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| Heather Campbell Pope |
In Bill C-16, the Protecting Victims Act, Parliament is rightly considering the creation of a standalone coercive control offence within intimate partner relationships, an important step in addressing violence against women, given that coercive control is a known precursor to intimate partner homicide.
However, the proposed offence’s narrow language overlooks a form of gender-based harm that disproportionately affects older women: coercive and controlling behaviour by family members, including adult sons. When the House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights meets on April 27 for clause-by-clause consideration, one measured path forward to correct this exclusion is to amend the wording to include coercive control by both intimate partners and family members, reflecting approaches adopted in other jurisdictions.
England and Wales, for instance, criminalized coercive control by intimate partners and family members in 2015, and in 2023, removed the cohabitation requirement, recognizing that perpetrators do not always live with their victims.
As the Older People’s Commissioner for Wales, an independent watchdog for older people’s rights, has observed, “The criminalization of coercive control is an important step forward in securing older people’s right to access criminal justice.”
In Canada, there is broad consensus across federal parties that older women experiencing coercive control are being left out of the proposed offence. But at this moment, the question before lawmakers is whether parliamentary procedure will be used as a reason not to fix this oversight. Specifically, the view has been advanced that this form of abuse in family settings falls outside the scope of Bill C-16, given its focus on gender-based violence and the prevention of femicide, generally defined as the intentional killing of women, primarily by men, because they are women.
House of Commons procedure is clear that once a bill is referred to committee after second reading, amendments must remain within the principle and scope of the bill; otherwise, they are out of order. An amendment is also inadmissible if it is not relevant to the subject matter of the bill or to the clause under consideration.
In this instance, interpreting Bill C-16’s scope too narrowly risks excluding conduct that reasonably falls within its purpose, creating an artificial boundary that signals to Canadians that elder abuse is somehow less serious or less worthy of legal recognition.
There is growing awareness that older women experience serious, gendered harm through coercive and controlling behaviours by relatives, particularly in situations of dependency, isolation and cognitive impairment. These dynamics can mirror key elements of intimate partner violence, including patterns of intimidation, financial control and restriction of autonomy, even if they do not always culminate in homicide.
That said, we do know that when women are killed by family members, the accused is most often their own son, accounting for 55 per cent of cases, according to 2024 data from the Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice and Accountability. In cases of matricide, mental illness is often a key driver, rather than coercive control. But this does not mean that coercive control by family members is rare, benign or irrelevant to women’s safety.
Indeed, while the link between coercive control and lethal violence outside intimate partner relationships has not been well studied, the triggering event of escalation, where the victim tries to leave the relationship, is less likely in intergenerational family settings. Unlike intimate partnerships, mother-child relationships cannot be exited in the same way, meaning older women may stay despite ongoing abuse.
Paradoxically, this entrapment risks rendering such cases invisible within Bill C-16, despite sustained harm and diminished quality of life, and sometimes, deadly neglect.
A criminal law response to coercive control that is grounded in gender-based analysis should be capable of capturing these cases involving older mothers, grandmothers and others. There is no clear policy rationale for their exclusion.
Older women face conditions that increase vulnerability to such control: they live longer, are more likely to experience widowhood and often rely on family for financial, housing or caregiving support. Lifetime income disparities further heighten the risk of financial dependency and exploitation. An offence that recognizes coercive control only in the context of intimate partners leaves a significant gap in protection, despite similar patterns of harm involving vulnerability, dependency and gendered dynamics.
There is a reasonable argument that extending the offence to family-based contexts would not depart from the bill’s purpose but would give fuller effect to it by capturing gender-based coercive control against women across the lifespan.
Parliament has an opportunity to get this right. If an amendment is put forward later this month to include both intimate partners and relatives, the justice committee should give serious consideration to whether family-based coercive control can be understood as consistent with the bill’s principle and scope.
At a minimum, if procedural constraints prevent female elder abuse victims from being addressed in the bill, the government should clearly commit to closing this gap without delay, so that older women are not left outside the law’s protection.
Heather Campbell Pope, LLB, LLM, is founder of Dementia Justice Canada, a small non-profit dedicated to safeguarding the rights and dignity of people with dementia.
The opinions expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the views of the author’s firm, its clients, Law360 Canada, LexisNexis Canada or any of its or their respective affiliates. This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal advice.
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