Canada Efforts to Address Intimate Partner Abuse and High-Conflict Custody Disputes in Canada

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Since the 1980s, Canada has made various efforts to modernise and better address the serious problem of intimate partner violence. In 2018, the Federal Government introduced revisions to the Criminal Code, including amendments aimed at increasing the effectiveness of the criminal justice response to the problem. As well, provinces have created specialised courts to deal with intimate partner violence. These initiatives are promising. Unfortunately, a continuing problem is inconsistency in the quality of responses to intimate partner abuse across the country and within provinces.

Canada also has been challenged by the problem of high-conflict custody disputes. Ongoing serious conflict between parents compromises the best interests of the children and leads to disproportionately heavy use of the family justice system. Measures to address high-conflict cases have been identified, but their adoption across the country has been uneven.

INTIMATE PARTNER ABUSE

Intimate partner violence, including violence between those in a spousal, cohabitation or dating relationship, whether current or past, is a serious problem in Canada as elsewhere. In 2015, there were 92,000 victims of intimate partner violence, representing over one-quarter of all victims of police-reported violent crime. 80 per cent of these victims were women. Not all incidents of intimate partner violence are reported to the police and are therefore not captured in these statistics. However, virtually all homicides are identified by the police, and the homicide numbers show that women are at greater risk of being killed by an intimate partner. In 2015, the rate of intimate partner homicides of women was 4.5 per 1 million, and for men the rate was 0.9 victims per 1 million.

In an effort to reduce intimate partner violence and increase the effectiveness of the criminal justice response to the problem, the Federal Government introduced mandatory charging and ‘no drop’ prosecution policies in the early 1980s. The provinces subsequently adopted the same approach. The policies signalled that intimate partner violence was not to be regarded as a private matter but as a serious societal problem and a violation of the law. The policies were also intended to protect victims by placing the onus for laying charges on the police and Crown. The risk of recrimination against victims was reduced because the decision to lay charges and proceed was no longer theirs.