Madam Speaker, I am honoured to rise in the House today to speak to my private member's bill, Bill S-205. It is a very important bill.
When researching the bill, I found out that one woman is murdered every 48 hours in Canada. In fact, last year, 205 women were murdered in Canada, and we know that about 60% of murdered women in Canada were murdered by their intimate partner. This bill looks to address that. It looks to provide additional measures to protect women.
I would just like to say off the bat that we know it is not exclusively women who are victims of intimate partner violence. Men can be as well. However, overwhelmingly, we know that it is women who are victimized and abused by their intimate partners, as well as their children. This bill aims to provide additional protections for them with more tools in the tool box to save their lives and the lives of their children.
Unfortunately, through the democratic process, we saw some unfortunate moves from the NDP, the Bloc and, notably, the Liberals at the committee stage, where they gutted a lot of very important provisions in this bill to protect women. I am going to get into that in a moment.
Before I do, and before I talk a bit more about the details of the bill, I do want to thank the original creator of this bill, Senator Boisvenu, who recently retired from the Senate. This bill originated in the Senate, and I was honoured to be asked to sponsor it in this place.
Senator Boisvenu has an extraordinary story in very tragic and victorious ways. His entire career has been dedicated to safeguarding women, fighting against domestic violence and providing more security tools for women who have been victims of intimate partner violence. It was inspired by his own daughter, who was kidnapped in a parking lot and murdered by a stranger. She would have been in her twenties at that time.
As a mother now, I cannot imagine what that would have been like for a parent. It is one of the more inspiring things I have heard of since being elected as a member of Parliament, that someone turned a horrific tragedy into the motivation to protect all women across Canada. He worked tirelessly throughout his Senate career to do that, and I thank him very sincerely for his courage and hard work on this. It is truly inspiring, as an elected official, to see that. It reminds us that we can really make a big difference in this place.
I also want to thank the incredible member for Peterborough—Kawartha. In my absence in the last year after I had a baby, she shepherded the bill through committee and fought valiantly against what the Liberals and the other parties were looking to do to water it down. She did an incredible job. In fact, she has moved amendments in the House that we will vote on in the coming days. We are trying to convince everybody to put the bill back into its original form. It was stronger and provided more protections for women and victims. It was tougher on their abusers. We are looking to do that, so I thank her very much for her initiative to put forward those amendments to return it to its original stronger form. I thank her very much for her hard work.
What this bill has been left with is still very important. It is about peace bonds in particular. For those who do not know what a peace bond is, I will briefly tell them. They are sort of like restraining orders. A lot of people are familiar with that term. However, peace bonds are criminal court orders often related to the safety of property or of an individual, whereas restraining orders are non-criminal court orders often related to custody and family court issues. They are similar, but different.
Bill S-205 would allow for a peace bond to be imposed if a victim demonstrates a reasonable fear of domestic violence. A number of conditions could be added to those peace bonds. This would allow a justice, the court process and prosecutors to ask for things such as therapy for the abuser as part of the peace bond. They could also ask that those with a peace bond cannot go to certain places or have to stay within a certain area. They may have to abstain from communication with the victim, or abstain from drug and alcohol consumption.
Most notably, it would provide the option within the peace bond to wear an electronic monitoring bracelet. These really have come a long way in recent years. We are seeing in Quebec, which was one of the first to institute some of these, that it has had great success in the protection of women who have been victims of domestic violence. The abuser wears the bracelet. It has a GPS in it, which is connected to their former intimate partner's phone. If he or she, but notably he, comes within a certain distance of the person they had victimized, an alert centre would be notified and would immediately call that abuser to tell them that it is time to back off because they are getting a little close. If the abuser does not co-operate, or if there is a reason to believe that it is too tense of a situation and that it needs to send the police right away, it would do so.
It provides an alert system so that people can be informed of what is going on. Women can be alerted if they are in fear of their lives or if an individual is coming close. It involves a route for police to be sent directly to where an individual is and provides a barrier of protection. It is another tool in the tool box.
This bill has been isolated to peace bonds, which is very good. I am excited to see it pass, as it will save lives. However, in its original form from the Senate, it was much more broad. Justices would have had the option to apply electronic monitoring bracelets to anyone who was getting bail, which was key. It would have been a monumental milestone to have that in the Criminal Code, particularly for those who have been victims of domestic violence and intimate partner violence. Notably, intimidation, breaking and entering, and being unlawfully in a dwelling or house, those kinds of things, could have triggered a justice to make someone on bail wear an electronic monitoring bracelet. It would have given them another checklist option, whereas now it is not front and centre for justices in those scenarios.
We know about this from Senator Boisvenu and the research he has done. In particular for intimidation, breaking and entering, and being unlawfully in a house, when physical contact of an assault has not occurred but a relationship has become a tense situation, a woman could decide to seek legal help to get a peace bond or make a request through the court process for an electric monitoring bracelet. That opportunity could tip off justices that there are precursors to domestic violence, and they could institute a monitor on an individual. That was the key part missed at committee.
We recently passed something called Keira's law, which we all supported. It was a very important law. For those who are not familiar with what happened to Keira, it is a devastating story, and it is wonderful that this place came together and passed something important. It was a good bill. Some argued that the bills were similar and did the same thing, but that is not entirely accurate. In fact, Keira's law was much more narrow. Although it was still very good, the original bill was going to have much broader impacts that considered all of the different violations of our law that occur in the scope of domestic violence, leading up to it in particular.
It is quite disappointing that something that would have provided a broader scope was so limited at the committee stage. This was the status of women committee, so it was surprising and bizarre to see it being gutted piece by piece by members of the committee. I read through all the testimony, and I am still scratching my head over why they would weaken protections for victims of intimate partner violence and their children. Perhaps they will respond to clarify, because nothing has been clear in everything that I have seen communicated from them. It has been very disappointing.
They gutted another provision as well. This one was really wild. There was a provision in the bill, right at the beginning, of paramount importance saying that victims would have to be consulted on their safety and security needs. During the process, a justice would have had to consult the prosecutor to see whether the victim had anything else they should know about so they could implement related protections for her. That was completely tossed out. Having a victims' rights option in there to have her voice heard on what she needs would have been required. We know there are a lot of problems in our judicial system about victims not being consulted, but that was gutted as well. It is interesting, because with Keira's law, the victim's stepfather supported that provision.
Lastly, just to conclude, the original bill also made a peace bond last two to three years. It takes a lot of effort and courage to get peace bonds, and 12 months, especially for mothers, goes by quickly so they have to keep going back. We could have had a two- or three-year option for women. Now they would have to go back every 12 months. That was gutted by the Liberals.
It is deeply disappointing to see them prioritizing the abuser over the victim. We worked so hard to get this bill here. I would urge them to please consider our amendments. There are women's lives at stake. Let us do this together. Let us pass the strongest bill possible. Let us do it for women.