The B.C. government is applauding the federal Liberals on Tuesday after they proposed new legal measures to address hateful and controlling behaviour toward women.
Provincial Attorney General Niki Sharma and B.C. Parliamentary Secretary for Gender Equity Jennifer Blatherwick held a media event Tuesday, reacting to the Protecting Victims Act.
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The Act would treat murders driven by control, hate, sexual violence or exploitation as first-degree. It would define these murders as femicide when the victim is a woman.
Currently, some murders targeting women may be classified as first-degree murder, while others may be second-degree, the Justice Department says.
The bill also would outlaw engaging in a pattern of coercive or controlling conduct against an intimate partner. There is currently no specific Criminal Code offence prohibiting such conduct.
The bill would expand the Criminal Code section prohibiting the non-consensual distribution of intimate images to apply to non-consensual deepfakes, amendments that Sharma already announced in October this year.
The legislation also proposes a new offence that prohibits threatening to distribute child sexual abuse and exploitation material, and it would ensure the child luring offence mentions extortion so that it applies to sextortion cases.
Sharma says the bill would bring about “compassionate amendments” for which B.C. has advocated.
“These are historic changes that I believe will make a difference. The Criminal Code and our legal system must clearly and unequivocally reflect the seriousness of hurting an intimate partner,” said Sharma.
“It’s been clear that not only is intimate partner violence among the most serious of crimes a person can commit, but if a pattern of sexual violence, control and abuse cumulates in murder, the perpetrator cannot get away with a more lenient punishment by arguing the murder itself was not planned or premeditated. A record of abuse should be considered evidence of premeditation. This is a key step in ensuring families of victims receive the justice they deserve.”
She says she is also pleased that the federal government heard B.C.’s concerns in that courts need clear guidance on how to deal with delays in assault cases.
“Too often in recent years, we’ve heard stories from victims who have bravely come forward to seek justice, confront their fears and trauma to testify, only to have their case dismissed due to ‘Jordan’ delays.”
She says the province is still making progress on Dr. Kim Stanton’s 2025 report on the treatment of survivors of intimate partner violence in the B.C. legal system — with a recent focus on three key priorities.
Those include establishing a new policy framework that offers clear guidance to help all actors in the legal system better respond to intimate partner violence and sexual violence; an internal government accountability mechanism to monitor the reforms; and exploring how to implement timely, standardized risk assessments and safety planning for criminal and family court processes.
Sharma says the work on those priorities is underway, but the province is committed to providing regular updates as they progress.
Angela Marie MacDougall, executive director of Vancouver’s Battered Women Support Services (BWSS), says the bill marks a positive step forward.
“The systems have traditionally preferred to minimize and to rationalize and not define the violence accurately. So this signals up the possibility of a cultural turn,” said MacDougall.
She highlighted the inclusion of the term ‘femicide’ as a particular win for the services’ advocacy.
MacDougall says Sharma’s influence on the bill is evident, and B.C. is making strides, but the BWSS knows more work is urgently needed.
She says the organization is waiting for the province to take action on its five recommendations to prevent violence.
“What we’ve asked the province to do will go a long way to preventing the next femicide. And, so far, there’s been no action. And so while we wait for the law to change, that’s not going to do anything.”
—With files from Jim Bronskill, The Canadian Press and Raynaldo Suarez.
