Justice Committee on March 25th, 2026

[Amarjeet Gill, Conservative, Brampton West, ON]

Thank you, Ms. Silverstone.

Ms. Kim, my next question is for you.

I was reading your organization's submission on Bill C-16, and I see that you raised issues with the government's proposed changes on deepfakes.

My colleague Michelle Rempel Garner also has a bill before this Parliament on that subject, Bill C-216, an act to enact the protection of minors in the digital age act. Are you familiar with this bill?

[Rosel Kim]

I'm not very familiar with it, but I know of the bill, yes.

[Amarjeet Gill, Conservative, Brampton West, ON]

Do you have anything to say about which bill would do a better job, or do you have no knowledge about Bill C-216?

[Rosel Kim]

I want to focus my comments on Bill C-16, which is what my brief is about. As I said, we welcome the inclusion of deepfakes, but we did suggest the one amendment to make sure that all the harms of deepfakes are captured.

[Amarjeet Gill, Conservative, Brampton West, ON]

Is criminalizing coercive control enough to help victims and survivors?

[Rosel Kim]

In our opinion, we do not think that creating a new offence of coercive control gets to the root causes of coercive control. We also have some questions about how evidentiary collection would work and how certain victims may be perceived, especially if they are indigenous and Black women, who are often labelled as more aggressive or perceived as more aggressive.

For that reason, we make recommendations about taking a proactive approach of focusing on prevention and providing mandatory and ongoing training to law enforcement, Crowns and judges on what coercive control actually looks like, as well as systemic bias, so that can be recognized.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Gill.

Ms. Dhillon, it's over to you for six minutes.

[Anju Dhillon, Liberal, Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, witnesses, for being present here today and for your dedication and long-time work on this very important issue.

I will start with Ms. Irons.

On behalf of the whole committee, we're very sorry for the tragedy you have experienced. You have come here today and testified in such detail to a painful and deeply disturbing event in your life, and we thank you for your courage in that as well.

I would like to start with this. You have advocated your whole life for recognizing the importance of patterns of coercive control and these kinds of behaviours in intimate partner violence. What are your thoughts on the part of the bill that would require a first-degree murder charge in cases of femicide where a pattern of abusive, harassing, coercive or violent behaviour can be demonstrated to the court?

[Alison Irons]

Thank you for the question.

I feel very strongly about this, and some of it is, I must admit, perception.

We who work in this field, whether professionally or as an advocate, as I am, far too often see second-degree murder charges laid in cases of femicide. Often, that's because it's well known in the justice system—and as an ex-police officer I can tell you—that it's an easy guilty plea. It saves the courts and the justice system a lot of time and money, but it also results in bail and in lesser sentences, and it involves earlier release. With all of those things comes a higher risk of recidivism.

It's very hard as a female.... I can tell you that my first marriage itself was an abusive and coercive one. It's very hard to believe sometimes that it's not simply the sexism that exists within the system. If a man says, “Oh, I lost control” or “She made me do it” or “She provoked me”, and that is accepted, that results in the second-degree murder charges. Experts in the field will tell you that a man who's abusing or harming a woman is usually very much in control, and that's why women's injuries are sometimes in places that can't be seen when they're clothed.

I feel very strongly, and I think the bill gets at this, because the question is the evidence to support a first-degree murder charge. What the bill says, or what this clause says, is that a pattern of harassing, abusive, violent or coercive control behaviour can be demonstrated. I think that helps immensely to get us to more first-degree murder charges in cases of femicide. Otherwise, I view the disproportionate laying of second-degree murder charges in cases of femicide as discriminatory towards women.

[Anju Dhillon, Liberal, Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, QC]

Do you believe that if this had existed at the moment when the tragedy occurred for your daughter, the accused would have had a tougher sentence?

[Alison Irons]

Absolutely. He would have gone to jail. My daughter was terrified of calling the police. She was actually afraid that the police would take his guns away and this would tip him over the edge into violence. It was a very hard discussion I had with my daughter about whether to call the police or not.

I also knew at the time, from being a police officer, that if we tried to get a restraining order against him, the service of the restraining order on him might be the very thing that tipped him over the edge into violence. That is why I've also worked on the Bill C-21 provision for protection orders and the removal and seizure of gun licences and guns.

