The Decibel - New crime bill addresses violence against women and court delays

Episode Date: December 12, 2025

Mark Carney’s federal government has introduced its second tough-on-crime bill this fall. The new bill, Bill C-16, focuses on violence against women and children, changes to mandatory minimum sentences and the growing problem of court delays.The Globe’s justice reporter, David Ebner, explains the specific changes to the Criminal Code that this bill wants to make and what advocates and critics are saying about it.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail] Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Just before rising for the holiday break, the federal government introduced its second tough-on-crime bill this fall. Bill C-16 focuses on violence against women and children, as well as changes to mandatory minimum sentences, and the growing problem of court delays. While parts of the bill are being celebrated for addressing what advocates call an epidemic of intimate partner violence, critics are concerned that the bill could also violate charter rights. David Ebner is the Globe's justice reporter, and he's on the show to explain what this bill is all about. I'm Cheryl Sutherland, and this is the decibel from The Globe and Mail. Hi, Dave, thanks so much for coming back on the show. Thanks for having me again. So to start, I was hoping you could give me an overview of this bill, because it's a big one.

What does this bill set out to do? It's definitely a wide-ranging bill. It all comes from their platform in this. This one specifically, I would say, has three. Three pillars. The most important one is a range of measures to take on the goal of reducing violence against women as well as children. Secondly, there is work to restore what are called mandatory minimum punishments. So for a variety of crimes in the criminal code, there will be a minimum punishment. A court is obligated to sentence a person to if they're convicted. These have been controversial in the courts and the liberals are aiming to restore several that have been struck down by the courts. And the third part is the longstanding delays in the justice system, you know, much like hospitals and various infrastructure across Canada. The courts in Canada are clogged and delays are a major problem. And so the liberals have proposed several measures to try to, you know, ease up the squeeze.

So, Dave, how substantial is this legislation? Like, is it seen as a big deal in the legal world? I would say definitely, you know, it's caught a lot of attention. There is a lot of reworking of the criminal code in this bill. And then more broadly, we have to remember, of course, we know this is a new government, even though it dates back to 2015. But under Prime Minister Mark Carney, there's a definite different tenor coming out of Ottawa these days from the Liberal Party. And crime, tough on crime, is one of them. You know, the Liberals have now delivered two back-to-back tough on crime bills in October, stricter sentencing and bail laws. And here, kind of across the board, moves to make the criminal code tougher.

Okay, so let's dive into this bill and what it sets out to change. So let's start with the changes that are coming into effect around violence against women. Walk me through what they're trying to do here. So the big thing is introducing two new terms to the criminal code.

The first one is femicide. And so that's specifically homicide of a woman. And this term might not be familiar to many people, but it is growing in recognition, especially among advocates. And obviously, murder is murder, but in Canada, the statistically most dangerous place where a woman might be killed

is her own home. For women, intimate partner violence is a plague, a scourge. And by naming Femmicide in the criminal code, it just brings much greater attention to the issue. But on the legal side, first degree murder in Canada is categorized as a planned and deliberate murder. and if this bill goes through, femicide would also be considered first-degree murder, even if a killing wasn't actually planned and deliberate. So it takes a specific look at the specific situation in which intimate partner violence occurs.

And then the second major thrust is what's called coercive control. Again, maybe not familiar to a lot of people, but gaining recognition. And again, it's about how, you know, it's not always men against women, but, you know, typically it is. It's how a man can control his intimate partner. there's kind of psychological violence, essentially, jealousy, lashing out, you know, controlling the finances. So the criminal code proposal is to name course of control.

It details several definitions of it. And if there is a conviction, it would be upwards of 10 years in prison if it was a serious situation. Right. Okay. So Femicide equals automatic first degree. Yeah. It would. It would.

And to underline on first degree murder, it's life imprisonment with no chance of parole for 25 years. So it's essentially the harshest punishment that can be levied under the criminal code. Right. And then on coercive control, this was never considered a crime before this bill. What it does is expand the idea, but absolutely the words coercive control would be a new addition to the criminal code. It's in the vernacular, especially among advocates who work to reduce violence against women and help families deal with these issues. It builds on criminal harassment, but this very much more specifically details things that we know are happening, but might not have been written into the criminal code as specifically as possible. And police are getting up to speed on these things, too.

And so you can make the laws, but you need the entire justice system to adjust. But police are becoming much more aware of issues like this. And so this is putting in the criminal code is a way to crystallize it. Okay. There's also something in this bill about non-consensual deep fakes. Can you talk about that a little bit? Yeah. So it was already illegal to, like, again,

an intimate partnership for me, let's say, to, you know, send around naked pictures of my partner, you know, I might be trying to extort her or threaten her. I'm like, oh, I'll post this stuff online unless you do whatever. That's already illegal. As we know in this modern world, artificial intelligence, you can create all sorts of images. And so the liberals have proposed, again, in response to calls for change, the liberals have proposed that, uh, sexual deep fakes would be added to the non-consensual distribution of images. And so if it looks like the person, but it's not an actual picture, that was, I suppose, a loophole in the law.

