Every six days in Canada a woman is violently killed by her intimate partner.
“That is an unacceptable statistic,” New Democrat MP Laurel Collins said on Wednesday. “But it is more than a statistic. These are loved ones, family members.”
It could soon be illegal in Canada for anyone to use controlling or coercive behaviour towards their partners.
A private member’s bill, C-332, brought forward by Collins aims to amend the Criminal Code, criminalizing conduct that has a “significant impact” on a person, including fear of violence, a decline in physical or mental health or a substantial adverse effect on their day-to-day activities.
“Any violence against women is wrong,” NDP leader Jagmeet Singh said on Wednesday. “And sadly, we are seeing an epidemic of violence against women in our country. It’s happening in every part of the country, and we’re seeing heartbreaking stories of violence that could have been prevented.”
Singh said in 95 per cent of cases that end up in partner violence, there is coercive control that happens before the violence.
He said they met with families who have lost loved ones to intimate partner violence and their stories contained many examples of abusive, coercive control.
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“We have a crisis of gender-based violence in this country,” Leah Gazan, Winnipeg MP said on Wednesday. “Many municipalities are now calling it an epidemic. We know that rates of gender-based violence are not decreasing. They’ve actually increased since the pandemic.”
The bill will be voted on after question period on Wednesday.
“I want to share just a few of the words from some of the stories I’ve heard over the past year,” Collins said. “A woman described coercive control as a web that was slowly tightened around her until she felt like it was impossible to get free. And we heard from, Dan. Dan lost his daughter, Caitlin, and he said that if this law had been in place, that Caitlin would still be here with us today.”
— with files from Saba Aziz