Justice committee  Really, thinking outside the box—

Justice committee  In the way we respond to mental health, for some reason police officers are still the 24-7 go-to for mental health, but we're not mental health professionals. If you apply the same concept to intimate partner familial violence, if we showed up at a doorstep with a community service provider or a specialist who had nothing to do with policing and had the ability to engage somebody, even for us to be the secondary, that's thinking outside the box, where we just don't own that space.

Justice committee  Tools right now are very limited to law enforcement-related abilities, enhanced interviewing skills. We have about six or seven risk assessment tools that our intimate partner violence investigators would utilize. Then we shift and lean on our service partners. To roll into your next question, for example we might be at somebody's house five times over a period of four months and we might resolve the dispute, but there's no case management during the week with us sitting with settlement services, supports for survivors, in order to triage and maybe do a door knock mid-week where we could not only provide the victim support but even come alongside the perpetrator in a way that gets them off track.

Justice committee  Absolutely, that is true. I'll use the word “maturity” again, which we've seen in equipping our officers from a standpoint of understanding what's behind the behaviour, whether it be a perpetrator or what a victim is presenting...has increased. To go to a previous question, we've been equipped with a variety of tools.

Justice committee  Very simply, clearly we don't need to criminalize everybody, but repeat high offenders who show a propensity for victimization I think need to be treated differently from people who are provided a GPS. There's a slew of other criminals whom I'd happily provide the GPS to, or I'd hope the courts would, but somebody who repeatedly reoffends—intimate partner or gun and gang violence—in my view needs to be seen a little differently at the court level from a reform standpoint.

Justice committee  The access to firearms—legal or illegal—is just another factor that compounds the risk to an individual. With the legislative ability, especially the new bill, we know there are opportunities now for application to the firearms officer when there's even just a risk or a possibility of risk to look for either a temporary retraction or prohibition of the firearms.

Justice committee  Absolutely. Really, it reflects a fundamental shift from our being the emergency responder and dealing with everything in that wheelhouse of enforcement and leaning on our community partners to help invest in other spaces. What we've done is apply an emphasis on social development, risk mitigation and of course prevention.

Justice committee  Thank you for the question. Yes, the same split was roughly what we saw last year in our homicides. Domestic or intimate partner, family-related homicides were just shy of 50%.

Justice committee  With certainty, over the progression in maturity that policing and law enforcement have seen.... Without a doubt, survivors' experiences have probably seen a lack of reception from policing, but it's my experience now that it has matured so much in the last decade. Our shift to looking at risk and mitigating risk versus dealing with what we see being presented at the doorstep has changed insofar as now we are equally frustrated with our inability to stop the cycle of violence.

Justice committee  Thank you for the clarification. I'll just be frank and honest. That is actually a concern for us as well. The standard of proof for offences like criminal harassment or threatening is very specific and has a very confined context. I know that for my officers and for our Crown attorneys who will have to prosecute it, the standard of proof will need to be extremely clear and articulable for terms like “controlling” or “significant impact”, especially when the defence is reasonableness.

Justice committee  Absolutely, sir. The very quick answer is that sometimes we don't meet the threshold of criminal harassment or threatening. We just don't meet the definition, but we are clearly aware that the individual has imposed psychological, verbal or non-verbal pressures to restrict mobility, finances and a variety of different artifacts such as that.

Justice committee  That's an accurate depiction of what's happening in Peel region. As the previous witnesses stated, the isolation that individuals have experienced has stopped their ability to call the police, but it is disproportionate to the actual demand on service providers. We've seen service providers having more people in an intimate partner violence situation seeking help, and we have seen a slight reduction in calls to police.

Justice committee  We welcome it as another tool. Any opportunity to mitigate risk in the cycle of intimate-partner violence is a positive one, particularly because many individuals who call us don't think we're going to be able to help. We've stepped into homes where there is an absence of violence, and an officer ends up leaving, with no action or outcome.

Justice committee  Thank you for the question. My first thought on the placement of this offence is that I see it as one tier below the violent commission of offences such as assaults. I see it almost in the space of one or two existing criminal offences, such as threatening and criminal harassment.

Justice committee  The main frustration, I think, in our context when we are coming upon survivors is.... It's all part and parcel, like the chicken and the egg. There is a fear of reporting, because there is a lack of confidence that the system will actually provide them the protection they're seeking.