The committee met to study Bill C-16, an act to amend certain acts in relation to criminal and correctional matters regarding child protection, gender-based violence, delays and other measures. Witnesses included Jennifer Dunn from the London Abused Women's Centre, Monique St. Germain from the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, Kristin Szabo from Daughter Project Canada, Kendra Cooke as an individual, Angela Marinos from the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, and Andrew Ullock and Lisa Henderson from the Ontario Child Sexual Exploitation Investigators Association.
Jennifer Dunn welcomed the recognition of femicide but stressed that naming it alone will not prevent violence without sustained investment in prevention. She expressed serious concerns about criminalizing coercive control, warning that without mandatory training for police, Crown attorneys and judges on trauma and systemic bias, the law risks misidentifying survivors as offenders. She recommended coordinated multisector prevention models like London's high-risk action table and noted that criminal law alone does not address root causes such as housing and income barriers.
Monique St. Germain supported Bill C-16's provisions on sextortion, expanded luring offences, increased age protections under section 161 orders, and mandatory reporting improvements. She was cautiously optimistic about the safety valve for mandatory minimums, arguing it preserves meaningful sentences for grave child exploitation offences. She urged criminalizing the creation of sexual deepfakes and bestiality imagery, not just their distribution, and called for laws holding online companies accountable for swift removal of child sexual abuse material.
Kristin Szabo supported the bill's intent but recommended amending the definition of intimate image to a harm reduction standard, replacing "likely to be mistaken" with "presented or capable of being presented." She emphasized that prevention requires shared responsibility among platforms, communities and governments, including rapid takedown mechanisms and digital literacy education. She also called for mandatory national data collection and public reporting on child sexual exploitation trends and prosecution outcomes to address prevention gaps.
Kendra Cooke described her experience of coercive control during and after marriage, including false reports, stalking, threats and weaponization of the justice system. She noted that systems are ill-equipped to respond without physical violence, and that proving a pattern of coercive control is nearly impossible when each system operates in a silo. She recommended recognizing the authority of professionals who support victims and adjusting laws like peace bond eligibility to align with the bill's definition of psychological safety.
Angela Marinos proposed three key amendments: providing independent legal representation for victims of sexual violence from the point of police statement through court; adding trauma and PTSD to the definition of exploitation, along with threats to property or pets and the term "manipulation"; and specifically listing human trafficking and sexual services offences under section 276 of the Criminal Code to avoid litigation over the general phrase "of a sexual nature." She also recommended adding section 286.4 to therapeutic records provisions and ensuring victims' voices are integrated into restorative justice processes.
Andrew Ullock emphasized the importance of restoring mandatory minimum sentences for child exploitation offences, arguing that conditional sentences are unreasonable for such harm. He supported the safety valve approach but stressed that the Jordan timeline for trials must account for the complexity of digital evidence, which often requires analysis after arrest. He warned that online child exploitation is growing exponentially, citing a sextortion offender's manual that describes victims as "cyber slaves," and urged urgent law reform.
Lisa Henderson, a retired Crown attorney, noted that mandatory minimums had previously prevented conditional sentences for child sexual abuse offenders, but courts struck them down using reasonable hypotheticals. She argued the safety valve in Bill C-16 limits courts to considering the specific offender and offence, not hypotheticals, though she acknowledged initial litigation is expected. She supported clarifying mandatory reporting obligations and extending data preservation to 12 months, as 21 days is often insufficient given administrative delays in routing reports to the correct jurisdiction.
No procedural debate, motions or votes were recorded in this meeting.
AI-generated summary — may contain errors; verify against the official evidence.