Status of Women Committee on Oct. 2nd, 2024

[Witness 3]

I'd like to add that the reunification therapists, these therapists they bring on to change the child's reality, are often hired by the non-preferred parent and are always swayed by the non-preferred parent. This person I spoke to three times in my entire life writes reports about how terrible I am and yet has never really had any therapy with me.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

I'm so sorry that's your experience.

I'll pass my time to Ms. Hepfner.

[Lisa Hepfner, Liberal, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Hello, witnesses. This is Lisa Hepfner chipping in here.

I met with the three of you a couple of months ago, and I was extremely moved by your stories. I'm very glad that you've accepted the invitation to come and share with the entire committee. I think it's something that we all need to hear.

I would like to clarify something that we heard earlier from my colleague. This isn't something that's in the Divorce Act that they want us to take out; this is something they want us to change so that we can't use parental alienation in family court.

One thing that I find very disturbing—and I haven't really heard anybody talk about it yet—is that there's a sort of cottage industry growing out of this tendency to use parental alienation. These so-called therapists, the family reunification people, are the same people advising judges that this therapy is needed. Then the children and the parents are forced into particular therapy with that particular person.

Does anybody want to chip in if they've heard the same thing?

[Witness 1]

That is correct. None of my colleagues in the medical community have ever heard of this therapy. Nobody I know has heard of this therapy, and it has become a cottage industry. It's very lucrative. Had we continued on the therapy schedule intended for my family, it would have cost us $6,000 a month.

[Lisa Hepfner, Liberal, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

And it's mom who's paying that.

[Witness 1]

Most often, yes, it is. There can be some type of split that happens, but, especially if the child is sent to camp, the bill is sent to the mother. This is another vector of abuse.

It's these same players in this cottage industry, as you said, who are the frequent flyers in the court. The court heavily weighs their opinion, and if they say it's alienation, it's alienation. There's a lot of money to be made in the reunification therapy industry in this country.

[The Chair, Conservative, Shelby Kramp-Neuman]

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Lisa.

Next is MP Larouche.

You have two and a half minutes.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Ms. Illingworth, I would like to pursue our conversation. Two and a half minutes go by quickly.

On the subject of coercive control, last Friday, I met again with a member of Quebec's National Assembly, who worked on the recommendations in the “Rebuild Trust” report.

She asked me for an update as to any progress on the coercive control issue at the federal level. This is a recommendation in the “Rebuild Trust” report, which deals with the problems of violence against women in Quebec.

Much has been said about the importance of this observation. We must take action on coercive control to prevent situations from getting worse. In your opening remarks, you said that coercive control is often a red flag and is a common feature of femicides.

Can you tell us how, by taking action on coercive control, interventions might be more preventive, before the situation reaches the point of femicide?

[Heidi Illingworth]

Yes, I think it's very important for police to have training to recognize these behaviours as abusive so they can, if not intervene with charges as of yet, intervene by making referrals to victim services so that social workers can intervene with these clients and hopefully provide some crisis counselling, safety information, services and planning and help assess whether they are ready to leave or not.

We know that coercive and controlling behaviours can escalate to more severe forms of abuse and are a precursor to domestic homicides. If we do change the law and criminalize it, I think we will be able to have, hopefully, a much reduced incidence. Basically, every second day, a woman or girl in Canada is killed by a partner or a former partner. This is a really serious issue, and we haven't put enough focus on tackling this violence in our communities.

I do think that moving toward criminalization will do that, but, of course, with the caveat that we need training for police, judges and officials.

[The Chair, Conservative, Shelby Kramp-Neuman]

Thank you.

Leah, you have two and a half minutes.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Thank you so much.

I want to continue on with you, Ms. Illingworth.

I don't think there's anybody on the committee who doesn't believe that coercive control exists and is harmful, but there are a couple of things that have been said that kind of make me feel like we're taking steps before we've put other steps in place to make sure we're actually protecting people. One is banning the use of parental alienation, and the other is the training of judges and police officers who can make an assessment. We know, certainly in the NAWL report, that when victims bring up issues of abuse, it's not uncommon for judges to defer to their trying to alienate the other parent.

