Thank you, Madam Chair and members, for the invitation to speak before you today on the matter of criminalization of coercive control. I bring my testimony from the traditional territories of the Haudenosaunee and Anishinabe people. I'm the director of housing and gender-based violence with YWCA Hamilton and have close to a decade of frontline experience in the VAW sector. As well, I'm a survivor of childhood family violence.
At YWCA Hamilton we have served, across a range of preventative and responsive programs, close to 2,000 individuals over the past year whose lives have been impacted by gender-based violence, and we strive to centre the voices of those with lived and living experience as well as our frontline staff in our work and in our advocacy.
While there are key cross-sectoral responses that acknowledge the role of legislation and enforcement in the work to eradicate gender-based violence, many of the survivors we support, particularly those from marginalized or diverse communities, identify that their experiences within these systems have not led to better outcomes for themselves or their children. These systems have had some but limited success in addressing reoffence through existing means of intervention and monitoring. We know that gender-based violence, as we heard today, is rooted in patriarchy and systemic oppression, and that any law, policy or response is also vulnerable to these failings in its application.
We see this in the rates, as was mentioned by other witnesses, of dual charging and the increased rates of survivors being solely charged with the introduction of mandatory charging. We also see this demonstrated in the higher-than-average rates of gender-based violence that we know exist where perpetrators have access to firearms in their jobs and higher-than-average degrees of authority over communities. To meaningfully address and increase safety for survivors, where strengthening and improving the legal system is critical, I want to echo research-backed and evidence-based steps that we believe should be taken in advance of any introduction of coercive control into the Criminal Code. These are highlighted by many of the previous testimonies that have been given to the committee, such as the powerful testimony by executive director Nneka MacGregor of WomenatthecentrE in 2022, as well as really important publications put forward by OAITH and Luke's Place on this topic.
I think, as has been spoken to really significantly already today, about the challenge of accurately capturing the various forms and nuances of—