It would be a mistake to dismiss the final report of the independent review into B.C.’s legal system’s treatment of intimate partner violence and sexual assault as just another list of recommendations that we’ve already heard before. While there are some familiar themes, in conducting the review and writing the report, Dr. Kim Stanton has dug deep to come up with ideas that will be hard for the B.C. government to ignore.
Dr. Stanton was an excellent choice for this job: her background includes practicing Aboriginal and constitutional law, a stint as the legal director of the Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund and membership on the federal Minister of the Status of Women’s Advisory Council. More recently, she was one of the three Commissioners of the Nova Scotia Mass Casualty Commission.
In the opening paragraphs of the report’s executive summary, Stanton acknowledges the work that has come before hers:
“For many years, report after report has identified the barriers to survivors in accessing justice and made recommendations for what to do. . . . So, why aren’t we doing it? Or if we are, why isn’t it working?”
Rather than providing a long list of new recommendations, Stanton’s report sets out to answer these questions.
“We just need to do it”
Noting that only a small minority of survivors access legal systems, she identifies two kinds of barriers that need to be addressed: those that prevent system change and those that prevent individual survivors from accessing legal systems. Stanton then looks at the connections among what she calls “the community safety ecosystem,” the normalization of gender-based violence and ongoing myths and stereotypes in legal systems about survivors of GBV. This leads to her first recommendation: as a way to increase public awareness and to motivate a whole-of-government, whole-of-society response to GBV, the government should declare that gender-based violence is a provincial epidemic.
The report then moves on to what many of us doing this work see as the biggest challenge of all: the lack of systemic accountability. Here, Stanton writes about the ways in which dividing responsibility for addressing GBV into silos leads to a lack of information sharing and collaboration, which in turn leads to duplication of effort, gaps and inefficiencies. As well, she notes that when work is done in silos, there is “no identified leader with the authority to ensure that what needs to be done gets done.” Recommendations two and three are intended to address these problems through the creation of a strong internal government accountability mechanism and the appointment of an independent GBV commissioner.
Death review committees
I read Stanton’s comments about domestic violence death review committees (DVDRCs) with particular interest, given my membership on Ontario’s committee. She supports her recommendation that British Columbia establish a standing DVDRC, by saying that it “could play a pivotal role . . . bringing together people with multidisciplinary experience in intimate partner violence and family violence.”
Her use of the word “could” is crucial. My experience with Ontario’s DVDRC is that, while the committee brings together this expertise – and passion — in its members, supported by dedicated staff from the Office of the Chief Coroner, there is a lack of accountability at the political level that leaves some of us wondering why we are even there. It’s not easy examining an intimate relationship that ends in the death of one partner at the hands of the other. Reviewing the details of the death itself can be highly traumatic. To write recommendations that we have already seen more than once in previous committee reports and that remain unimplemented is, to put it politely, frustrating. Without accountability at the highest level, a DVDRC can wind up being little more than window dressing.
Here is where Stanton’s recommendations are woven together in a beautiful and inspiring way. If the B.C. government implements her first three recommendations by declaring IPV to be an epidemic, creating an internal government accountability mechanism and appointing an independent GBV Commissioner – then creating a standing DVDRC just might be worthwhile. In fact, each of these four recommendations will support and enrich the other.
Stanton’s report includes a total of 21 recommendations that address a wide range of the barriers faced by survivors of GBV who are ill-served by the legal systems that should support them.
The Executive Summary begins with a quote from a survivor that provides a powerful indictment of a legal system that most Canadians assume will be there for them should they need it:
“I would never recommend another woman from going through this ordeal. Run, hide and start over somewhere else.”
Stanton ends her report:
“The Review has proposed a path forward to address the systemic barriers that cause ongoing harm to survivors of sexual violence and intimate partner violence. It is up to the government and the legal system actors to take that path.”
Yes, but it is also up to all of us. As a first step, I urge you to read the report and, if 250 pages is too much for summer reading, then the Executive Summary gives you the headlines in a manageable 14 pages.