Status of Women Committee on Nov. 4th, 2024

[Alison Irons]

We've recently learned, in the last couple of weeks, that despite over 100 municipalities in Ontario having declared intimate partner violence an emergency, the province chose to withdraw the bill that the NDP had put forward. I feel that in Ontario right now there is a bias in terms of appointments of judges and so forth who are going to be supportive of this kind of legislation. I always worry that our judges are still largely—to the extent that I'm aware of—male in this country. We don't know how many of them are actually abusers.

I think the education is essential. There is really no way to police judges. They police themselves. I think that we have to at least make those strides to attempt it, but I'm not highly confident.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

I have really limited time, Alison. I just quickly wanted to ask you this, because I know that you have tracked femicides as much as you can—and we don't do it or police services don't do it—to see how many are legal firearms owners. I'm just wondering. You went through some names, but how many...? I know you track that yourself, God bless you. Can you maybe share with us what you've found?

[Alison Irons]

I'm thinking of the list I have. Again, it's often in the rural homes.

As you say, my daughter's ex was from a rural area and she was deemed a rural victim because she was living in Bracebridge at the time, but in in many of these cases.... For example, in the case of Jones, in Burk's Falls, Ontario, who killed a woman, her elderly mother and her adult son, Ulla Theoret had gone to the police because she alleged that her neighbour, Jones, had committed a sexual assault against her. I don't know what became of that, but in fact, because she rejected his advances, he went to her home and murdered her, her elderly mother and her adult son before shooting himself.

Another area that we've been working on extensively is how police use what we call the FIP hit codes or the codes that police can use. Earlier, somebody mentioned other types of coercive control. When they attend an occurrence, whether it's a break and enter or some kind of assault or harassment, there are actually over 400 codes that police can use to code an occurrence report that will trigger a firearms review.

Again, the problem, as I was told by a confidential source of mine—an ex-police officer—is that a lot of police officers and police forces either don't use them or don't know how to use them, so once again we're missing opportunities to code and capture these offences and perhaps prevent a tragedy.

I'm not sure if that answers your question.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

This is just a really quick question for you, Alison: Should Bill C-71 and Bill C-21 be repealed?

[Alison Irons]

Absolutely not. We worked very hard. In fact, my issue with Bill C-71 and what I advocated so hard for was the background checks.

In my daughter's case, it turned out, through my own investigation after her murder, that in his past some many years before he met her, he had been convicted of forcible confinement and assault related to a drug trafficking transaction with another male. His parents had money for lawyers, so he was able to plea bargain his offences down. He got two years' probation. As soon as he got off probation, he applied for and got a gun licence, which is just ludicrous.

That's why Bill C-71 changed the five-year requirement for a firearm review of any criminal history to an adult lifetime history, but again, I'm not sure that they're actually doing anything with that yet.

[The Chair, Conservative, Shelby Kramp-Neuman]

Thank you.

That concludes our panel for today. On behalf of the committee, I would like to provide a heartfelt thank you to all of the witnesses, both here in the room and online, for being with us and sharing your stories and your recommendations.

I would encourage any witnesses, if you did not get an opportunity to answer a question that was posed to you or would like to submit a question and provide an answer, please feel free to send it to the committee.

Is it the will of the committee to adjourn the meeting for today?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Shelby Kramp-Neuman]

The meeting is adjourned.