Without naming it, advocates say it is easy for people to pretend the murder of women and girls because of their gender is not happening.
While the recent slaying of an Ottawa mother in a park is bringing more awareness to the term femicide — generally described as the killing of a female because of their gender — advocates say it’s an epidemic that is not new to our country.
“It’s important to name it, and the name is femicide,” said Megan Walker, the former head of the London Abused Women’s Centre and a longtime advocate for ending violence against women.
“Naming it does a lot of things: It makes it visible, it gives us the opportunity to create data around what’s happening, it’s palatable for parents and makes them better understand that what happened was not their fault.”
Between the years of 2018 and 2022, the Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice and Accountability estimates that at least 862 women and girls have been the victims of femicide in Canada, with that number increasing by 24 per cent over that time.
Walker said the issue has reached “dire” circumstances in this country.
“We are seeing a woman killed in this country every other day. We’re seeing significant acts of violence, torture, rape and trauma committed against women and girls,” she said.
“We’re seeing women and girls across this country who are being trafficked into the commercial sex industry. All of these factors specifically impact women.”
In 2022, the London Police Services Board, which Walker is also a board member, sent a letter to the federal government in a push to have the term added to the Criminal Code. She reiterated that push to a parliamentary committee earlier this week.
While several countries have identified femicide as a crime distinctly different from homicide, Canada has still not.
“It’s critical. We can’t live in a community where women, who comprise more than half of the population in this country, are disposable,” Walker said.
“It’s harder to be preventable when we don’t have a name for it, and it’s not legislated.”
'It’s happening in significant numbers'
The Ottawa Police Service is widely considered the first police force in the country to start using the term in its policing.
After consultation between their departments and community groups, the force felt it was essential to use the term despite it not being in the Criminal Code, Deputy Chief Trish Ferguson said.
“It draws attention to the issue,” she said.
“Femicide is … often driven by stereotypes, gender roles, discrimination towards women and girls or unequal power relationships between women and men.”
While Ferguson said it’s important to have a broader conversation about femicide, what should not be lost in the conversation are the women and girls who have died, and the suffering their families have to go through after they are gone.
Since deciding to use the term, Ottawa police have already labelled two cases as femicide — most recently with the Oct. 24 slaying of Brkti Berhe, a mother of four — and the killing of Jennifer Zabarylo in August.
“It’s really important that as part of the criminal justice system and generally, we’re the first part of it. We set the stage, if you will, for what it is,” Ferguson said.
“It’s making lawmakers and decision makers aware that this is happening, and that it’s happening in significant numbers.”
She notes that while not all motives are known when police start investigating cases, in situations involving intimate partner violence, it does not take much to identify what has happened.
Since starting to use the term, Ottawa police said several other forces have reached out to them for guidance on how to do the same.
Like Walker, Ferguson feels that having femicide added to the Criminal Code would help address the issue.
“In 22 countries around the world, it has become a charge in the Criminal Code and their laws, and I think that’s ultimately where I’d like to see it get to,” Ferguson said.
“When we consider the missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, when we consider the Montreal massacre, Canada has a history and not a great history of how we treat women and girls in society, so I think we need to make some progress and we need to shine some light on the situation.”
Those in need of help escaping violence can call the Assaulted Women’s Helpline: 1-866-863-0511 in Ontario. Resources for help in other provinces can be found here.