Criminal Code
Bill to Amend--Second Reading--Debate Continued
November 26, 2024
Honourable senators, I rise on the unceded, unsurrendered territory of the great Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation to share some thoughts and reflections on Bill C-332. I am thankful to have this opportunity to engage in dialogue and discussion that raise awareness of all forms of gender-based violence, in this case coercive control, one of the least known and possibly most insidious aspects of abuse in the spectrum of gender-based violence, most often rendered invisible to those on the outside looking in.
I’d like to express my appreciation to Senator Miville-Dechêne for sponsoring and moving this bill forward.
Honourable colleagues, I rise because Bill C-332 supported by some research and limited experience in other jurisdictions is well intentioned and has the ability to make a difference in some situations and in some communities but not all. I say this not to oppose the bill but to highlight why a criminal justice response, despite meaningful amendments, will still fall short and, quite possibly, may not be the panacea we all long to see.
Gender-based violence is and has always been a pervasive and pernicious scourge that continues to tear apart lives, families and communities. In fact, it has been a deadly epidemic if not pandemic that has not declined for far too long, despite the current criminal justice regime.
Personally, I cannot tell you how many years I’ve repeated this refrain: Every six days in this country, a woman is killed by her intimate partner. I’m, quite frankly, tired of repeating this refrain, yet we cannot remain silent as this pandemic rages on.
As inferred, it’s quite possible that an addition to the current legislative regime is what’s needed, but I’m not wholly convinced this bill will be the solution we seek. And I say this from my decades-long experience as a leader in the gender-based violence sector, someone who has delivered front-line gender-based violence programs and services at the grassroots level and as a Black woman who has experienced gender-based violence inclusive of coercive control.
Now, although my personal experience is of some 40 years ago, as a young, married, 20-something-year-old mom, I learned very quickly and painfully that the criminal justice system was not the best option for my son and me. In fact, after being ignored and dutifully dismissed by police, I was fortunate to have the option of family, friends and community who sheltered and protected me from further harm and danger.
I share this not to evoke your sympathy but to demonstrate that like for the 44% of all women in Canada aged 15 and up, GBV, or gender-based violence, is not an uncommon occurrence, yet it persists and quite often with impunity, despite strengthened legislation over the years. Legislation has indeed improved, but Bill C-332 will be an additional legal tool that will hopefully save lives.
I worry, my colleagues, that the discriminatory, misogynist, racist and anti-Indigenous systems that have kept GBV in place for so long have not shifted much and will continue to only save some lives over others, particularly those who fit the image of the “ideal” victim and leave the most vulnerable Black, Indigenous, gender-diverse people, women with disabilities and others quite possibly at risk of high criminalization without addressing specifically the causes that have left the pervasive onslaught of all forms of gender-based violence and femicide intact.
Some 40 years ago, I didn’t fit the ideal victim to be protected, and today, as evidenced by the statistics on gender-based violence and incarceration rates, many do not. Under the current legislative regime, adding yet another legal remedy without addressing key root causes and recognizing and investing in alternate critical community-based responses and issues will continue to result in the inequitable outcomes we have seen for decades.
I’m sure there isn’t an honourable colleague in this chamber who would not support saving the lives of all women and children and preventing gender-based violence everywhere; however, we can, including through Bill C-332. The concerns I raise are to point out the historical and inequitable application of already existing legislation that women from Black, Indigenous, racialized, disabled, 2SLGBTQI+ and other vulnerable communities have endured. They and all of us are deserving of equal treatment under the law, but also the recognition that sole reliance on criminal justice tools is not a sufficient, effective remedy for the long, unyielding, persistent societal ill of gender-based violence, including coercive, controlling intimate partner violence.
So, there is much more to be said on this that I hope will be explored in committee. That’s where we’ll get to the meat of the matter, I believe. But suffice it to say from me, my concerns remain intact despite the thoughtful clarifying amendments made to date.
Earlier, you heard Senator Petten mention the signal for help — thanks for the plug — a simple non-digital tool developed by the Canadian Women’s Foundation that captured global attention and has been used thousands of times around the world to signal to someone that a person needs help. I am proud of this initiative or innovative tool that was created under my leadership at the foundation at the outset of the pandemic, when we began to hear of escalating calls for help from shelters and women’s support services.
Colleagues, it is not lost on me that it is the second day of the global 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence and that we’re only days away from the thirty-fifth anniversary of December 6, Canada’s National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women.
I mentioned earlier that I’m tired. I’m tired of repeating the same statistics over and over again. At some point, though, it must dawn on all of us that the issue of gender-based violence is deeply systemic — and in the worst way for some. The pernicious systems of sexism, misogyny, racism, gendered inequality, poverty and so on intersect and work together to lock and bind the most vulnerable women in inescapable, vicious cycles that make it impossible to break through, thus resulting in robbing many of choice and options that they would otherwise have were it not for lack of access to meaningful interventions like safe, affordable housing, livable incomes and well-resourced grassroots community supports.
My concluding reflections, as I said, are not to speak against Bill C-332 but to lead to more thoughtful, comprehensive, holistic conversations exploring ways to question whether yet another legislative response — that further locks in already deeply systemic barriers without addressing the already known deeply historical barriers and inequities without also investing in grassroots initiatives — is what’s needed at this time.
Thank you for listening.
[Editor’s Note: Senator Audette spoke in Innu-aimun.]
Thank you very much to the Anishinaabe people. My dear friend, Senator Julie Miville-Dechêne, this is a message for you, but mostly I’m rising in this chamber to talk about a bill that is important to some, that scares others and that does all of that at the same time for me. My colleague Senator Senior did a great job of explaining that.
