The Quebec government is urging Ottawa to criminalize coercive control in order to better protect women victims of domestic violence. It is your “duty”, he even adds in a letter sent Thursday to the federal Minister of Justice, including The duty got a copy.
The missive, sent to Arif Virani on the eve of International Women’s Rights Day, is signed by his Quebec counterpart, Simon Jolin-Barrette, and the minister responsible for the Status of Women, Martine Biron.
They explain that Quebec has undertaken a “major cultural change” in favor of women, in particular with the creation of specialized courts for sexual violence and domestic violence – a first in the world, they say – and with the training of those who intervene in the judicial system on what these women undergo on a daily basis as well as the different manifestations of violence, which is far from being limited to beatings.
“Coercive control” thus refers to anything used to abuse, humiliate and manipulate a person. It is an “insidious and progressive” takeover which does not necessarily need physical violence to be exercised and which aims to maintain domination over the victim, summarizes the Regroupement des maison d’s on its website. accommodation for women victims of domestic violence. Sometimes, the perpetrator of this form of “intimate terrorism” exercises it by controlling finances, threatening the victim to take away their children, monitoring their comings and goings, or even demanding that they report their whereabouts. at set times by sending text messages and sometimes even photos to prove it.
The two ministers consider it essential that all these facets of violence are also reflected “in the laws that govern us”.
“However, it is clear that the Criminal Code does not take into account certain manifestations of domestic violence, since no offense encompasses coercive control in its entirety,” they write.
For now, police and Crown prosecutors must link domestic violence — which is not an independent criminal offense — to illegal actions that are prohibited in the Criminal Code, such as death threats, harassment or again assault, if blows have been struck.
These crimes are far from encompassing all violent behavior and do not offer an overview of what a victim experiences, sometimes for years, support many organizations that work with victims.
They have also been campaigning for a long time for the Criminal Code to be amended accordingly, just as the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police has requested in the past. A full-fledged criminal offense would give additional leverage to the justice system to break the cycle of violence sooner, they believe, as well as to deter perpetrators of such illicit behavior.
Minister Virani said last year he was open to criminalizing coercive control. He then launched a series of consultations, to which various organizations fighting against violence were invited as well as representatives of the Sûreté du Québec and the Ministry of Public Security, among many others.
Quebec recognizes that steps have been taken, but seems to find that they are dragging on.
“As the reflections continue, we must keep in mind that many women still experience acts of violence on a daily basis,” he wrote.
Invisible, but devastating
The manifestations of coercive control are not all visible, but its consequences are just as devastating on the people who are victims of it as well as on their loved ones, recall the two ministers.
“It is the duty of your government to better protect them by giving them all the necessary means to denounce their attacker and this necessarily involves the criminalization of coercive control,” maintains Quebec.
Experts agree on this point: various controlling behaviors often precede more serious acts of physical violence, going as far as marital femicide.
Last November, NDP MP Laurel Collins introduced a private bill to criminalize coercive control. It received support from the ruling Liberals and Conservative MPs, who however expressed some concerns about how it would be implemented.
“On a societal level, criminalization would show that this socially unacceptable behavior must be taken seriously. If physical violence and feminicides are universally condemned, non-physical violent behaviors between intimate partners are still too often normalized and trivialized,” declared M.e Karine Barrette, from the Group of shelters for women victims of domestic violence.
Various organizations have, however, warned governments: making coercive control a criminal offense will not be effective without adequate training for all those who intervene with victims in the legal process, such as the police.
Ministers Jolin-Barrette and Biron end their letter to Minister Virani by saying they are convinced that he, like them, is concerned about violence against women. They hope he will take “necessary actions to improve the situation.”