You know, technology changes fast. But this is seeking to address the various ways violence, as it were, could be inflicted on intimate partners. Okay. Is Canada an outlier with these types of changes, like specifically around recognizing violence against women as its own thing in the criminal law? We're at the forefront, but we're not blind. blazing the trail necessarily. On famicide, countries such as Croatia have legislated it. Most

recently, Italy, on coercive control, England and Wales have put it into official language. So we're following closely at the lead. So I would say Canada is in the vanguard, if not at the exact front. Okay, let's talk about the changes to mandatory minimums. For some background, mandatory minimums are when Parliament decides on automatic punishment for some crimes. So we're talking about a sentence of mandatory time in prison. or a minimum fine, for example. But a lot of these mandatory minimums have been deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. Why is that? Yeah, so we'd rewind probably more than a decade to the Stephen Harper years, again,

the tough on crime reputation of the conservatives. And part of the changes of that error in the criminal code were to levy a number of mandatory minimums for various crimes such as drugs and guns. And again, a minimum punishment might be, you know, off the top of my head, but something like five years in jail, for armed robbery. And, you know, that's probably, in most cases, a just punishment. But a number of the Harper minimums went up to the Supreme Court,

and the question was, are they constitutional? And so the basis is Section 11B of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is prohibition against the state inflicting cruel and unusual punishment. And so the courts then consider the minimum against that idea, and they don't necessarily look at the case. hand, but they use what are called somewhat controversially, reasonable hypotheticals, not just made up ideas that are just completely outlandish. But, you know, potential scenarios that someone might be charged for this crime and then face this minimum punishment,

but then that minimum punishment might be, you know, quite obviously much too much. In legal jargon, it would be grossly disproportionate. And so courts on that basis, coming up with, quote, a reasonable hypothetical, looking at the minimum, and then looking at the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment will then rule that a variety of minimums are cruel and unusual, grossly disproportionate, and so the minimum will be struck down. And the most recent example, a Supreme Court case in October, it was about possession and accessing child pornography, for which the minimum punishment was one year. And the court came up the idea that in certain scenarios, that would be grossly disproportionate. It would be cruel and

unusual punishment. And so that minimum was struck down. Now we have the liberals looking to revive more than a dozen minimums, including again the minimum one year in jail for possessing or accessing child pornography. So is the idea here that the Supreme Court kind of wants to look at things on a case-to-case basis versus, you know, putting a blanket mandatory minimum on all cases? Exactly. Colloquially speaking, you know, one size fits all generally doesn't work. You know, the medium t-shirt is going to fit some people, but it's not going to fit everyone. And in crimes, you know, there can be a lot of nuances. And in general, while a minimum punishment might fit the bill for 90% of cases, if it is not fitting in 10% of cases, you know, especially from the court's

point of view, it looks unfair. Judges as well, prized their independence. And to have discretion, especially in the situation of sentencing, like what is the appropriate punishment? The judge, the trial judge, has access to all the evidence, here's all the information, and sentencing is something that really is in the hands of an individual judge, and it's not a power struggle, but judges see, well, this minimum just doesn't fit this situation. So then what does Bill C-16 change around mandatory minimums? So in 2016, when the Beverly McLaughlin court, when she was Chief Justice, struck down a minimum on drugs, drug crimes. And at the time, a year before, a gun crime minimum had been struck down as well.

So it was all in the news how the court was knocking down the Stephen Harper mandatory minimums. But in the 2016 judgment, McLaughlin very specifically outlined, you know, what would fly, what would be constitutional. She suggested to Parliament if Parliament wanted to, they could institute minimums that had a, quote, safety valve. And so that's what the liberals have mostly done, I would say. So the minimum is X unless the minimum is grossly disproportionate. So very specifically taking the Supreme Court wording. One little curveball in this is if the minimum isn't chosen by the judge, jail time will still be required. Okay.

The Liberals have tried to kind of very specifically address what the Supreme Court said would fly for minimum punishments in the Charter. But on this, if this goes through specifically as worded, it's almost guaranteed to be challenged. What outcome would emerge thereafter? It's hard to know. But it would definitely be challenged. We'll be right back. All right. So we've gone over the changes to Femmicide and course of controls. well as how the federal government is trying to impose a new form of mandatory minimums.