Do you think we need those things in place before we can move forward safely with a law on coercive control?

[Heidi Illingworth]

I do agree that we have to move in both directions. I'm hopeful that this study and your recommendations will lead to a Divorce Act amendment to ban parental alienation accusations, but I do think that it's also critically important that we move toward criminalization in the Criminal Code as well.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Yes, I think we're on the same page there with caveats.

I share that because, Witness 2, when we're talking about parental alienation, because those things were not in place, it placed you in a situation of violence as a child. Would you agree with that?

[Witness 2]

Do you mean because of the fact that parental alienation was allowed to be used in court?

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Yes.

[Witness 2]

Yes, 100%.

[The Chair, Conservative, Shelby Kramp-Neuman]

Thank you, Leah.

Michelle, you have five minutes.

[Michelle Ferreri, Conservative, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

Thanks, Chair.

This is tough to do in five minutes, I'll be honest with you.

I guess I'm going to start with Ms. Illingworth, if I can.

Is there anyone tracking data on the escalation of coercive control? We know it almost always escalates to violence and, as you said, homicide. Is anyone tracking that data?

[Heidi Illingworth]

We have the Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice and Accountability. We also have the domestic death homicide reviews that happen in many provinces. I know there's a lot of data there. I don't believe that, federally.... We don't have a violence against women survey that includes coercive control data collection, or I'm not aware of any. Again, you could check with Stats Canada on that. I don't believe this self-reported victimization survey digs too specifically into that, either.

[Michelle Ferreri, Conservative, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

Where I'm going with this.... I think the issue is that the definition of “coercive control” in itself is fairly new, so having that data is going to be a challenge. However, I think data collection is going to be critical. If we collect the data, we can really show the escalation of what coercive control turns into, in terms of crime. I'm just looking for an agreement through a nod here, because I want to move on to something else.

You pointed to 30% of your caseload being intimate partner violence. Has that number changed? I assume that's your current number. What was it in previous years? Has it increased, decreased or stayed the same?

[Heidi Illingworth]

We've seen increased demand for services, for sure. Our numbers for gender-based violence.... It's about 50% of our files. That includes criminal harassment, sexual assault, human trafficking and intimate partner violence.

Postpandemic, there have definitely been stresses on our team and increased numbers in terms of responding to violence in the community. It's the same with the Ottawa police. They've seen similar jumps.

[Michelle Ferreri, Conservative, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

Thank you.

I want to go back to Witness 1.

I really value your input. Obviously, as a physician, you're very clever, and you've obviously been through some horrible lived experience, which gives you a lot of credibility in this coercive control study.

I'm looking at the Divorce Act and the new changes that were put in. What I see is that, no matter what it says, an abuser or somebody who is effective at coercive control and manipulation is going to be able to use whatever is written to their benefit. How do you word this in a way that prevents an abuser from manipulating the system? I've heard from other witnesses who don't have the money to defend themselves, or the financial means to do this in court. I'm worried about the language we're going to use. Will it ultimately protect parents and children when a judge spends two minutes with them and makes a ruling? I don't even know if there are psychiatrists specialized enough in coercive control who can testify.

Does Witness 1 want to answer that?

[Witness 1]

I think the wording has to be extremely detailed. The men using these alienation allegations are very slick at circumventing abuse allegations. It's just too vague. I've read numerous definitions of coercive control, and all of them are extremely detailed. I think that's the only way to get around it.

To your point, the education piece for every single person who touches these cases has to be very high. It's not just about education. It's also about putting that education into action. As it stands now in these cases, the professionals involved are highly educated in parental alienation. They do not recognize coercive control as abuse, as Witness 2 mentioned. The same thing happened to me. It was not deemed to be abuse.

[Michelle Ferreri, Conservative, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

They don't have enough knowledge.

I will ask you this, since I only have 10 or 20 seconds left here: Are you able to submit what you believe to be a definition of coercive control? I believe that will be one of the biggest recommendations we're going to make from this study. What does that definition look like, keeping in mind that an abuser is going to be able to twist and manipulate that verbiage?

[Witness 1]

Yes, 100%. I'm happy to do so.