Status of Women Committee on May 23rd, 2024

[The Chair, Conservative, Shelby Kramp-Neuman]

I will call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 109 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on the Status of Women.

Before we begin, I would like to ask all members and other in-person participants to consult the cards on the tables for guidelines to prevent audio feedback incidents.

Please take note of the following preventative measures in place to protect the health and safety of all participants, including the interpreters. Only use a black approved earpiece. The former grey earpieces must no longer be used. Please keep your earpieces away from your microphones at all times. When you are not using your earpiece, place it down on the sticker placed on the table for this purpose.

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For the benefit of the witnesses, I'd like to make a few comments.

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Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted by the committee on Monday, November 27, 2023, the committee will continue its study of coercive behaviour.

Before we welcome our witnesses, I'd like to also provide the trigger warning that we will be discussing experiences related to violence and coercive control. This may be triggering to viewers with similar experiences. If you feel distressed or need help, please advise the clerk.

For all the witnesses and for all members of Parliament, it is important to recognize that these are indeed difficult discussions. Let's try to be as compassionate as possible in our conversations.

At this point, I would like to welcome our witnesses.

We have, as an individual, Jennifer Koshan, professor, Faculty of Law, University of Calgary, joining us by video conference; from Regroupement des maisons pour femmes victimes de violence conjugale, Karine Barrette, lawyer and project manager, and Louise Riendeau, co-responsible for political affairs; and from the Women's Legal Education and Action Fund, Roxana Parsa, staff lawyer, joining us by video conference.

You will each have five minutes for opening remarks followed by rounds of questions.

I will give the floor to Ms. Koshan to start. Then we'll give the floor to Ms. Barrette and Ms. Riendeau for a shared five minutes, and then to Ms. Parsa.

We'll begin.

[Professor Jennifer Koshan, Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Calgary, As an Individual]

Thank you very much for the opportunity to engage in your committee study of coercive control.

I'm joining you today from Treaty 7 territory in Mohkinstsis, which is the Blackfoot word for Calgary.

I'm speaking today on my own behalf, but I did file a submission with the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights for its study of Bill C-332 with three co-authors in March 2024. Our submission raised concerns with the criminalization of coercive control. I will not repeat those concerns in these opening remarks but certainly will welcome questions on that subject.

In my time today, I'll focus on research that I've conducted with colleagues Janet Mosher and Wanda Wiegers that examines how coercive control is being interpreted and applied under the Divorce Act. This research reveals several concerns, two of which I'll highlight today.

First, coercive control is being used against survivors. We found several cases where coercive control has been interpreted broadly by family courts—

[The Chair, Conservative, Shelby Kramp-Neuman]

I'm sorry. We're going to have to interrupt for a moment and suspend. We have a situation with earpieces. There are several that are not working. I'm terribly sorry that I have to interrupt you. We will suspend for a few minutes to get the earpieces working.

[The Chair, Conservative, Shelby Kramp-Neuman]

Ms. Koshan, you can continue.

We paused your time, of course, so you can carry on from where you left off. Thank you.

[Prof. Jennifer Koshan]

Thank you.

Again, our first concern is that coercive control is being used against survivors. While it may seem like a positive development that coercive control is being interpreted broadly by family courts, findings of coercive control are being made against mothers who seek to protect their children from family violence by limiting contact with abusive fathers. So-called parental alienation arguments are often raised by fathers in response to claims of abuse, and courts are sometimes finding women to be perpetrators of coercive control simply for trying to protect their children. In other cases, where women's claims of abuse are not substantiated, this too can be construed as family violence on their part, based on myths and stereotypes about false allegations of violence being made by women who are seeking purported strategic advantage in family law proceedings.

These cases reveal a failure by courts to understand the difference between protective behaviour by mothers on one hand and actual coercive control by fathers on the other hand. They also confirm not just the challenges of proving coercive control for abused women but how their inability to prove coercive control can be used against them. In this respect our research supports the recommendations of the National Association of Women and the Law about the need to limit arguments of parental alienation before family courts. Overall, the family law system indicates that judges are struggling to understand coercive control and the types of evidence that can help establish it. Education of all legal professionals is required and must be undertaken before any new offence of coercive control is implemented in Canada.