I come from an isolated community. We can only get in or out by plane. In the winter, we travel by skidoo, on the ice roads or by train. When a small initiative could help to save a woman or a man, I need to think carefully to ensure that this initiative will in fact support an individual or family.
For me, this bill is much more than a bill. It is a matter of justice, a matter of protecting children, families and communities. Every day, we realize that this type of violence often goes unseen. It is often hidden or invisible, even for me. It is thanks to you that I learned this word. Before that, I normalized this sort of behaviour or called it a form of harassment.
Where I come from, we like to take a holistic approach. We have to consider all aspects, all the parties involved, and our current context, in other words, our culture and our way of doing things. However, in my world, among the Innu, we’ve come to accept this repetitive behaviour, this form of manipulation, this harassment, this control, this humiliation. We tell ourselves that it’s part of life and wonder why we should report it, when that’s just the way it is. Thank you to the senators who explained it so well in their speeches so far.
Sometimes this violence will be physical, but we hear less about that. It’s more a form of coercive control, but it can really affect a family. When I say “physical,” it does has an effect on your self-esteem, on how you get up in the morning and say to yourself, “Do I deserve to live? Do I deserve everything that’s happening to me? Is this normal?” You’ll understand why I always say “normal.”
Many of you have shared personal experiences from your youth. It’s the same where I come from, when you see the person you love the most — for me, it was my mother — be controlled by someone from the outside who wants to change who she is and how she behaves with her own children and her environment, to the point where she ended up saying, “That’s life, my girl.” Yet I knew that deep down she was afraid. She was caught in a cycle of violence, but she knew it wasn’t normal.
The community saw it too. People saw it. Collectively, we normalized it all. However, people knew that she deserved better, and today, we still believe that she deserves better. As I said, she was noticed, and at one point, we felt powerless. I was young. I didn’t know that I could file a complaint, and even if I had, what response would there have been? We didn’t even have real police in our community. They were supernumeraries, people we tapped on the shoulder — because the band council had that authority — and who were told, “You, you’re a supernumerary.” They had no training to respond to spousal or family violence, much less the kind of violence we call “coercive violence.” The word didn’t exist in my world.
When I looked at Bill C-332, I said to myself, we have an opportunity here. The world isn’t perfect. People want to change the Criminal Code, not in bits and pieces, but with a major overhaul so that it is better adapted to who we are as women, as men, and as individuals in 2025. Alas, that is what we get as a society and as a democracy: precious little bits at a time.
Words are important to me. We need to give a voice to this invisible violence. That voice will protect my mother, these women, these girls, these little girls. It will break one form of the cycle of violence that I referred to as silent earlier. We have heard a man stand up, a brother, a colleague, a senator, who wants to join us in denouncing the many forms of violence that women and girls experience across Canada.
This feminism is seen in the Innu communities where the men are part of the problem, but also part of the solution. We carried them, we brought them into the world. We want these men to be our warriors, our protectors, for them to take care of us and to reclaim the place that they lost to colonialism. Remember that great National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls and Call to Justice 5.3, which called on every government, including the federal government, to reexamine the issue and reform the legislation on sexual violence and intimate partner violence, utilizing feminist perspectives and the realities of indigenous women and girls.
I think I’m going to cry, but I’ll be strong. A year ago, I had to leave you because I received a call that no mother ever wants to get. My son was on the other end of the phone. He’d been stabbed with a knife, thinking he’d been in love with the right person. We saw him change, grow smaller, become crushed and then extinguished. We thought, this isn’t normal. “Stand up for yourself. You’ve got rights. There are organizations out there for you, there are things for you, you have the right to live.” No, he wouldn’t listen. He was stuck in a way of doing things. Again, I didn’t know the term “coercive control” back then, but friends here — lawyers, experts, feminists and people who had lived through the same thing — they told me, “Here is what you can do as a mother.” It was the same in my family. I kept my son on the other end of the line and I told him, “You’ll survive, you can do it.”
Today, he is holding together, standing tall and strong. He is healing, but it upset us a lot. At the same time, today, with his little daughter, we always say, “We’re going to learn these words, we’re going to change the laws together, we’re going to amend them, we’re going to shake them up and we’re going to speak out. We’re going to make sure of that, not just for you, Uapen, but for all the men and women who didn’t have the capacity, courage or strength to make it this far.” That’s because it’s tough to be courageous when you’re caught up in such violence.
I’m sharing all this with you from the bottom of my heart as a passionate mother — I think you’ve seen that before — but also as someone who’s convinced that we need to make every little bit of effort we can to save a life or several lives, to change mindsets. We could also give police officers the ability to say, “Yes, I can do something. Right now, I don’t have a framework that allows me to act, to be able to support victims and say that we had noticed the coercive control within the family, because this isn’t the first complaint to be made.” I’ve often heard police officers say in a major investigation that they didn’t have a legal framework, so they couldn’t do anything. Even if you try to give them gender-based training, as police officers, they can’t do anything because they don’t have a legal framework.
The fact is the police aren’t always welcome in Indigenous communities, and the justice system is definitely no better. The evidence is clear. There is overcrowding, incarceration. It’s unbelievable. We beat all the statistics.
Once again, for me, it’s zero tolerance. I say no to violence of any kind. I’m going to fight or motivate people to make sure that when we study this bill, we look for blind spots, places where we’ve been told to be careful, because if we head in that direction, it might have an impact on the larger community of women, of Indigenous women, and so on.
At the same time, we need to ensure that we’re doing it all for the right reasons, and that we’re going to talk about awareness, training and education; we can’t just accept it like that. This bill requires a holistic approach.
As a mother and grandmother, I want to be part of this change. I therefore hope that we will study this bill in committee. Thank you.