Now let's look at the third group of changes. This is to deal with court delays. First off, Dave, why are cases taking forever to make their way through the court system? You know, I mentioned hospitals earlier, and I've come in recent months to use that example to some casual conversation. What's up with the courts? I'm like, it's just like hospitals. You know, you can go to the hospital and get served, especially if something's gone badly wrong. But, you know, you might have to wait if it's not serious. And so the courts are the same. You know, Canada's population has risen over the years. And there's a ton of cases. Cases these days are a lot more complex, the evidence requirements and sex assaults, for instance. And courts are just really, really jammed up. One specific

example is 20 years ago, there were 10% more judges relative to the population than today. And so, again, a bigger population, we haven't added enough judges to keep up. And then the big factor in 2016, a Supreme Court decision called Jordan. The Supreme Court was looking at longstanding delays in the justice system and was thinking, we've got to do something about this. And so they decided to create deadlines, strict deadlines for criminal trials. And those are 18 months in provincial court from the day a person is charged and 30 months in what's called Superior Court from the day a person is charged. You know, there's a charter right to have a trial within a reasonable amount of time. So the accused, I know it's uncomfortable and lawyers will say

this right to a reasonable trial within reasonable time is not a popular right. But the accused also have rights. I just want to underline that. Those deadlines, they haven't wreaked havoc on their own delays already existed, but having a point where a case will hit the wall if it doesn't get completed has seen, you know, many, many, many thousands of cases thrown out of court due to delays. And some of these involve, you know, again, sexual assault allegations. And so imagine yourself, you are the victim of sexual assault. There's an alleged perpetrator, you know, a case is proceeding. And then it hits the 18-month deadline and then, boom, it's over.

There's no guilty. There's no not guilty. The case is what's called stayed. And so it's effectively tossed out of court, and that's that. How frequently does this happen, like that cases are derailed by deadlines imposed by the Supreme Court? A lot is the answer, you know, relatively a lot. too much, way, way, way too much. We recently were reporting statistics Canada data for the latest full fiscal year available, and that's 2023 through 2024. And about 10,000 criminal cases across

Canada were stayed or withdrawn that had exceeded the Jordan deadlines. So that's a huge number, and it's been around 10,000 for a couple years now annually. And that's about 4% of all criminal cases across the country. So that's almost one out of 20 cases. And again, among those, you know, there were a few homicide cases that get thrown out. There's more than 500 sexual assault cases that get thrown out. So not only does that the pain of the assault last, there's no conclusion from the justiceism. Can you talk about a case that comes? to mind that illustrates this problem? Yeah, so an advocate, Kate Alexander, I've spoken with

a number of times now. In 2020, so during the pandemic, she was in Toronto at the time, you know, meets men, it goes well. They move in together relatively quickly early into 2021. And then, you know, then there's a few flashes of violence. And then that summer, according to Kate, he beats her badly, like very, you know, quite severely. She's concussed and she's left laying there on the floor. And he, you know, he's on the lamb for a little bit. I think four days. something that he's arrested, he's in jail overnight, he's granted bail, and, you know, charges are laid, and case is proceeding, case hits the Jordan deadlines, and is stayed. And so for Kate Alexander, this is a new experience all around, especially with the justice

system. And she just, you know, was not only disgusted for herself at how nothing got done, but how prevalent it was. So she founded an activist group called End Violence Everywhere. And they're advocates for tougher laws on bail and especially to do something about the Jordan deadlines to that sexual assault victims see justice rather than to see their cases hit a wall with no resolution. What does Bill C-16 say it'll do to help with the delays that result in cases being tossed out, like in Kate's example? A number of things. And the first one that jumps in mind is complex cases. As we've discussed, cases are a lot more complex these days. and so the liberals have wording in the proposed bill.

The Jordan deadlines are counted in specific ways. You know, it can go over a deadline, but then days will be minus if the defense is at blame for the delays. Those will be subtracted from the deadlines. It's basically to get the Crown prosecutors to move the case along quickly. But in complex cases, the liberals have proposed to subtract a number of different days from the Jordan tally if it's a complex case. So in theory, fewer will exceed the deadline and more cases will be completed.

Another effort the liberals have put in is, again, evidentiary requirements for sexual assaults, trying to streamline it, if I could say. There's like 20 pages in the bill about the sections and the criminal code on sexual assault. So there's a lot of changes there. And then the last one, and this one would be controversial. So if you are the accused and a judge has ruled an unreasonable delay, the remedy, there is only one remedy, a stay of proceedings. The case is effectively ended. And the liberals very vaguely in the bill propose a stay shouldn't be the only remedy, but they don't name what are other potential remedies.

And the other problem is the remedy of a stay for unreasonable delay is a Supreme Court precedent. So now you have proposed legislation that aims to, you know, usurp Supreme Court precedent. So it's all quite confusing. Like what would these other remedies be exactly? No one quite seems to know. Like one idea is like, okay, we hit the 30 month deadline. Well, now let's start working. Expedite the trial.

