Thank you.
Good morning. My name is Roxana Parsa. I am a staff lawyer at the Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund, also known as LEAF.
I’m grateful to appear today from what is now known as Toronto, which is on the traditional land of the Mississaugas of the Credit, Wendat, Anishinabe and Haudenosaunee nations.
LEAF is a national charitable organization that works to advance the equality rights of women, girls, trans and non-binary people through litigation, law reform and public education. For the past 38 years, LEAF has advocated for the need to improve the justice system’s response to gender-based violence. We are grateful for the opportunity to be here today to share our views on this bill.
I’d like to start by expressing appreciation for Senator Boisvenu’s efforts to address intimate partner violence. Intimate partner violence accounts for 45% of all violence reported by women. These risks are greater for women who are indigenous, Black and racialized, as well as for women with disabilities and migrant women. These risks are also greatly increased for people who are 2-spirit, non-binary, trans and gender non-conforming.
Responding to intimate partner violence requires an immense systemic approach that considers the needs of diverse survivors of violence. However, we encourage committee members and all parliamentarians to resist focusing on the criminal law as the sole response. Taking a carceral approach and expanding provisions in the Criminal Code do not address the systemic issues that underlie violence. We are concerned today that the focus on electronic monitoring in this bill diverts resources that could instead be spent on preventive measures and direct support of survivors, while also increasing surveillance and promoting a false sense of security.
Before sharing our concerns, we would like to first commend this bill for its provisions on sharing information with survivors during the legal process. As we have all heard numerous times, for many survivors of violence, the process of reporting an incident and engaging the legal system is retraumatizing. It often does not offer what they need to move forward with justice and safety. Survivors are often left in the dark, unaware of their own rights during the process. Requiring judges to ask prosecutors whether the intimate partner of the accused has been consulted, as well as providing them with a copy of the bail order, can have a positive impact by providing survivors with much-needed information. This is a positive step towards an approach that considers survivors to be integral parts of the criminal legal system.
However, we remain very concerned about this bill’s focus on electronic monitoring. We understand the desire and the intent behind exploring more paths to safety for survivors. However, in our opinion, electronic monitoring serves as a band-aid. Electronic monitoring does not necessarily function as an effective means to increase safety. Reliance on this technology can lead to malfunctions, such as false alarms and delayed notifications. This risk is heightened in remote and geographically isolated communities, where a lack of connectivity and sometimes extreme weather conditions can also cause monitoring systems to fail. These failures lead to the inability of law enforcement to effectively respond. In effect, while some survivors may feel an increased sense of safety, this does not translate into reality.
Electronic monitoring was also already available to judges as an option when, through Bill C-233, it was recently introduced into the law, specifically in the context of intimate partner violence. This proposed legislation is redundant and serves to increase surveillance of offenders and their families, many of whom may already be from oversurveilled and marginalized communities. As Senator Pate pointed out, studies in the U.S. show a disproportionate use of electronic monitoring on racialized and low-income families.
Finally, electronic monitoring devices are expensive, costing hundreds of dollars a month. When we are thinking about how to best spend resources, we need to think about what will have the most meaningful impact. We urge the government to reconsider spending valuable resources on criminal legal solutions that have not proved to protect women. These are resources that could be allocated to services that provide direct support for survivors and the mechanisms to seek safety.
While new laws can give the illusion of concrete action, the criminal law is not the solution. Repeated legislative amendments and expansions have not reduced the number of deaths. Moreover, when policing is seen as the primary solution to intimate partner violence, it inadvertently excludes survivors from marginalized communities, who may not seek the support, and only deepens the existing inequities in seeking safety.
The answer, we suggest, is properly supporting and funding education, prevention and frontline services that respond to the needs of survivors while working to end gender-based violence. It is time we look beyond the criminal legal system and focus our resources on developing the social systems that are necessary for violence prevention.
Thank you for your time.