[Anju Dhillon, Liberal, Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, QC]

You spoke about manipulation. What signs of manipulation can you quickly tell us about that would show that somebody is being victimized?

[Alison Irons]

I had to help a very good friend of my daughter's financially after my daughter's death. She had a new boyfriend who seemed very nice and so forth, and was well employed at first. He then gradually began to control all of her movements. He began to demand to check her phone. He would follow her. He would call her several times a day to find out where she was and when she was going to be coming home.

In the case of my daughter and that phone bill I mentioned, it may seem like a minor thing, but he never let up on that phone bill with my daughter. Even until three weeks before she died, he was still bringing up that phone bill. She said she did not owe that money. There's a form of debt that is alleged to be owed that can also be held over a woman's head.

Gaslighting is another form. I was told by my ex-husband that if I left him, nobody would ever love me enough to want to marry me again, for example.

These things are all intended to keep you under their thumb, so they know where you are all the time. You get isolated from your friends and family, partly because you're embarrassed. Then it becomes a question of how to leave, which, as we all know, is a very dangerous time. I'm so proud of my daughter for having had the courage to leave.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thank you, Ms. Dhillon.

Mr. Fortin, we'll go to you for six minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like to thank the three witnesses for joining us today.

First, Ms. Irons, I would like to offer you my deepest condolences concerning the events that you described. No one wants to go through something like this. My heart goes out to you.

[Alison Irons]

Thank you.

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

Ms. Silverstone, we talk a great deal about coercive control in couple relationships, and rightly so. We need to address this scourge. As you can see, we're working quite hard on this on both sides of the House.

In your opinion, should we broaden the scope of the bill to address, for example, the issue of seniors who may fall victim to coercive control at the hands of their family or at times their own children? Should we look at this, or does just focusing on the couple relationship adequately address the issue?

[Andrea Silverstone]

Thank you so much for this question.

I strongly believe that elder abuse should be included. It needs to be broadened. I think the way it's written right now is too narrow and therefore does leave out other vulnerable victims such as elders, people who are sexually exploited and people who are being coerced through gangs. It also leaves out child abuse. I think there are a bunch of ways that it's not broad enough.

I feel like I'm flogging a dead horse here, but I think that if we change the language to the language of “a relationship based on dependency and trust”, it would broaden it enough to be able to cover all of those pieces. In consultation with our partner organizations that are elder abuse organizations.... They feel the same way about the language of dependency and trust.

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

Ms. Kim, I would like to hear your answer to the same question.

[Rosel Kim]

I'm sorry. Is the question whether elder abuse should be included in coercive control provisions?

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

Yes. I was asking whether you think that we should broaden the scope of the provisions addressing the coercive control issue to include not only couples, but also seniors and vulnerable people.

[Rosel Kim]

As I said previously, we don't think criminalizing coercive control will get to the heart of the matter or the root causes of coercive control. We have some concerns about the way it is framed at the moment. We think it's much more effective to provide supports for people so they can leave relationships that they feel are coercive. This comes down to social and economic supports, not necessarily through criminal law.

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

I'm not sure whether I fully understand your organization's position. You believe that we shouldn't adopt provisions to combat coercive control. Did I get that right?

[Rosel Kim]

Yes, we have concerns about creating this new offence, especially without creating safeguards for survivors of coercive control who might be at risk of being charged themselves. We have seen this with mandatory charging in domestic violence policies, where sometimes, when police arrive and don't know what's going on, we've seen increases in both parties being charged.

There are also some questions about how police might recognize all patterns of coercive control, which is very nuanced and captures a wide range of behaviours.

Because of those concerns, at this time, we do not support criminalizing coercive control, but we do want to fight coercive control by providing the supports that survivors desperately need. One of the recommendations of our organization is creating a gender-based violence commissioner, for example. This could provide direct support to survivors and get to the causes before these behaviours happen.

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

Thank you.

I'll move on to a completely different topic. I want to talk about the distribution of intimate images. I imagine that you must deal with this issue on an almost daily basis.

Does your organization have statistics or detailed information on the extent of the issue? Has there been an increase over the years? Who are the people targeted? In short, do you have any information on this topic?