Honourable senators, I rise today to speak to Bill C-337, the judicial accountability through sexual assault law training bill.

It is an honour to serve as the critic of this bill in the Senate, as I strongly support the principle at its heart, that of responding to a systemic and shocking failure to address violence against women and children, and particularly the shameful legacy of our criminal justice system with respect to those who have been sexually assaulted and abused.

As I discuss the importance of Bill C-337's proposed aims, I want to draw attention to the aspects of this bill that I believe require further consideration in order to effectively address issues of race and class, especially in light of Canada's ongoing crisis and inquiry regarding missing and murdered indigenous women and girls, as well as the intersecting roles that police, lawyers and correctional authorities and services play, in addition to judges, in responding or failing to respond to violence against women and children in our society.

The first of two types of measures contained in Bill C-337 concerns the training of judges who fall under the jurisdiction of the federal government. The bill would require all those applying for judgeships to have completed sexual assault training. For those who are already serving as judges, the bill does not impose this mandatory sexual assault training out of concern for avoiding any interference with the judicial independence and would instead require the Canadian Judicial Council, the federal body that oversees judges, to report on the availability of sexual assault training to judges in the form of continuing education seminars; and they would have to report the number of judges, by court, attending those seminars and the number of sexual assault cases heard by judges who have not participated in such seminars.

Taken together, the purpose of these measures relating to judicial training is to counteract two stereotypes. The first are pervasive misogynist assumptions that create barriers within the criminal justice system for those who have been sexually assaulted and which contribute to underreporting as well as withdrawing and recanting of complaints.

In her speech in this chamber, our colleague Senator Andreychuk has given examples of the treatment of complainants in court that make clear the need for mandatory sexual assault training for judges. I wish to emphasize, however, that the barriers complainants face within the criminal justice system begin long before cases of sexual assault ever make it before a judge.

Sexual assault is the most underreported crime in Canada, with Statistics Canada suggesting that, at the very most, only 5 per cent of sexual assaults are reported to police let alone tried in court.

Professors Elizabeth Sheehy and Elaine Craig have conducted vital research exposing the treatment of those who have been sexually abused within the criminal justice system, and the fear that this treatment creates is a key reason why those who have been victimized do not come forward to report sexual assault.

This reluctance to come forward is understandable when the response that reports of sexual assault have traditionally received is contrasted with how other crime is dealt with.

I cannot help but think of my own experience reporting a property crime to the police years ago when my home was broken into and my television was stolen and how it would have been different if I had been treated by the criminal justice system in the way that those who have been sexually assaulted are treated, or fear they might be treated.

Instead of the considerate and professional response that I received, I can imagine how a line of questioning might have gone something like, "So you say you have a TV. Do you ever let other people watch that TV? Do you invite them into your house? In fact, aren't you known to have people with records sometimes in your home? Can you see the television from the road? Do you have drapes on your windows? Do you put that TV in a cupboard? Do you close it? Do you close those drapes? When you got that TV, did you put the recycle box out at the curb just to flaunt that you had a new TV? Didn't it stand outside that house for a little while, just to invite someone? In fact, don't you think that you were actually inviting people to take that TV?"

It sounds ridiculous, I know, and yet it is all too familiar for victims of sexual assault. Victims contend with invasive inquiries into past history, questioning and cross-examinations designed to demean, humiliate and intimidate.

Judges and others in authority who lack the training to control these dynamics often end up contributing to the perception that the complainant is somehow at fault, a phenomena at risk of being accepted as commonplace within our criminal justice system.

While Bill C-337 focuses on sexual assault training for judges for courts under federal jurisdiction, the realities lived by those who have experienced violence again women and children make clear that training must also be given to other participants in the criminal justice system, including police, as suggested by witnesses before the committee in the other place, as well as to lawyers, both defence and Crown prosecutors, and those who provide correctional services.

The system's devaluation and revictimization of those who have been sexually assaulted was recently taken to an extreme in the highly publicized case of R. v. Blanchard, where a victim of sexual assault known as Angela Cardinal was forced to testify at a preliminary hearing wearing handcuffs and leg shackles. For five nights during the course of giving testimony, she was jailed in a remand centre alongside the man who had attacked her, sharing the same transport van to the court. Ms. Cardinal was not suspected of committing any crime. Rather, as a result of her fear and panic, her difficulty responding to questions in court, a judge ordered that she be incarcerated to ensure her availability to testify — treatment that Justice Eric Macklin, who later presided over the case, qualified as nothing short of appalling.

Tragically, before the case was heard at the Court of Queen's Bench, Ms. Cardinal was shot and killed as a bystander in an unrelated incident. Her death meant that she was unable to give oral testimony in court, the kind of testimony that was felt to be crucial during the preliminary hearing that was seen to justify her incarceration.

Instead, records of her previous testimony were admitted in place of live oral evidence, a situation that is almost unheard of in cases of sexual assault despite the personal cost for victims of exposing themselves to public questions and cross-examinations regarding their most personal and private details. The assumption that this public spectacle is required to obtain a conviction in sexual assault cases is undermined by the fact that the individual charged with the crime in Ms. Cardinal's case was convicted nonetheless.

Her case is an example of the intersection of misogynistic stereotypes surrounding victims of sexual assault, particularly those who because of their race and class are left with the devastating and unconscionable effects that Ms. Cardinal and many others face, and the effects that threaten public confidence in the criminal justice system.

In the words of Alberta Justice Minister Kathleen Ganley:

. . . I think one of the questions that keeps me up at night is whether this would have been the case if this woman was Caucasian and housed and not addicted —

— and not homeless —

— whether this would have happened to her.

Ms. Cardinal's case reminds us that dynamics of misogyny contributing to violence against women is tangled up in dynamics of racism, colonialism and classism.