over time as opposed to a single incident that might otherwise fall under another part of the Criminal Code. Similarly, animals must be included in coercive control legislation, because the animal cruelty sections of the Criminal Code do not have a mechanism that adequately reflects the kinds of behaviour patterns that are seen in coercive and controlling behaviour that target animals as a tool, which is not a rare incident.

In a 2018 survey, 89% of survivors reported the perpetration of animal abuse by their partners. A 2019 study of survivors highlighted some of what those acts included: 65% reported threats to get rid of their pet, 60% reported scaring or intimidating a pet on purpose and 56% reported smacking a pet, while 50% reported throwing an object at the pet. In the most severe cases, 20% reported injury of a pet, and 14% reported the killing of a pet. These findings are significant, because they indicate the perpetrators of the abuse are more likely to engage in those less physical and overt forms of animal abuse that leave a victim unclear as to whether or not it should be reported to police, because it is unclear if a crime actually was committed.

I want to take a few moments to share with you some survivor stories from our network that illustrate how animals are used in coercive control.

A rural woman from Saskatchewan fled a violent home. Her abuser refused to feed or care for their beef cattle and their horses, so that she had to come back onto the property to do so. When she would return, he would attempt to intimidate her. The police would not intervene because they felt, if she would return to the farm, that would be evidence that she was not actually afraid of her abuser.

An abusive partner threatened to poison the survivor's dog. The dog died, but she didn't have the money for an autopsy, so she was never clear as to whether or not he actually poisoned the dog. Shortly thereafter she broke up with him, but he would call and leave messages on her phone simply saying, “Remember what happened to Bobby”, which was their dog.

A survivor left an abusive situation, but her partner refused to let her take the dog. He brought the dog to meet her at Starbucks a week later and leveraged that relationship by allowing her to spend time with the dog if she complied and did all the things he wanted. The dog became a source of continual control and abuse.

This bill needs to clearly identify that these actions are an act of coercive control. Abuse towards animals is not always considered by the law or the courts, particularly in the absence of physical injury. Enshrining patterns of controlling and coercive behaviours with explicit inclusion of animals would add clarity to the law for law enforcement agencies, prosecutors and criminal justice stakeholders, but more importantly for victims and survivors. Therefore, we recommend adding animals to proposed subsection 264.01(2), “Interpretation—significant impact”.

In closing, this committee recognized the role of animals in coercive control in its 2021 report on this subject. The Mass Casualty Commission's report made recommendations on animals and coercive control.

Finally, we are pleased to have MP Collins's support for the inclusion of animals in this bill.

Thank you very much for your time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lena Metlege Diab]

Thank you very much.

Our third and final testimony will come from Ms. Ritchie for five minutes.

[Shannon Ritchie, Founder and Clinical Director, Currents Counselling]

Thank you so much for having me. It's an honour to be here.

I first want to acknowledge with gratitude that I'm joining as an uninvited guest on the traditional unceded territory of the Secwepemc people.

I am providing evidence in support of Bill C-332 from my experience of working with perpetrators and victims of violence.

To provide a bit of information about myself, I am a registered clinical counsellor with a master's degree in counselling. I'm the owner and clinical director of Currents Counselling, which is a private counselling practice located in the Okanagan and B.C. interior. I support a team of clinical counsellors. My practice is focused on working with couples and families, including those in high conflict. I have more than 10 years' experience working with victims and perpetrators of violence, and I have specialized training in completing violence risk assessments for perpetrators of family-based violence and sexualized violence.

In my experience and training, coercive and controlling violence is often disguised or mutualized. You'll often hear language like domestic violence or relationship conflict, which doesn't identify what is going on and who is doing what to who, or ideas that justify the controlling behaviour. This is language like, “it's in her best interest,” or “she's not good with money,” which then justifies the controlling of the family finances.

