Thank you for the question.
In fact, I have been working on the subject of spousal violence for several years, and, in my opinion, if there is one important issue at this time in how spousal violence is addressed, it is the confusion that exists between spousal violence and separation-related disputes, when the couple or parents are separated.
Have we seen progress? There may have been some progress, but it has been very timid, in my opinion. Certainly, the recent amendments to the Divorce Act do offer some interesting avenues to explore. Under the Divorce Act, the judges who apply it should ordinarily give greater consideration to spousal violence, but that remains to be seen. We don't have a very good idea of how it is actually being applied on the ground. Nonetheless, the Divorce Act does now contain a duty to do this.
However, we are very well aware that there is still a lot of confusion in various fields. Within the criminal justice system, for example, there is still data that shows a degree of confusion when police are involved in spousal violence situations, particularly if there has been no crime or assault. Often, they will interpret situations like these as arguments between a couple, and they close the file and that is where their involvement ends. This may be attributable to the fact that the police do not have the statutory tools at present to go any further. But still, there is confusion and poor comprehension of spousal violence. We have to make sure that the various actors in the criminal justice system have a better understanding and that we give them the tools to be able to do their job better.
As well, there are still a lot of gaps in the fields of family law and youth protection. That confusion is still an extremely important problem, in applying the Civil Code, in Quebec, or when youth protection services are involved.
This problem is still important, and I would say there are several reasons for it, in particular because we still have an understanding of spousal violence that is largely based on incidents. Spousal violence is often seen as associated only with physical violence.