A second concern is that survivors need supports to protect themselves against litigation and systems abuse, including in family law cases. We know that abusers often use litigation as a way of furthering their coercive control. In the criminal law sphere, there are protections for complainant/witnesses, such as limits on cross-examination by self-represented accused persons, and the option of testifying behind a screen or with a support person is permitted by the judge. However, this type of protection does not exist in the Divorce Act.

To provide an example, we came across one case from 2023 in which a self-represented father, who was found to have engaged in family violence, was permitted to cross-examine his wife for seven days. While the judge permitted her to testify behind a screen, that ruling was discretionary, and we found that this type of measure is rarely ordered in family law cases involving claims of coercive control. This type of litigation conduct can itself amount to family violence, yet, as noted, it's rare for courts in the family law realm to place limits on it. Our Divorce Act research therefore shows that amendments are required to limit this type of abusive litigation conduct by restricting personal cross-examination and allowing testimony behind screens, and with supports for family litigants.

By way of comparison, in the United Kingdom, reforms to the Domestic Abuse Act in 2021 allow courts to put these types of special measures in place to protect survivors of abuse in family law proceedings, and some Australian states do as well. Overall, we can glean lessons from legal responses to coercive control from other jurisdictions, but also from within Canada, when looking at how the Divorce Act is being implemented. We also need to be mindful of how women experiencing intersecting inequalities can face challenges in having their claims heard and accepted in ways that are trauma informed and informed by principles of substantive equality.

Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Shelby Kramp-Neuman]

Go ahead, Madam Riendeau.

[Louise Riendeau, Co-responsible for Political Affairs, Regroupement des maisons pour femmes victimes de violence conjugale]

Good afternoon.

We want to thank the committee for the opportunity to express our views on coercive behaviour today.

Our association comprises 46 shelters for women victims of domestic violence, which are scattered across Quebec. Every year, they accommodate some 3,300 women and nearly 2,000 children to whom they provide 30,000 homelessness services. In all, they respond to 90,000 requests for assistance.

Coercive behaviour—

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

I have a point of order.

[The Chair, Conservative, Shelby Kramp-Neuman]

Yes.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

I'm so sorry, Chair, but I'm not getting translation.

[The Chair, Conservative, Shelby Kramp-Neuman]

We are suspended for a minute while we sort out the translation.

[The Chair, Conservative, Shelby Kramp-Neuman]

We will resume the meeting. Again, I apologize for the disruption.

Please continue.

[Louise Riendeau]

Coercive behaviour isn't a new form of domestic violence or a synonym for psychological violence. Instead it's a term that reflects a broader vision of domestic violence. The main reason why women seek assistance at our shelters isn't physical violence, but rather other forms of violence. More than 44% of the women who receive outpatient services do so as a result of violence following a separation.

With funding from Women and Gender Equality Canada, we are conducting a project to encourage the various legal actors to incorporate the concept of coercive control in their practices. Now more than two years since it started, the project has had a major impact. First, we've created a tool box for legal actors and a booklet for the women themselves.

In addition, more than 6,000 professionals have received training to assist them in more effectively detecting coercive control. As a result, coercive control strategies are beginning to feature in police reports. We have also noticed that legal actors have acquired a clearer understanding of the risk associated with coercive control, particularly in preventing homicides.

Furthermore, Quebec's Ministry of Public Security has expanded the victim statement to include coercive control elements and has broadcast a webinar intended for all police officers in the province. It has also developed a “police placement”, a kind of checklist to be used at all police stations.

In addition, the director of criminal and penal prosecutions now requests that prosecutors take coercive control into account in the violent cases they handle.

Lastly, we are now witnessing a change in the way domestic violence is presented and discussed in the media.

These changes lead us to believe that the legal community is now focusing more clearly on coercive control. The Regroupement des maisons pour femmes victimes de violence conjugale advocates for the criminalization of coercive control. It supports Bill C-332, as it was amended by the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights.

In our view, criminalization would help validate the experience of the victims and their children and demonstrate that this behaviour is socially unacceptable. This would represent a significant step toward securing women's rights to safety, dignity, autonomy and freedom.

This new offence would also help provide legal professionals with additional tools to break the cycle of violence at an earlier stage and to intervene appropriately given the dangerous nature of this type of violence.

[Karine Barrette, Lawyer and Project Manager, Regroupement des maisons pour femmes victimes de violence conjugale]

Last year, we met with stakeholders from England and Scotland to survey the lessons that the criminalization of coercive control has taught. They all agreed there was no going back. A few days from now, we will be starting a new mission to form a clearer picture of the development and handling of controlling and coercive conduct offences.

