Status of Women Committee on April 21st, 2026

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Iqra Khalid]

Thank you very much, ma'am.

Ms. Larouche, you have the floor for two and a half minutes.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I'm going to go back to some of the things that were said.

In her first recommendation, Ms. Rose talked about income support for seniors. Ms. Schoepflin answered my question about the bill to increase seniors' pensions from age 65.

Ms. Estienne, I saw you nodding, so I'd like to know what you think about the potential impact of increasing incomes.

In Quebec, for example, there are a lot of seniors who live solely on fixed incomes, that is, on old age security and the guaranteed income supplement.

There should be a law to increase the income of people aged 65, so that all seniors get the same amount and can earn a bit more money without having their guaranteed income supplement benefit reduced.

What would be the impact on their financial situation?

[Loriane Estienne]

I'll go back to the [Technical difficulty—Editor] that comes with this role.

I think it's absolutely necessary to take into account the impact of this role, given that one in five caregivers is age—

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Iqra Khalid]

I sincerely apologize. We don't have interpretation.

Can you please try again? Why don't you try turning off your video and speaking?

Could you speak now?

[Loriane Estienne]

Nearly one in five caregivers are aged 65 or older. That means it's important to address the additional vulnerability of the caregivers, which comes on top of the fact that their income is already too low.

As part of this discussion, it's essential to think about increasing, boosting their incomes. These people are living in poverty. If we add to that the fact that they're caregivers and that this role is likely to become more common because of the aging population, we'll end up with a segment of the population facing a huge social and financial crisis.

For that reason, caregivers have to be considered as a factor that worsens the impoverishment of people aged 65 and over. It's important to take into account the fact that caregiving is a social role that will become more prevalent in this segment of the population.

That has to be considered when it comes to conducting a review. The goal is to increase all the benefits available to people aged 65 and over.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

I will conclude by talking about another aspect that has an impact on the situation of seniors.

Do financial institutions currently have enough tools to detect fraudulent transactions and to work on the issue of fraud targeting seniors?

[Loriane Estienne]

Unfortunately, I don't have an exact answer for you. However, I will undertake to do some research and share the results with you.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Iqra Khalid]

Thank you, Ms. Larouche.

This concludes our first hour.

I will suspend briefly as we let our Minister of Justice and Attorney General, Minister Fraser, settle in.

We are suspended for a minute.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Iqra Khalid]

I call this meeting back to order once again.

Thank you, folks. Welcome to the second part of our meeting today.

Again, you guys know the Zoom rules, etc. Please follow along. Please wait until I recognize you before speaking. All comments should be addressed through me.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted by the committee on Thursday, April 16, 2026, the committee will begin its study on the subject matter of Bill C-16, an act to amend certain acts in relation to criminal and correctional matters regarding child protection, gender-based violence, delays and other measures.

We have with us today the Honourable Sean Fraser, Minister of Justice and Attorney General. We also have, from the Department of Justice, Owen Ripley, senior assistant deputy minister, policy sector; Matthew Taylor, senior general counsel and director general, criminal law policy section; and Nathalie Levman, senior counsel, criminal law policy section.

We will start with opening remarks.

Minister Fraser, I invite you to go ahead, please, for five minutes.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

Thank you, everyone.

It's a great pleasure for me to be here to discuss the very important Bill C‑16,

the protecting victims act.

Before I get too far into my remarks, let me say that it's an honour to be before this committee. When I was first elected, I spent about two and a half years as a member of the committee. I found it to be uniquely collaborative, and I contributed many recommendations, with multipartisan consensus, which have since become policy.

I know the work has continued, and I was pleased to see some of the work that this committee has done on gender-based violence, femicide and coercive control. I expect we'll have an opportunity to discuss each of those items in some detail today.

Before I begin, it's important for me to ensure that the committee understands the context of this bill.

It's partly a strategy to address public safety. It has three pillars.

First, we need to strengthen our criminal laws.

Second, we have to make sure that police officers and people working in the community are supported by the government's measures.

Finally, it's essential to make investments to prevent violence and crime.

There are three main pillars to the strategy, at risk of oversimplifying things.

The first is strengthening Canada's criminal laws, and this bill falls into that category.

The second and third pillars, though, are equally important, and without all three, the strategy will not be the success that I think we all wish it to be.

The second strategy, again, for those listening in English, is the need to support those on the front line, such as law enforcement and community organizations. In the context of this bill, it's important to point out the many women's organizations that are providing services to those fleeing violence.

Finally, we need to make the upstream investments to help build healthier people and healthier communities. Those include affordable housing with a unique understanding of the needs of different people, including families who may be fleeing a violent household, as well as mental health and addictions, with programs that are aimed at prevention, particularly for at-risk youth.

This particular bill has many measures. I'll try to focus on some of those that may be of the greatest interest to this committee.

First, it tries to deal with different aspects of intimate-partner violence. You will have seen much coverage in the news around the construction of a new femicide offence. This would treat murders that are committed in a number of contexts as constructive first-degree murder charges, including hate-motivated murders, murders committed in the context of coercive control and murders committed in the context of the commission of a sexual offence.

You will also have seen significant coverage that followed a recommendation of this committee on the issue of coercive control. This is extremely important, because not only does it give the opportunity to punish crime after it has happened, but the offence has also been fashioned in a way, pursuant to expert advice, that may actually be preventative of violence. We have the opportunity to capture behaviour before it becomes violent and capture violence before it becomes fatal if we do this right.

In addition to these offences, you will see significant changes when it comes to the restoration of mandatory minimums for certain penalties following the Senneville decision at the Supreme Court of Canada, which has effectively vacated the mandatory minimums that existed for a particular offence. We want to restore them in a way that is constitutionally compliant.