Perhaps expediting a trial at that moment in time could be a remedy. But it's unclear what other remedies would be. And it's unclear how the courts would view the wording of these proposals. Yeah, it sounds like the remedy for something taking too long is the stay, right? And then there's nothing else that's out there right now. Is that what I'm understanding? Yeah, I would say that exactly. you know, they've been trying to move the trial along throughout the 18 month or 30 month period

and they hit the deadline and that's it. You know, you're the accused, your charter rights have been violated and the remedy for that is a stay of proceedings. The case is effectively shelved. As difficult as that is for the victim involved, again, the accused has rights as well and that's the current situation. Right. Couldn't the Supreme Court just change how long the deadlines are to avoid throwing a case out? Yeah, that's definitely a possibility and it's percolating right now. There's a lot of things in flux with this bill being proposed. But if this bill were to pass, it changes the lay of the land. But last week, the Supreme Court did hear a drug case that was around the Jordan deadlines. It had been thrown out of the lower courts. And the Supreme Court ordered the case

to go back to trial, even though it had exceeded the deadlines. The court ruled from the bench. I was listening to the hearing that day. So there was about two hours of back and forth between all the lawyers. The court asked some questions. And then they deliberated for an hour and they came back and said, the case is going back to trial and then we'll have written reasons, you know, at some point in the future. And those written reasons might include more information on what the court thinks about Jordan. Chief Justice Richard Wagner, you know, without really tipping a hat, it was a question, not a statement. But he did ask one of the lawyers in the case whether the 18-month and 30-month ceilings were appropriate a decade ago, but, you know,

a decade passes, and maybe they're not appropriate anymore. So the court from the Chief Justice at least, you know, sounded vaguely open-minded to potentially looking at that 18 and 30. But compared with, you know, previous years, given everything happening, it seemed a possibility. So a lot of these changes are meant to help the victims of crime. It's actually called the Protecting Victims Act. And we've talked about how the accused have charter protected rights in Canada. But do victims have similar rights? Yeah, there's a victim bill of rights that was passed by the Stephen Harper government near the end of their run in 2015, and it outlines a number of things.

But it's not quite a law. It's not the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. And so, of course, the accused has their right to trial within a reasonable time. But in general, the entire justice system is on the side of victims, I would say. It doesn't necessarily always feel that way if you are the victim. It's a Byzantine Kafka-S system at times. I'm pretty sure if you're in the thick of it. But, you know, when cops charge someone with a crime, the crown's on board with those charges, the goal is to convict the person because the cops believe there's enough evidence to convict the person and the crown has also decided there's enough evidence to convict the person.

So once someone's charged, the collective goal of the justice system beyond the defense lawyer is to convict the alleged perpetrator. And so the entire system effectively is working on behalf of victims every day, trying to get cases to the finish line. And, you know, no Crown prosecutor wants to see a case stayed. That all said, there's no specific right for a victim to see their case completed. So with any crime legislation, a government has to balance the rights of the accused with the needs of a victim. And so I just wanted to get a sense of the reaction. What has been the reaction to this bill so far? you know it's it's a mix and you know advocates who have been working for uh to reduce violence

against women are pretty happy with the result to see femicide named in the criminal code proposed to be named in the criminal code you know naming things is important in life course of control you know it could go a long way to address something that is happening but that all said you know the canadian civil liberties association uh they're a little skeptical of femicide automatically as first-degree murder. Again, the sentencing, you know, it may be a femicide, but should it really be a minimum of 25 years in jail? It's, again, a very, very stiff punishment. So a bit of skepticism there from the Civil Liberties Association. On those other fronts about the minimums and about the delays, a lot of question marks from

lawyers about, is this really constitutional? This looks pretty aggressive. So it's a mix of reaction. You know, advocates are happy to see. the work on violence against women, but a lot of the mechanics that have been proposed for the criminal code will have to see how it all plays out. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, there's a lot of mixed reaction there. So what is the likelihood that this bill will pass? You know, it seems pretty good. Right now the liberals are in a real corner. You know, at some point next year, you never know with the minority government, like how long does the minority last? But presuming the minority government lasts through 2026, I would see this bill making it through. There was a private

members bill on course of control in the last parliament before prerogation in January. It was almost going to pass. So the conservatives were on board with that one. I can see the conservatives and the liberals getting together on this one to pass it. But in general, it looks like the conservative strategy is to kind of stymie the liberals at every front. And so we'll see kind of logistically politics how it all plays out. But I think the heart or the gist of the bill would probably have enough support to pass in parliament. Dave, thanks so much for joining us today. Excellent. I appreciate it. That was David Ebner, the Globe's Justice Reporter.

That's it for today. I'm Cheryl Sutherland. Alyssa Wheeler joins us as our Brooke Forbes fellow and is our associate producer. Our producers are Madeline White, Mihal Stein, and Ali Graham. David Crosby edits the show. Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Angela Pichenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening. I'll talk to you tomorrow.