Thank you.

Good morning, committee members. My name is Kat Owens, and I am a project director at the Women's Legal Education and Action Fund, or LEAF. I am grateful for the opportunity to appear before you today from Tkaronto, or Toronto, which is within the lands protected by the Dish With One Spoon wampum belt covenant.

LEAF is in solidarity with indigenous communities, and we echo their calls for, among other things, the immediate implementation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's calls to action, as well as the calls for justice from the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. This government has urgent obligations to bring justice to missing and murdered indigenous women, girls and two-spirit persons and their communities, and to ensure that not one more indigenous women, girl or two-spirit person becomes a victim to this crisis.

LEAF is a national charitable organization that works toward ensuring that the law guarantees substantive equality for all women, girls, trans and non-binary people. It does this through litigation, law reform and public legal education.

LEAF is glad that this committee is not only studying the Victims Bill of Rights but is hearing about how victims or survivors of crime can be better supported generally. Given the nature of LEAF's work and expertise in advancing gender equality, I will focus on how to support survivors of gender-based violence, including sexual violence, of which women, girls, trans and non-binary people are disproportionately the targets.

As you know, gender-based violence takes a devastating toll on the lives of victims, survivors and their loved ones. It disproportionately impacts women who are Black, indigenous, queer, trans or disabled. We urge you, as parliamentarians, to hear from and listen to members of these communities and the organizations led by them as you do your work.

We need survivor-centred approaches to addressing and ending gender-based violence, and survivors must have agency and choice in every step of the process. Too often the criminal justice system is the site of further harm for those who look to engage with it. For many survivors, especially those who are Black, indigenous, trans or criminalized, it can simply be unsafe to come forward and engage with formal legal systems.

I have three non-exhaustive recommendations to provide to this committee on how to better support survivors of gender-based violence.

First, we need a fully funded, intersectional national action plan to end gender-based violence. Piecemeal changes to how systems deal with gender-based violence are insufficient to adequately address the problem. We need holistic solutions. We also need parliamentarians of all political stripes to ensure that this work moves forward in a timely way, that it is guided by expert organizations and those with lived experience, and that the plan is put into action.

Second, it is imperative to study, develop and implement survivor-centric alternatives that move beyond existing legal systems. Alternatives like restorative justice and transformative justice models broaden the possibilities for justice, accountability and healing. LEAF is ready to support this work through its alternative justice mechanisms project, which will look at legal barriers to these types of mechanisms for sexual violence and propose law reform measures to address these barriers.

Third, we need to make changes to our existing legal responses to make them more accessible to those survivors who choose to engage with legal systems. Free and independent legal advice and representation must be made available to survivors of gender-based violence. This is crucial for them to understand their options and their legal rights and how to navigate the justice system.

In the criminal context, we need to reform how publication bans are implemented and removed in sexual violence prosecutions, as well as how the criminal justice system deals with breaches of bans by survivors. Whether a publication ban is issued to protect a survivor's identity should be an informed choice made by that survivor. Should she no longer want the ban, there should be a simple process to remove it.

Finally, a survivor should never be prosecuted for breaching a ban put in place solely to protect her identity. I understand that Morrell Andrews will be appearing before you on Thursday, and I would encourage you to listen to her lived experience, leadership and expertise on this issue.

Thank you for your time. I would be happy to answer any questions that you have.

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