A southern Ontario police board is gathering input from the public as it prepares to ask the federal government to add the term femicide to the Criminal Code, a move some advocates say is a crucial step in addressing a national crisis.
The London Police Services Board expects to hear from community members, women’s advocates and experts as it prepares to send a letter to Ottawa. The last day to judge the matter is July 31.
“What we’re trying to do is tell people that when a woman or a girl is killed every 36 hours in Canada, it’s a crisis and it needs to be addressed,” said board member Megan Walker, who heads the initiative. .
“One of the first tools we know we can use to address it is by defining femicide and using it to conduct (criminal) investigations.”
Walker, who is a former executive director of the London Center for Battered Women, said the initiative stemmed from a board meeting in May where she asked if there was a specific breakdown of how many women had been victims of murder, attempted murder and hate crime in the city , and was told that there was no such data readily available.
“My concern was, how do you solve a problem if you don’t admit there is one? So if we can’t even name how many murders of women there are, if we can’t even talk about how many hate crimes and incidents have been against women, we’re stuck in this cycle,” she said.
Police departments across Canada have been contacted to learn more as the London board prepares to present its case to the federal government, Walker said.
The issue was also highlighted last month at an inquest into the deaths of three women killed in 2015 by a man with whom they had been in past relationships.
The jury that looked into what happened to Carol Culton, Anastasia Kuzik and Nathalie Warmerdam called on the federal government to investigate adding the term femicide and its definition to the Criminal Code “to be used where appropriate in the context of the relevant offences”. .
Myrna Dawson, founder and director of the Canadian Observatory on Femicide, said she was “encouraged and happy to see some movement” on the issue of femicide.
“It’s been a long time coming because there was a group of us in Canada and more globally who recognized femicide as a key issue that affects women’s lives, but … the term femicide didn’t really resonate with members of the general public,” she said. .
The Canadian Femicide Observatory found that 173 women and girls were murdered in Canada as of December 31, 2021, up from 137 murders in 2019, the year before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. The research and information center notes that the number could increase over time as investigations are completed, suspicious deaths are ruled homicides or new deaths are reported.
Dawson said she believes the term femicide is starting to get the attention it deserves because of the pandemic-based lockdowns that have brought domestic violence to the fore and the number of cases in recent years that have highlighted the way women and girls can be killed just because of their gender.
Unless there is an official recognition of femicide as a crime, it is difficult to start prevention efforts or raise public awareness around it, she said.
“It highlights the discriminatory and symbolic aspects of this form of violence as a social reality for women and girls,” Dawson said, noting that Indigenous women and girls are disproportionately affected.
“It really goes back to the attitude that men have a right and a privilege over women and that there are social norms around masculinity and their need to assert power and control.” When we call it murder, we’re not capturing all of that context about how which women were killed.”
Lisa Darling, executive director of the Ontario Police Services Association board, said the association will support the London board and “advocate as necessary” on its homicide-of-women initiative.
The Toronto Police Services Board plans to review the London board’s efforts and will “consider joining them at the appropriate time,” said Daniel Dowdy, senior adviser for strategic policy and stakeholder relations at the Toronto board.
A spokesperson for Canada’s Department of Justice said the federal government is “committed” to ending all forms of gender-based violence and addressing any gaps in the Criminal Code “to ensure a robust criminal justice system response, and will carefully review the inquiry’s recommendations and other data.”
Ian McLeod said the Criminal Code’s sentencing provisions “ensure that perpetrators of violence against women and girls receive sentences that are proportionate to the seriousness of the offence”, taking into account whether there is evidence that the crime was motivated by prejudice or hatred , based on gender and gender identity.
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