Toronto city council declared gender-based violence and intimate partner violence an epidemic in the city on Thursday, while calling on Ontario and the federal government to do the same.
The declaration was the result of a motion from newly-minted Mayor Olivia Chow and came just weeks after the province declined to make the same move.
Chow, who was elected in a byelection last month, has been public about the abuse her mother suffered at the hands of her father and how her mother was able to rebuild her life thanks to supports that aren’t always available, including safe and affordable housing.
“Because I had a basement apartment, even though it was one mattress and one bed, we were able to share the mattress, she was able to live with me, which began her new life … a lot of women and their children are trapped because they can’t afford to move out,” Chow said during a council meeting Thursday.
“We need to give hope to women and children that are experiencing violence now, and one way to give hope is to say that you can recover.”
Chow’s motion, which passed with no opposition, also urged other levels of government to enact recommendations from an inquest into the deaths of three Ontario women at the hands of their former partner.
The jury at a coroner’s inquest into the 2015 deaths of Nathalie Warmerdam, Carol Culleton and Anastasia Kuzyk in Renfrew County, Ont., made 86 recommendations more than one year ago aimed at preventing similar tragedies.
Most of the inquest recommendations – including that intimate partner violence formally be declared an epidemic – were directed at the provincial government.
Ontario said in late June that it would not make such a declaration because intimate partner violence is not an infectious or communicable disease. It also declined to establish an intimate partner violence commission and create the role of a survivor advocate, as recommended by the inquest jury, because it would duplicate existing systems.
But it said it was working on or had accepted many other recommendations, including one to explore ways to allow people to find out if their partner has a history of intimate partner violence.
Advocates have said a declaration of an epidemic, while largely symbolic, uses a public health framework to help survivors and bring attention to the issue as a sociological phenomenon.
Toronto joins 30 other municipalities across Ontario that have made their own declarations of intimate partner violence as an epidemic, including Ottawa, Peel Region, Halton Region and Renfrew County.
According to Statistics Canada, 90 homicide victims were killed in 2021 by an intimate partner – three-quarters of them women and girls – up from 84 victims in 2020 and 77 victims in 2019.
The Toronto declaration made Thursday also advocates for the term femicide to be added to the Criminal Code, which mirrors one of the inquest recommendations to the federal government.
Femicide is defined as “the killing of one or more females, primarily by males, because they are female,” according to the Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice.
Ottawa had not responded to the coroner’s office as of late June.
The Toronto motion also asks the provincial and federal governments to provide necessary support to meaningfully address intimate partner violence.
Additionally, the city will seek input from Toronto’s top doctor, Indigenous affairs office, police and community organizations on best ways to act on the declaration and invest in related programs and services.