On July 25th, 2023, The City of London officially declared intimate partner violence and femicide an epidemic. Lanark was the first municipality in Ontario to declare that killing women and girls is an epidemic, with 46 communities following suit.
This follows from the June 28th, 2022, jury recommendations from the Renfrew Inquest into the deaths of Carol Culleton, Anastasia Kuzyk and Nathalie Warmerdam were presented. In total, 86 recommendations for change were made, speaking to oversight and accountability, system approaches, collaboration and communication, funding, education and training, measures addressing perpetrators of intimate partner violence, intervention, and safety. Formally declaring intimate partner violence as an epidemic is the first of the 86 recommendations that includes a range of actions including, among other things:
Improving the monitoring of high-risk perpetrators of intimate partner violence & enforcing the law when conditions are breached.
Listening to survivors and incorporating their input into the monitoring of abusers
Educate and treat men who abuse before they are ever charged or enter the criminal justice system.
Developing education programs for students in primary & secondary school about the signs of gender-based violence, including subtler non-physical forms of abuse known as coercive control
Improving collaboration between corrections and probation staff when planning a perpetrator’s rehabilitation
Reviewing the practice of mandatory charging & review of unintended consequences including fear by survivors that they may suffer more abuse if their partner suspects they’re responsible for charges.
Advocacy for allowing police services to disclose information about a person’s history of intimate partner violence to new and future partners, like some other provinces in Canada.
Establish a royal commission to review and recommend changes to the criminal justice system to make it more responsive and victim centric.
Femicide is the most extreme form of gender-based violence and is described as a woman being intentionally killed because she is a woman. Many municipalities, including London, are lobbying for psychological abuse, also known as coercive control, as well as femicide to be added to the Criminal Code.
For more information on this topic, please visit the following links:
Read City of London resolution.