Thank you very much.
My name is Jennifer Kagan. I'm a mother and physician, and I will introduce my husband, Mr. Philip Viater, who is a father and family law lawyer.
I'm here to speak with you today about Bill C-233, the judicial education component of which is named informally in honour of my daughter, Keira Kagan.
Today I want to thank MPs Dhillon, Damoff and Saks, as well as all of you on the committee, for inviting us here to speak. It is really an honour.
It is obviously difficult for me to come today to speak about this, but it is very important, and this bill is going to save lives.
Essentially, I will tell you my story and why my story is not an anomaly but instead is emblematic of a broader problem in the way the family court system handles domestic violence cases and is reflective of a lack of judicial understanding of domestic violence and coercive control.
I was a victim of domestic violence in my previous marriage. It was a short marriage, and I was subject to multiple types of domestic violence, which included isolated episodes of physical violence as well as coercive control.
I had a young daughter and I was able to safely escape the abuser, but when I sought protection for Keira in the family court system, I found that the court system was not equipped to protect a small child. I was before, I believe, between 10 and 12 different judges, none of whom had an understanding of domestic violence and coercive control. During my trial, when I went to the stand to talk about the abuse I had experienced, I was cut off by the judge and told that abuse is not relevant to parenting and he was going to ignore it.
Keira was put unsupervised into the hands of a very dangerous individual. As was mentioned previously by MP Dhillon, Keira was killed in a murder-suicide in February 2020. She and her father were found dead at the base of a cliff in Milton, Ontario.
Out of this, we don't want any other child or family to have to go through what we have had to. Each year, 30 to 40 children in Canada are killed by a parent. One child is too many. When we look at family court failures, we see that Keira was failed by the family court system and that other children are being failed. Children who experience domestic violence in their lifetime will have a myriad of issues, including physical and psychological health problems. Domestic violence is a public health crisis that demands urgent action.
We are of the strong view that judges require education in domestic violence and coercive control; hence the judicial education component to Bill C-233.
A woman is killed somewhere in Canada every 1.5 days. This warrants urgent action, and we are grateful to the MPs for bringing this forward so that no other child has to experience a violent and premature end to life at the hands of a parent, which is preventable.
We are very hopeful that the education will be done in consultation with survivors of violence and the organizations that support them. We would certainly welcome a conversation with the judiciary to discuss domestic violence education and what that education should contain. In my view, it obviously needs to include coercive control but certainly also risk assessment, risk factors for lethality and data from Canadian domestic violence death review committees, which look at what those red flags and warning signs are.
I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Viater.
Thank you so much again. It's really an honour to be here.