Madam Speaker, I rise today in complete support of Bill C-16, the protecting victims act, and to speak about why this legislation matters so much. It is profoundly important to people in Nova Scotia and in my riding of South Shore—St. Margarets.
I am also going to speak today as a former educator and high school principal. Everyone in this chamber can imagine some of the things I have seen in my riding in regard to children.
This bill represents one of the most significant updates to Canada's criminal justice system in generations. It is broad in scope, but its purpose is clear: to respond to modern forms of violence and exploitation, to intervene earlier, to protect victims and survivors, and to ensure our justice system works faster and more fairly. Bill C-16 does this through its four pillars: tackling gender-based violence and intimate partner violence; protecting children from predators; strengthening victims' rights; and addressing court delays.
That work is urgently needed in Nova Scotia. Our province has some of the highest rates of gender-based violence in the country. Intimate partner violence, criminal harassment and coercive control are persistent realities, particularly in the rural and coastal communities I help represent. In recognition of this, Nova Scotia became the first province in Canada to declare intimate partner violence an epidemic. That declaration reflected what survivors, advocates and frontline workers already knew. This violence is systemic, patterned and too often predictable.
Bill C-16 meets that reality head-on. Under its first pillar, the bill takes decisive action that would prevent violence before it becomes lethal. For the first time in Canadian law, it would create a new offence for a pattern of coercive and controlling conduct toward an intimate partner. Survivors have told us repeatedly that abuse is rarely about one single incident. It is about isolation, intimidation, surveillance, financial control and psychological manipulation. These patterns strip away safety and autonomy long before physical violence appears. By naming coercive control as a criminal offence, Bill C-16 would give law enforcement and the courts a tool to intervene earlier, when lives can still be saved.
This bill also recognizes the severity of violence driven by control and fear. It would provide that murders committed in the context of coercive control, sexual violence, human trafficking or hate are femicides committed against a woman and would be treated as first-degree murders, even where traditional planning and deliberation are difficult to prove. This reflects the lived reality of many intimate partner homicides that are not spontaneous acts but rather the end point of long, documented patterns of abuse. This bill would further require courts to consider life imprisonment for manslaughter committed in those same circumstances.
These reforms closely align with the work being done on the ground by organizations like the Be the Peace Institute in Nova Scotia. Be the Peace focuses on root causes of gender-based violence, unequal power, rigid gender norms and systems that fail to centre survivors. This trauma-informed, feminist and intersectional approach reminds us that prevention requires structural change, not just punishment after harm has occurred. Bill C-16 reflects the same understanding by recognizing patterns of control and exploitation as violence in their own right.
I am also proud to have served on the board of directors of the Second Story Women's Centre in my riding, which supports women, girls and gender-diverse people across the south shore. The Second Story Women's Centre provides counselling, advocacy, safety and support within its community. I have seen first-hand how many survivors endure years of coercive control, which has never quite fit legal definitions before. Bill C-16 would help close that gap by aligning the Criminal Code with the realities that survivors and frontline workers have always understood. It would modernize the offence of criminal harassment. It would remove the requirement that a victim must prove they subjectively fear for their safety, and replace it with a reasonable personal standard.
This change matters. It matters deeply for victims who are stalked, monitored or intimidated, and for those whose fears have been minimized or questioned in the past.
In terms of my being an educator of youth, under the second pillar, Bill C-16 would strengthen protections for children and youth, particularly in an increasingly digital world. As a former educator, I want to speak clearly about this. In classrooms, we see the consequences of online exploitation every day: anxiety, shame, isolation and fear.
The bill would update the Criminal Code to address harms that barely existed when many of our laws were written. It would expand the offence of non-consensual distribution of intimate images to include AI-generated sexual deepfakes, recognizing how technology is being weaponized against young people, especially young girls. It would criminalize threats to distribute sexual abuse material. It would directly address sextortion, which is one of the fastest-growing forms of online exploitation of children.
Bill C-16 would also expand child-luring and sextortion offences. It would create a new offence for recruiting a person under 18 into criminal activity. This is something I have seen hands-on, with boots on the ground, during my time as a principal. The bill seeks to strengthen mandatory reporting and data-driven preservation obligations for online service providers. These measures reflect how predators groom, manipulate and exploit children today, often across multiple platforms and jurisdictions. The bill would restore mandatory minimum penalties for child sexual offences while adding a safety-valve clause to ensure constitutional fairness. This would respond to years of legal uncertainty that weakens deterrence and accountability for the most serious crimes committed against children.
The third pillar of Bill C-16 focuses on strengthening victims' rights. The bill would enhance the Canadian Victims Bill of Rights by affirming that victims be treated with respect, courtesy, compassion and fairness. “Fairness” is a key word. The bill would provide victims with information proactively, without requiring them to navigate complex systems or make formal requests. It would expand access to testimonial aids, clarify victims' rights in order to protect impact statements at sentencing and parole, and improve information sharing under the Corrections and Conditional Release Act.
These changes respond directly to what victims have been telling us on all sides of this chamber: The justice system can be retraumatizing, confusing and isolating. Organizations in my riding like Thriving Twogether, a grassroots non-profit working in southwestern Nova Scotia, see this every day. Thriving Twogether supports individuals and families affected by gender-based violence, addiction and human trafficking, recognizing—