Justice committee  I want to bring us back to the issue that I narrowed in on in my remarks, which is the fact that we have a crisis of mass incarceration of indigenous women and gender-diverse people in this country. In the federal prison system, 50% of the people we see are indigenous. As you all know, they make up only about 4% of our population.

Justice committee  I think we've had discussions about criminal law before in this committee, and it does sometimes come as a surprise to people that an organization that works with the most vulnerable women and gender-diverse people in this country doesn't support the creation of new laws that would potentially protect them.

Justice committee  Exactly.

Justice committee  It would seem that we would be on the same page about this, but you can see what happens. Coercive control is so hard to prove. He was somebody who, potentially, could have harmed her in a physical way. There are laws on the books that already deal with potential financial abuse and physical abuse.

Justice committee  Any time there is a creation of a new criminal law that will result in people being sentenced for behaviour, you're going to see an increase in the criminalization of people who are already overly criminalized. That's the only point we wanted to bring here today. We are not in any way arguing that this isn't an issue.

Justice committee  Thank you for the question. I don't think I can answer that question, because I don't think I have the expertise to answer that properly. I'm just going to remove myself from answering that at this point. Thank you.

Justice committee  Again, I'm not an expert in coercive control. However, we know that the existing laws that surround intimate partner violence, and the way that women and gender-diverse people are criminalized, are often manipulated by people who are abusing or harming their partners. If there is a way that a person could manipulate the system to harm their partner, they will do it.

Justice committee  It's exhaustive, but I will be presenting a brief to you by the end of this week. I'll include it there as well. Thank you.

Justice committee  Yes, I think we have a good definition of coercive control. I'm not an expert on coercive control, actually, and I would defer to those who are. I think one of the recommendations that came out of many of the inquiries into intimate partner violence was to create a panel of experts on coercive control, and that might be something else that we could do in order to inform the steps that we are taking moving forward.

Justice committee  It's hard for me to talk about what to include in a law that I don't actually think should be moving forward. As I said, when we criminalize women and gender-diverse people, we are punishing families. When a caregiver is charged—I have this in my notes, but I didn't say this—and is held on remand, so denied bail for even a short period of time, this can have lasting detrimental effects on her keeping her job, keeping her housing and caring for her children.

Justice committee  I do think that is a problem. In the legal system as it exists, we know that most of the people who experience intimate partner violence do not come forward. We know that many times, if they have come forward and are brought before the courts, they are made to relive the trauma that they've had to endure.

Justice committee  I mean, we've already discussed training. Training is always important when it comes to the legal system and when we're talking about prosecutors, criminal defence and judges understanding the experiences of people who've experienced intimate partner violence. Not criminalizing coercive control until we've figured everything else out might be another way that we could go.

Justice committee  Thank you so much. First and foremost, give organizations that work with survivors of violence epidemic-level funding and make it ongoing. This came out of the recommendations from the Mass Casualty Commission. If a person who is experiencing coercive control has access to a safe place to escape to and can bring her children and her pets with her, then that is one of the first hurdles.

Justice committee  It is a great honour and responsibility, as always, to appear in front of this important committee. Thank you very much for having us here. We at the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies, or CAEFS, have a statement of purpose that I want to bring to you today. It is to address the persistent ways that criminalized women and gender-diverse people are routinely denied their humanity and excluded from considerations of community.

Status of Women committee  We are spending a lot of time thinking about the issue of intimate partner violence with regard to a specific piece of legislation. This specific piece of legislation certainly focuses on section 810 and increasing the voices of people who have experienced intimate partner violence.