Official Hansard
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill C-16, the protecting victims act, an essential and comprehensive piece of legislation situated on a broader strategy to keep communities safe. The last time the bill was in the House, our hon. colleagues voted to send it to committee so it could be studied, tested and improved. I am pleased to report that this is precisely what has happened. The Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights has done serious and careful work. Members on all sides heard from witnesses, asked hard questions, proposed amendments and engaged with the substance of the bill in a way that Canadians expect their Parliament to. The legislation has returned to the chamber today and is stronger for that work. I want to begin by thanking every member of the committee on every side of the aisle for the seriousness they brought to it. Over several months, the committee heard from more than 50 witnesses and received over 60 briefs from survivors of violence, advocates working to end gender-based violence, law enforcement, legal experts, child protection organizations and the provincial and territorial partners that administer justice every day. What was striking was not the disagreement but the breadth of the consensus that something must be done and that the bill would do a great deal of it. While the bill may have changed in the process, the seriousness of the issue has not. In Canada, a woman is killed every 48 hours. There have been femicides in every part of this country, and behind each one is a family that grieves. I have met many of these families and heard from them first-hand as to the impact it has left on their lives. These are not statistics. They are people who shared our hallways at school, who sat beside us at work, and who were loved. The protecting victims act would respond to that reality by moving forward with a constructive first-degree murder charge in cases of femicide. It would ensure a first-degree murder charge where murder is committed in an intimate partner setting; where it takes place in the context of a sexual offence; where it is motivated by hatred, including hatred of a person because she is a woman; and where it is preceded by a pattern of coercive and controlling behaviour. As the Coalition féministe contre la violence envers les femmes put it, the automatic requalification of these homicides as first-degree murder would put an end to the inconsistencies in the current law and finally recognize these killings for what they are: femicides that exist within a continuum of domination. That is the language of people who have studied this violence for decades, and we should listen to them. We know through extensive engagement with experts and survivors that the pattern of using violence and intimidation to control every aspect of a person’s life is one of the strongest predictors that a relationship may turn deadly. By naming this conduct and criminalizing it in its own right, we would give the justice system the ability to intervene before a relationship becomes violent and before violence becomes fatal. This provision would have the power to save lives. I would also like to acknowledge and thank the members of the status of women committee who have urged action on this for years. The world does not stand still, and neither can our laws. The protecting victims act would modernize a range of offences to keep pace with the way harm is now inflicted. We would be modernizing the events of criminal harassment to recognize that a person can now be stalked through technology, including the tracking of someone’s location through their phone. We are also confronting the rapid spread of artificial intelligence used to create deepfakes. There is a gap in our law today, and the bill would narrow it by expanding the definition of an intimate image to include images created through artificial intelligence. We would also be criminalizing the threats of distributing sexual explicit images, a tactic regularly used to humiliate and control victims. That same principle of confronting threats before they become tragedies runs through the child protection measure in the bill. The protecting victims act would expand the definition of a list of offences that threaten our children and would increase maximum penalties for a range of those offences. The Canadian Centre for Child Protection has been unequivocal about the stakes. It has told us that online sexual violence against Canadian children, including online luring, has reached unprecedented levels, and that confronting it is not optional. I would ask every member of the House to sit with the word “unprecedented”. We would be legislating not against a hypothetical but against an epidemic of the most reprehensible acts, which is unfolding on devices in the hands of children right now. I now want to turn to two of the more technical but no less consequential parts of the protecting victims act: mandatory minimum penalties, and delays in our justice system. These are the areas where the committee’s scrutiny was most searching, and the bill is better for it. With respect to mandatory minimums, a series of Supreme Court decisions, including the Senneville decision, left real gaps in our law concerning child sexual exploitation and abuse material, among other serious crimes, but the courts also offered guidance on how these gaps could be remedied. The bill would establish a carefully bounded safety valve, allowing a court, in the rare case where a minimum would be grossly disproportionate, to impose a different penalty that still results in incarceration. It would not simply restore the minimums that were struck down. It would shore up those on our books today that are constitutionally vulnerable. It is a measure that has received support from several parties in the House. With respect to delays, nearly 10,000 cases in this country have been thrown out for the sole reason that they took too long, thrown out not because an accused was acquitted but because the clock ran out. There is no version of that outcome that feels like justice to a victim who must live in the same community as the person who harmed them. The bill would require the courts to consider remedies other than a stay when the Jordan timelines are at risk, give clearer guidance on which complex cases warrant more time, and streamline the introduction of evidence at trial. Our law enforcement partners feel this too. The Canadian Police Association described how demoralizing it is for officers to build a complex case over months or years, only to watch it collapse on a timeline divorced from the realities of modern policing. They have called the bill a meaningful step toward restoring confidence in our justice system. Finally, the protecting victims act would do more to recognize the rights of victims throughout the criminal process. Too often, people who, through no fault of their own, are drawn into a long and difficult proceeding feel lost within it. The bill would build on the Victims Bill of Rights to ensure that victims have the information they are entitled to. Building the voices of victims into this process is essential if we want them to have faith in it. I would ask the House to hold in mind the words of Kelly Favro of Beyond the Verdict, a survivor advocate who said something during this process that I have not been able to set down. She said that survivors do not have the luxury of waiting until the theatrics in the chamber come to an end. She is right. While we debate, the violence does not pause. A woman is still killed every 48 hours. A child is still being targeted online tonight. The cost of delay in this file is not measured in sitting days. It is measured in lives. The legislation has earned the support of survivors, advocates, child protection organizations, police associations and provinces. It has been studied, it has been tested, and it has been strengthened. My ask of the House at report stage is simple: Let us not be the reason it waits any longer. Let us adopt the bill at report stage and send it to third reading so we can give Canadians the protections they have asked us for and that they deserve.
