Status of Women committee  Thank you. I would add that I think we need solutions that support and don't punish the people coming forward. Giving a survivor agency means providing them with options, providing them with time to choose an option that works for them and making sure that option doesn't lead th

Status of Women committee  Good morning. My name is Rosel Kim. I'm a senior staff lawyer at the Women's Legal Education and Action Fund, also known as LEAF. I'm grateful to appear today from what is now known as Toronto, which is on the traditional lands of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Wendat, other

Justice committee  I think having unconscious bias and having cultural competence are good starting grounds, but I would reiterate what I said earlier that there should be some other signalling of the historical context of why we are where we are today. We can also talk about the over incarceration

Justice committee  I think there is a lot of psychological and neuroscience research out there on the impact of trauma and how it impacts memory. It would be great to incorporate what's already out and accepted in the scientific community about how trauma can impact someone's memory and their demea

Justice committee  I'll speak on the independence point. My understanding is that it's the judges themselves who have recognized the existence of myths and stereotypes in sexual assault trials, beginning almost 30 years ago in decision like Seaboyer and as recently as Barton, and that there are si

Justice committee  I think there is a value in having some specificity but also in being open to the fact that our understanding of how systemic inequality has been perpetuated is changing every day. It is important to signal what we understand to be factors in systemic inequality so far, such as t

Justice committee  I wanted the partial transcripts of the decision itself in sexual assault cases. The reason for limiting the transcripts is that we understand that providing transcripts of the entire trial can be very costly and time-consuming. However, given that there has been so much discussi

Justice committee  We don't wish to limit the grounds. That was not what I meant by my testimony. The reasons, even when they're given on the record, might not be publicly available for people to access. If they're not written and if they're not published on CanLII, they will not be accessible to t

Justice committee  That doesn't mean the transcript of the whole trial itself. It's just of the day the judge renders a decision.

Justice committee  On whether social context is important in this training, we would say yes. Depending on the other factors of identity that you inhabit, as a complainant there are layers of stereotypes based on that. It's a question of how you experience sexual violence, if you are taken seriousl

Justice committee  Good morning. My name is Rosel Kim. I'm a staff lawyer at LEAF, the Women's Legal Education and Action Fund. Thank you very much for inviting LEAF to speak on this issue. Over the past 35 years, LEAF has played a key role in advancing women's and girls' substantive equality rig