Justice committee  I can speak specifically to some of the situations the women we serve have explained to us. It's difficult, because—I said this to Mrs. Vecchio before—women should not have to look over their shoulder all the time, going to the grocery store or to an appointment. Here at the ce

Justice committee  We definitely need to look at all of this through a lens of violence against women, to be honest with you. Coming from where we come from and given the work we do, that is the answer I can give. With respect to the situation I was speaking about, of the ex-police officer who is

Justice committee  It's nice to see you, Mrs. Vecchio. We have many stories every single day that we could go through that are exact examples of this. A good example would be the one I gave while I was speaking. It's about the ex-police officer who has been in the news as of late here in the city

Justice committee  With what we're seeing on the ground here from the London Abused Women's Centre and this ex-police officer, for example, I don't think there's any option for him to prove that he's going to do better. Because he is who he is, he's able to get away with what has happened in this p

Justice committee  Thank you, Chair, and thank you to committee for inviting me here today. It is very nice to see all of you again. My name is Jennifer Dunn. I am the executive director of the London Abused Women's Centre, or LAWC, here in London, Ontario. LAWC is a feminist organization that sup

Justice committee  I will try to be very quick. Off the top of my head, to be honest with you, I can't tell you specific sections, but I think something important was said by Mr. Bond there. We need to work hand in hand with this legislation as it is. I know we can't change what has happened in t

Justice committee  Thank you very much for the question. I appreciate the opportunity. This is interesting. Asking if this defence should be available in other situations is a good question for us because it all comes down to the systemic issues that we have at hand here. I would like to say that

Justice committee  You're correct. We were not consulted ahead of time. With regard to this bill, we know that it's truly an attempt to obviously address the Supreme Court's decision. It attempts to support victims and survivors of crime and hold offenders accountable. The issue is that there was

Justice committee  It would be important to make sure, and I know this is something that is supposed to be done, that the gender-based analysis lens was looked at, or was used to look at this bill, as well. I'm unsure if the committee has information on that piece. I think that would be an importan

Justice committee  I can say something. I think it was clear in my presentation that we had a round table in August. Since it was in August, it was after everything was already complete. We were not consulted ahead of time at all. Thank you.

Justice committee  I have to say that I have not heard in our community of any of the organizations that we work with being consulted. That's not to say it didn't happen, but it is concerning that we wouldn't know based on the work that we all do together.

Justice committee  Thank you very much. It is our understanding that “extreme intoxication”, when seen in this way, wouldn't be from just one intoxicating substance. For example, you could not have consumed just alcohol; it would have to be perhaps a combination of intoxicating substances that co

Justice committee  Thank you to the committee for inviting me here today. It's very nice to see you all again. My name is Jennifer Dunn, and I am the executive director of the London Abused Women’s Centre, or LAWC, here in London, Ontario. LAWC is a feminist organization that supports and advoca

Justice committee  There are no simple answers for this, to be able to answer this in two minutes, but what I do believe is that it needs to be looked at from the lens of violence against women. I urge the committee to look at the case of Helen Naslund. That might provide you with some answers to y

Justice committee  Thank you again. This is way bigger than today. It's much bigger than this bill by itself. I think we need to talk about the issues and the systemic change that needs to happen before this hits the court and before we're talking about it in this situation here today. We need