Systems and professionals are often complicit in this mutualizing and disguising of the violence because it's sometimes hard to identify. The victim is often pathologized and blamed for the violence and control being perpetrated against them. It can be overt or subtle and covert. The violence is often concealed, and resistance to violence is often minimized and retaliated against by the perpetrator.

Often, the victim can believe they're responsible for the violence. However, when we properly assess for violence, we learn many things about it. We learn that the victim often has insider information about what happens when they resist the violence. When you start to ask the victim questions like, “What would happen if you left the relationship?”, they tend to be able to provide descriptions that reveal their real fears for their safety.

Victims of coercive and controlling violence often have a lot of fear of leaving the relationship. I have an example from a personal client I had the privilege of working with a number of years ago. I've changed her identifying information and I'm going to refer to her as “Tracy”.

Tracy initially attended counselling with her husband, who is nearly 30 years older than her. She's an indigenous woman who, at the time, was in her early twenties, and she was with a white man in his fifties. He was an incredibly wealthy man. When I met them, he wanted to control the narrative for the reason why they were in therapy. The reasons they were having relational issues were that she had trauma and she had a drinking problem.

When I met her individually, I learned that her life was very closely controlled. She had to attend the church he attended. He controlled all of the family's finances. Her movements were closely monitored. She was not able to establish credit or independence, and when she asked to further her education, he created many barriers to this. She had to hold his hand when they walked, and if she didn't, there would be conflict when they got home. She was isolated from her friends and family. There was strict monitoring of her weight and image. He coerced her into getting a breast enhancement, which he paid for and she truly did not want. She also had to dress conservatively and maintain a small physique.

As a response to the violence she was experiencing, her mental health declined rapidly. She was drinking a lot, and at times, while she was drinking, she would act aggressively towards him. When she started to leave the relationship, the retaliation was swift. She was out of town for a medical procedure when he hired a lawyer and was successfully able to position a case to a judge for a no-contact order against her—without her consent.

When she was released from the hospital, she realized that not only could she not go home; she could not see her children unsupervised. Her mental health continued to decline and she got a DUI. She now had even fewer options and had no choice but to return to their relationship.

This woman will navigate this for her entire life unless the perpetrator is held accountable for his actions. There are so many other victims who have to navigate the realities not only of having their lives controlled but of facing real consequences when they try to stand up or take a position.

In summary, Bill C-332 provides legislation to not only offer clear language for what is happening to the victim. It also provides a recourse to support victims' experiences in coercive and controlling behaviour, and it invites accountability for the perpetrator and for the behaviour.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lena Metlege Diab]

Thank you, Ms. Ritchie.

We'll now move to our six-minute round. We will begin with Ms. Gladu.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to all of the witnesses for being here to help us with this very important subject.

Every six days in Canada a woman is killed by intimate partner violence. It's clear to me that none of the actions that have been put in place works. Many of these women don't leave. I'm certainly well acquainted with coercive control. Even if they get a no-contact order, it doesn't work. People violate them. Nothing happens, and then they kill their partner.

I'd like to start with Ms. Coyle.

You talked about preventive actions that we might take. Could you elaborate on those?

[Emilie Coyle]

Thank you so much.

First and foremost, give organizations that work with survivors of violence epidemic-level funding and make it ongoing. This came out of the recommendations from the Mass Casualty Commission. If a person who is experiencing coercive control has access to a safe place to escape to and can bring her children and her pets with her, then that is one of the first hurdles. I understand that this bill cannot require funding to be brought forward, but I do think that is an important piece of this discussion.

If you want to bring awareness to what is known as coercive control, then start a very public campaign about it. Teach children about it in school. We need to start early.

Provide financial supports and training—all of the people who have appeared before you have spoken about training—and employment opportunities for people who are escaping coercive control.

Provide adequate funding for legal aid lawyers and legal aid certificates, so that lawyers who are representing criminalized survivors of coercive control can tell their stories.

Finally, we should be utilizing the defence of coercive control much more than we are criminalizing coercive control.

Thank you.