Evidence of meeting #129 for Status of Women in the 44th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was men.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Artist, As an Individual
The violence lasted a number of years, nearly seven years.
Conservative
Dominique Vien Conservative Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis, QC
Was your spouse out on parole at any time?
Conservative
Dominique Vien Conservative Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis, QC
Tell us your story, please, because witnesses have spoken about the current laws that allow violent men, repeat offenders who are at large, to commit crimes against their partners. Remind us then of the context in which your spouse should have been in prison but was rather set free.
Artist, As an Individual
Absolutely. As you know, I'm an artist, a singer, a speaker and a writer, so I lead a fairly public life. Actually, I was only able to do that once I left my partner.
There were posters all over the place showcasing me as a multidisciplinary artist. Every time I showed up for a gig, even at a restaurant, he was there. He followed me for a long time. When I called the police, there were many occasions, at least seven or eight, when they would take him back to the station, give him a warning and release him. So I had to put my career on hold and apply for social assistance, because I had nothing left to support me financially. He was never kept in jail unless it happened on the weekend. In that case, he was kept in prison for two or three days. Otherwise, he was released under recognizance. After being found guilty for breach of probation, he spent two weeks in prison, which is not much, the equivalent of a slap on the wrist.
The authorities wrote to me saying that he had gone through three or four therapy sessions. Do you know how many therapy sessions I had to go through to get my life back? In his case, however, they made it sound as if he had been cured with a wave of a magic wand.
A year and a half later, I read in the newspaper that he had beaten another woman for four hours. I was horrified.
Conservative
Dominique Vien Conservative Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis, QC
If I understand correctly, he did the same thing to another woman.
Artist, As an Individual
Yes, he did the same thing to Patricia Coutu. I found Ms. Coutu on Facebook. When I went to see her, I took her hand and told her that she was no longer alone, that I was going to help her get through this.
When my ex saw me, he was shocked. Even though my case was closed, I asked the presiding judge to remind the accused of the details of my case. I asked the judge to do this that because my ex claimed that he had never been violent before. For once, a judge accommodated my request.
Conservative
Conservative
Dominique Vien Conservative Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis, QC
I have very little time, but I'm sure my colleagues will come back to this.
Conservative
Dominique Vien Conservative Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis, QC
Ms. Riendeau, welcome and thank you for being here. You are no stranger to the committee, and we are very happy to see you.
Co-responsible of Political Affairs, Regroupement des maisons pour femmes victimes de violence conjugale
Hello.
Conservative
Dominique Vien Conservative Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis, QC
You heard Ms. Tremblay's testimony. This isn't the first time we've heard that.
Last week, we heard from the chief of police of Peterborough, Ontario, who told us that the problem was not in enforcing the law, but in the very wording of the law. The law is lax, and sentences are lenient. The men are at home watching TV. The bail conditions are ridiculous. I see that the women who have come to testify are nodding their heads in agreement.
What changes should be made to the legislation? The women you welcome in your 46 transition houses and shelters have likely told you stories similar to Ms. Tremblay's.
Co-responsible of Political Affairs, Regroupement des maisons pour femmes victimes de violence conjugale
One potential change would consist in taking into account all the manifestations of violence and control experienced by women. That is why we are actively advocating for the criminalization of coercive control.
Police officers often tell us that they have no leverage to act, that they see that it doesn't work, but that they can't invoke any offence to act. However, if coercive control were criminalized and could be taken into account, as is the case in Great Britain, we could have better penalties for acts committed against women. Also, at the time of prosecution, there could be a better assessment of what they are experiencing and the risks they are exposed to.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Shelby Kramp-Neuman
Thank you very much.
Next, MP Hepfner, you have the floor for six minutes.
Liberal
Lisa Hepfner Liberal Hamilton Mountain, ON
Thank you, Chair, and thank you to all of our witnesses for their testimony here today. I'll go quickly, because we are short of time, and I'll start with you, Mr. Carolo. Thank you so much for your testimony.
The national action plan to end gender-based violence is more than half a billion dollars rolling out across the country. All provinces and territories signed on last year, and they have a lot of latitude in how they want to use that money, except 25% of it has to be for prevention. And to me, that's a lot of the work that you're doing.
Could you talk about the impact and why we need to support those types of efforts?