However, this criminalization effort must be supported by the necessary conditions for its success. First of all, it must be introduced gradually to enable legal professionals to prepare for its coming into force, and, second, victims must be invited to consultation sessions, including victims from indigenous communities.

Human and financial resources must obviously be provided so that actors have the necessary means to effect the desired changes in practice, and awareness and training activities should also be established within all justice system stakeholders, including judicial councils.

To do so, stakeholders should be able to rely on specialized domestic violence resources, and a public awareness campaign should be implemented. Efforts must also continue to ensure effective implementation of the national action plan to end to gender-based violence and to ensure that victims have access to assistance and support resources and receive adequate and recurring funding.

Lastly, legislative measures must be evaluated at regular intervals in co‑operation with domestic violence experts and survivors.

Other measures are essential to enable women and children victims of domestic violence to escape that violence. For example, efforts must be made to develop social housing projects quickly, to make a resettlement assistance fund available to victims, as Australia is doing, and to facilitate access to a decent income.

The Regroupement welcomes the initiative of the Standing Committee on the Status of Women, which, by studying the concept of coercive control, is helping to recognize and shape a clearer understanding of this behaviour. This is how we'll be able to protect the victims.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Shelby Kramp-Neuman]

Thank you so much.

Next, we have Roxana Parsa for five minutes.

[Roxana Parsa, Staff Lawyer, Women's Legal Education and Action Fund]

Good afternoon. My name is Roxana Parsa. I'm a staff lawyer at the Women's Legal Education and Action Fund, also known as LEAF.

I'm grateful to appear today from what is now known as Toronto, which is on the traditional lands of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Wendat, Anishinabe and the Haudenosaunee nations.

As you know, LEAF is a national charitable organization that works to advance the equality rights of women, girls, trans and non-binary people through litigation, law reform and public education. For almost 40 years now, LEAF has advocated for the need to improve the justice system's response to gender-based violence.

Thank you for inviting me here today to speak about coercive control. We're glad to see this issue being the focus of study at this committee. As this committee has heard, coercive control is prevalent across societal lines. This can present as a pattern of abuse through threats, intimidation, control, and induced fear often over a span of many years. Coercive control can creep into and impact every aspect of someone's life, their financial freedom, their social life and community connections, physical freedom, with even elements such as immigration status being used as a threat. These patterns must be recognized as an insidious form of violence that can have devastating consequences.

However, it is this very nuanced and complex nature of coercive control that also makes a criminal legal response challenging and raises significant concerns about the implementation of any law. Frequent lack of physical evidence means that recognizing the existence of abuse requires an understanding of the nuances and context of a relationship, often over many years. How can a survivor show these layers of control to a police officer or provide enough evidence of psychological harm to meet the burden of proof required by a court? Even when an arrest occurs, the experiences in the United Kingdom have shown that the vast majority do not lead to charges, let alone to a conviction. Moreover, how can we ensure that the police officer's discretion is being used in a manner that recognizes the subtle abuse when it is present.

The existence of systemic oppression, including histories of colonialism and racism embedded within the justice system, significantly heighten the potential for error or misapplication of law. We've seen similar risks arise in the past where mandatory charging policies have resulted in charges being brought against survivors of violence. Moreover, we know that the criminal law and the legal system broadly continue to fail survivors of gender-based violence. These systems are not providing justice, nor are they leading to more safety. We regularly hear about survivors who continue to be retraumatized through their experiences. Relying on the criminal legal system as a response to abuse may in fact unintentionally exclude many from even seeking assistance. Potential for harm is particularly heightened for survivors from already vulnerable communities, such as Black, indigenous, disabled, or non-status peoples, who have valid reasons for distrusting these systems. This only deepens the existing inequalities that exist.

The law does not exist in a vacuum and we think it's important to think about the realities of who is able to access the law and how it will be applied on the ground. This is why instead of focusing on the criminal law, we strongly recommend a diverted focus on prevention and education. This means providing increased funding for shelters and transitional housing in addition to funding affordable long-term housing for survivors to have places to live when they leave their relationships. We need ongoing and sustainable funding for social services to provide trauma-informed anti-oppressive services like mental health care or child care so that survivors know they have places to turn for support. We also need more funding for programs like legal aid and independent legal advice so that survivors can get the legal assistance they may need to help figure out their options.

