BTPI Presents to Justice Canada on Criminalizing Coercive Control

On September 28th, 2023 Be the Peace Institute had the opportunity to present to Justice Canada during virtual panels with academics, gender-based violence advocates, service providers, police, prosecutors and survivors to discuss the creation of a potential coercive control offence in the context of intimate relationships. Our session consisted of 10 other individuals representing diverse organizations from across the gender-based violence and community-based sector. We also sent a written submission to Justice Canada, click on the documents below to read our full submissions.

This engagement was framed as an effort to inform ongoing work with provincial and territorial colleagues on this issue and build on what was learned during the study by the House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights on controlling or coercive conduct within intimate relationships, the Standing Committee on the Status of Women’s study on intimate partner and domestic violence in Canada and the Nova Scotia Mass Casualty Commission’s Final Report.

The audience for these panels was Justice Canada officials as well as provincial and territorial colleagues. Each panelist had 10 minutes to share their views on a potential coercive control offence followed by a brief question and answer session.

Panelists had the opportunity to consider the following questions in their oral presentations:

What are the potential positive or negative impacts of a coercive control offence?
What are your views on how a coercive control offence should be constructed, in light of existing models in United Kingdom, Scotland, Ireland and New South Wales (links to this legislation are included below)?
What are the indicators of coercive control based on your experience and/or research?
Given that the criminal harassment offence (section 264 of the Criminal Code) captures some of the same conduct as a coercive control offence, do you have any views you would like to share on the effectiveness of that offence and how it could be strengthened?

Here is our oral presentation, as presented by Stacey Godsoe, Project & Resource Coordinator, and our written submission to Justice Canada. Click on the images below to read them in full.