Chief Executive Officer, White Ribbon
If we want to prevent this violence from happening at its roots, we need to absolutely focus on early intervention, education and engagement. We must absolutely focus on engaging directly with boys and young men, and also with men who are using violence. That means intervening earlier in the process.
I need to share with you that laws and tools like that are not sufficient. We must work on helping men better address their conflict, their anger, their traumas and their own resentments because men coming out of these sentences, conditions and restrictions are often even more angry and even more resolved to enact revenge and use violence. That is very problematic. It means that what we are trying to do to prevent the escalation of that violence is not working well.
We need to do things differently. We need to work with those men using different kinds of approaches.
I would agree that three sessions of counselling is not sufficient. A 12-week program for men who have used violence is not sufficient because we continue to see the escalation of femicides and the increase in these numbers. We need to look for better intervention and better approaches.
Liberal
Lisa Hepfner Liberal Hamilton Mountain, ON
I agree.
When you were talking about online radicalization, my brain immediately went to Alek Minassian. I don't know if you know who that is, but I covered the Toronto van attack. This is a young man who was radicalized online. He told police at the beginning that it was because he was an incel, but through the course of that trial, we heard that really he was just radicalized online and he wanted to be part of the online group of mass murderers.
I also thought about the hashtag “men going their own way”.
What does that mean to you?
Chief Executive Officer, White Ribbon
Alek Minassian, along with so many young men who've been recruited into these hateful ideological communities, are looking for community. They're looking for belonging and for support, but they're finding it in all the wrong ways.
If we look at the social histories of Alek, of many young men like him and of many adult men, they indicate a significant lack of support and of early intervention. These are young men who are looking for belonging and for community—
Liberal
Lisa Hepfner Liberal Hamilton Mountain, ON
Just to narrow that down, when you see #mgtow, is that part of the problem?
Chief Executive Officer, White Ribbon
It is part of the problem and we need to address that. We need to create online spaces and better programs to help young men address their own needs and social needs, so that they're not resorting to hateful ideologies and violence to address their own anger, their own exclusion and their own sense of not belonging anywhere.
Liberal
Lisa Hepfner Liberal Hamilton Mountain, ON
It's particularly concerning that the Leader of the Opposition is using a hashtag like this, but I'm going to move on.
Alison Irons, you gave such an impassioned opening statement both this time and last time, when you got cut off. Even before you got cut off, I started thinking of coercive control. I don't think you had gotten there yet in your speech, but that's immediately where I went. That's because in your daughter's case, even though there were no bruises, there were plenty of pieces of evidence to show that she could be in trouble.
We have coercive control implemented in other jurisdictions around the world. From your testimony today, I'm hearing it's not a magic bullet, so what do we need to do with this coercive control legislation?
As an Individual
I'm speaking also as an ex-police officer.
I mentioned the education of the criminal justice system as being critical. I compared it to Keira's law because if you have a judiciary, a Crown and police who don't understand that a woman has to be hit before they can do anything, that's going to be seriously problematic. I do recall, having been a police officer, the number of times that women would be told, “I'm sorry, but he hasn't hit you yet, so there's nothing we can do, frankly.”
Another thing that deeply worries me is that this is going to be a dual procedure offence. One thing that galls me to no end about femicide right now is that, by and large, the Crown charges second-degree murder instead of first-degree murder.
My own bias is that, invariably, that's because the guy said that she made him do it, that he lost his temper or that he lost control when in fact, as in my daughter's case, the Crown told me that had he lived—because it was a murder-suicide—it would have been first-degree murder according to the plan they discovered he had.
I think there is a risk that if the Crown and criminal justice system aren't well educated, we'll see these all be summary convictions, which carry a maximum of six months of jail time.
Liberal
Lisa Hepfner Liberal Hamilton Mountain, ON
That's an excellent point, and I've covered many court cases with the exact same thing.
We have three recommendations from the National Police Federation. First, provinces and territories should commit more resources to the collection and sharing of data. Second, we recommend creating community bail enforcement monitoring, which means that if somebody doesn't act within their bail conditions, we know about it right away and police can act on it right away. Third, we recommend that a justice of the peace actually have legal experience and the expertise to oversee these bail hearings, which we know they do.