You'll have seen as well that we're making changes to ensure that intimate images created by artificial intelligence, or deepfakes, without the consent of the person whose likeness is portrayed in the image would be treated on par with the circulation of intimate images that exist in the real world without a person's consent.

Other significant aspects of this bill are dedicated to protecting kids, including making changes to sextortion and a range of different offences.

In the interest of time, as I see I have one minute, I would be remiss if I didn't at least introduce the important issue that we're dealing with when it comes to delays in the court system, given how often they impact cases involving sexual violence.

These delays are leaving far too many people without justice, not because a person has defeated the charges at trial or been found not guilty by a court but because the clock has run out. When we're dealing with circumstances in which a victim of sexual crime may be living in the same community as the perpetrator and has a shadow hanging over them due to the termination of court proceedings as a result of delay, there is room for improvement.

Thank you for listening.

I look forward to continuing this conversation with you and answering your questions.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Iqra Khalid]

Thank you very much, Minister. You were right on the dot timewise. I really appreciate that; thank you very much.

We'll start our first round of questions with six minutes for Mr. Brock.

Please go ahead.

[Larry Brock, Conservative, Brantford—Brant South—Six Nations, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Welcome, Minister, and welcome Mr. Ripley, Mr. Taylor and Ms. Levman. Thank you for attending today.

Minister, there are three areas I want to speak about: the Jordan decision, the Canadian Victims Bill of Rights and mandatory minimums.

Minister, how can victims, especially women—who are disproportionately harmed by Jordan stays—be confident that they'll receive balanced, timely justice under the changes being made in Bill C-16, rather than having resources and personnel provided to rapidly support and address judicial delays?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Thanks very much.

I think you'll need both for people to have confidence that the system is going to function. Of course, the resources you're referring to largely fall within the purview of provincial governments across Canada, which have authority when it comes to the administration of justice.

However, there are things that we can do and that we should do.

One is to address substantively the issue of delays by changing the process, including, for example, streamlining the process through which evidence is adduced in cases involving sexual violence.

When we seek to streamline the process, we'll have fewer cases that suffer from delays that will come up against the Jordan timeline, but we recognize it still may be possible, even with the streamlined process and more resources, that certain complex cases will still hit the timeline. In those circumstances, we're directing the court to consider remedies other than a stay to ensure the courts will have the discretion to protect the interests of justice in ensuring that victims have the opportunity to see a case to completion.

I'm happy to dig into greater detail, if you wish.

[Larry Brock, Conservative, Brantford—Brant South—Six Nations, ON]

Okay. That's good. Thank you very much, Minister.

During the consultation phase of Bill C-16, was there ever any consideration or were any submissions made to the government to extend the guidelines, in light of the complexity of criminal litigation?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

To extend which guidelines...?

[Larry Brock, Conservative, Brantford—Brant South—Six Nations, ON]

I mean to extend the period, such as 18 months to, let's say, 24 months, or 30 months to 42 months. Was there any consideration of that?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

There has been some consideration, but most of it fell not within extending the lengthier timeline, because we're dealing with different timelines based on the complexity of cases, but to bringing more cases into a longer timeline, when the factors around complexity exist. You see it, typically, in sexual assault cases, drug cases or organized crime.

There will be other examples, but I see that you'd like to move to your next question, and I'm happy to take it.

[Larry Brock, Conservative, Brantford—Brant South—Six Nations, ON]

Yes, I would.

We've heard witnesses over the past several weeks, at this committee and, most definitely, at justice, emphasize the importance of supporting legislative changes with training, education, awareness and adequate resources to ensure that victims receive the wraparound services and support they deserve. Does Bill C-16 allocate to law enforcement and the justice system any new resources to address this aspect?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

This bill implements criminal law reform. Those kinds of supports would not fall under a bill that amends the Criminal Code. That said, this was contemplated specifically, for example, in the context of coercive control. While working with the provinces, we identified a delay in the coming into effect.

There's a parallel conversation. I don't want to speak for Minister Valdez. We are advancing additional resources for some of these kinds of initiatives. The final projects will depend on budget decisions yet to be taken.

[Larry Brock, Conservative, Brantford—Brant South—Six Nations, ON]

Thank you.

This past Monday at justice committee, we heard testimony from the federal ombudsperson for victims of crime, Dr. Roebuck. He explained that, despite his office's providing detailed recommendations for inclusion in Bill C-16 to better protect victims of intimate partner violence and coercive control, many recommendations were ignored. Did you consult with Dr. Roebuck in drafting Bill C-16, yes or no?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Yes, extensively, and most of the measures that are included in the reforms came from the ombudsperson's office.

[Larry Brock, Conservative, Brantford—Brant South—Six Nations, ON]

Okay. Thank you.

Did you exclude any of the doctor's recommendations—specifically, any that would add enforceable rights for victims?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

I expect some were recommended that are not in there, but we maintain an open channel of communication with the ombudsperson, and we look forward to continued engagement and changes, where appropriate.

[Larry Brock, Conservative, Brantford—Brant South—Six Nations, ON]

Okay.

He indicated that enforceable rights under the Victims Bill of Rights are not addressed in Bill C-16. Is there a reason they are not?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

We wanted to establish best practices and clear expectations that a victim should have. Sometimes there are jurisdictional issues when it comes to the processes that are implemented by courts. However, making clear what is inside the Victims Bill of Rights as a baseline of expectations, with the ability to register complaints when the expectations are not met, is a good first step in this space. We can always do more to improve the experience for victims in the criminal justice process.