We also echo the many witnesses who have advocated for more education. We need mandatory training for actors in the justice system on coercive control as well as ongoing training on systemic bias and racism. We also need public education about coercive control so that survivors and their communities can recognize these patterns and feel validated and understand that it's being recognized as abuse.

For decades now, the increased rates in gender-based violence have consistently shown that turning to the criminal legal system has proven to be an ineffective response. We think it's time that we turn to focus on resourcing our communities and systems with the infrastructure required to create real safety for survivors and to allow them to move forward. Thank you for your time, and I look forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Shelby Kramp-Neuman]

Thank you, all, very much for your opening remarks. We'll proceed with questions from members now.

I'll begin with Anna for six minutes.

[Anna Roberts, Conservative, King—Vaughan, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair. My first question is for Jennifer.

You made a comment about education. I think that's important. We do have to educate not just the men in our lives, but also the judges and the lawyers to better understand what coercive control is. I'm going to refer to the importance of this on behalf of the children because they end up being the victims as well as the mothers in all of this.

I'm going to take you to an event that occurred on Christmas Day in December 2017. Chloe and Aubrey Berry, ages six and four, were found by police in a ground floor apartment in Oak Bay. They were murdered by their father. If you read through the court case, the mother was continually trying to advise the courts and nobody listened.

What advice would you provide to the courts today? This is just one of many cases that occur. How can we change that to criminalize the father, because we're not protecting our children?

[Prof. Jennifer Koshan]

Thank you very much for that question.

Yes, the Berry case is a very disturbing one. Sadly, it's only one of many cases of children being killed by abusive fathers.

Something we found in the Divorce Act research that I mentioned is that even though the Divorce Act now requires that children's exposure to family violence be taken into account when making parenting orders, it seems that courts are still really struggling to understand what that means. In many cases, what they look for is children having been directly exposed to violence, rather than also considering how children's indirect exposure to violence can have a very adverse impact on them.

What we see is it's very rare for things like supervised parenting orders to be made by the courts. Even if it is a case where criminal charges are laid, if a person is incarcerated, they get out of jail eventually.

What I'm encouraging the committee to do is to think not only about the criminal side of things, but also about the family law side of coercive control, and the need for courts and legal professionals to be educated so that they understand the impact on children and the need, sometimes, for parenting orders to be supervised to try to prevent these types of killings in the future.

[Anna Roberts, Conservative, King—Vaughan, ON]

If we don't incarcerate them and have them go through treatments while they're incarcerated, how do we protect the children? That's what confuses me, because if they pay for their crimes, and if we educate them and work with them, hopefully, they will come out and be better people.

Do you agree?

[Prof. Jennifer Koshan]

I think training, counselling and those types of things can also occur without incarceration. In Alberta, where I'm from, our domestic violence courts use peace bonds quite regularly. This means that people are not incarcerated, but if they admit responsibility for the offence, they are still sent for treatment.

There's mixed evidence, though, on whether that type of treatment works, so again, what I'm encouraging is that criminal law be looked at alongside what happens in the family law realm so that we can be thinking about how these two systems work together. Look at the fact that sometimes, we need to have protections in the family law sphere, even if there has been treatment and/or incarceration in the criminal sphere.

[Anna Roberts, Conservative, King—Vaughan, ON]

Thank you.

I'm going to ask Louise the same question.

We could look at many cases. We could look at Keira's law, which had the same situation. The father was very controlling. The child was ignored and the mother was ignored, and we had another tragedy.

We have to ensure that we protect the victims. How can we do that if we don't control the men who are committing the crime?

[Louise Riendeau]

You're right in saying that there's a major challenge in family law.

Every day, we see that judges often think that violence is committed against women and that there are no consequences for the children if there's no direct violence. They also think, wrongly, that the violence stops at the moment of separation, whereas that's often when it becomes most dangerous.

We have to establish a dialogue between the penal system and the family law system. Family law must acknowledge that the presence of domestic violence is dangerous for both mothers and children, and measures must be put in place. We often hear about joint custody, for example. This is ultimately a situation that very often requires parents to stay in touch for the sake of the children, which increases the number of opportunities for controlling spouses to exercise violence against their former partner or against the children.

[Anna Roberts, Conservative, King—Vaughan, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Shelby Kramp-Neuman]

You have 30 seconds.