OTTAWA—By the time violence reaches the courtroom, it has already done its work.
It has nested itself in kitchens and bedrooms, in text messages and browser histories, in the long quiet before a blow lands or a life is taken. It thrives in delay, ambiguity, and a justice system that has too often asked victims to carry the burden of proof, patience, and survival all at once.
On December 9, the federal government introduced what it is calling one of the most consequential updates to the Criminal Code in a generation: Bill C-16, the Protecting Victims Act. The legislation aims to confront intimate partner violence, femicide, sexual violence, and the growing digital exploitation of children — crimes that are not abstract on Manitoulin Island or in the Sudbury–Manitoulin district, but familiar, recurring, and consistently underreported.
For readers of The Manitoulin Expositor, the terrain is already known. Intimate partner violence, sexual assault and hate-motivated crimes do not arrive here as headlines from elsewhere; they surface through court dockets, police reports, community vigils, and the quiet work of local support services stretched thin across long distances and small populations. In rural and island communities, where anonymity is scarce and housing options are limited, leaving can be more dangerous than staying.
Naming the violence before it kills
One of the most significant shifts in Bill C-16 is its explicit recognition of femicide and coercive control.
Under the proposed changes, murder motivated by hate — including femicide — would be classified as first-degree murder even when there was no planning or deliberation. Killings that occur alongside patterns of coercive or controlling behaviour, sexual violence, or exploitation by an intimate partner would also meet that threshold.
This distinction matters deeply in places like Manitoulin, where violence often unfolds incrementally and behind closed doors. Advocates have long pointed out that by the time physical assaults become visible to police, a pattern of control — isolation from family, monitoring of movement, threats tied to housing or children — has often been in place for years.
By criminalizing coercive and controlling behaviour as a pattern, the legislation aims to give police and courts the authority to intervene earlier, before abuse escalates to lethal violence. It is a legal acknowledgment of what survivors and frontline workers have been saying for decades: violence is a continuum, not a single act.
Nationally, intimate partner homicides rose sharply last year, with women overwhelmingly the victims. While local data is often limited or aggregated across regions, Northern and rural communities consistently face heightened risk due to isolation, fewer services, and longer response times — realities that shape outcomes long before a case reaches a courtroom.
When delay becomes its own form of harm
The legislation also addresses court delays under what is known as the Jordan framework — a legal standard that has quietly reshaped the justice landscape in Northern Ontario.
The Jordan framework stems from a 2016 Supreme Court of Canada decision (R. v. Jordan) that set strict ceilings on how long criminal cases can take to move through the courts. Under the ruling, cases must generally be completed within 18 months in provincial courts and 30 months in superior courts. If those limits are exceeded and the Crown cannot justify the delay, judges may stay the proceedings, meaning the case is dismissed without a verdict.
While intended to protect the accused’s right to a timely trial, the framework has had serious consequences for victims, particularly in regions reliant on circuit courts. On Manitoulin Island, where court dates are infrequent and legal resources limited, delays are often structural rather than strategic.
When cases involving sexual assault or intimate partner violence are stayed due to delay, survivors are left without resolution — not because the harm was unproven, but because time ran out.
Bill C-16 would provide clearer guidance to courts, including clarifying that a stay of proceedings is not automatic in cases of delay, particularly in sexual assault matters. The bill also proposes to expand access to testimonial aids and improve victims’ access to information about their cases — changes that may reduce retraumatization in courtrooms where survivors often encounter their abusers face-to-face.
In small communities, where everyone knows everyone, the courtroom is never a neutral space.
Digital harm, real consequences — even here
The legislation also updates the Criminal Code to reflect how violence now moves through digital spaces.
New offences and increased penalties are proposed for the non-consensual distribution of intimate images, including sexual deepfakes, as well as threats to distribute such material. These forms of abuse are increasingly used to control, shame, and silence women and girls — including in rural communities where reputational harm can be swift and enduring.
For children and youth, the bill strengthens mandatory minimum prison sentences for those who possess or access child sexual abuse material and introduces tougher measures to address online sextortion, child luring, and cross-border exploitation.
While online crimes may seem distant from island life, they are not. Internet access collapses geography. Youth on Manitoulin navigate the same platforms, risks, and vulnerabilities as their urban peers — often with fewer local resources to turn to when something goes wrong.
The bill also creates a new offence targeting the recruitment and grooming of youth into criminal activity, recognizing a growing pattern in which organized crime exploits young people as intermediaries, precisely because of their perceived disposability.
Mandatory minimums, with limits
Bill C-16 preserves mandatory minimum prison sentences for serious offences while allowing limited judicial discretion where a specific minimum would be “grossly disproportionate.” Jail time would still be required, except in cases of murder and high treason, which continue to carry life sentences.
The government frames this approach as an effort to keep mandatory minimums constitutional and enforceable, responding to previous court rulings that struck down penalties deemed too rigid.
What this means on the Island
Legislation does not replace housing. It does not create shelters, counselling spaces, or transportation out of danger. It does not undo the social and economic pressures that trap people in violent situations — pressures that are particularly acute on Manitoulin Island.
But law does signal what a society is willing to name and intervene in.
For communities here, where violence is often hidden by familiarity and compounded by isolation, the Protecting Victims Act represents a shift toward earlier recognition, clearer accountability, and a justice system less willing to let harm disappear into procedural delay.
Whether those promises translate into real protection will depend on resources, enforcement, and whether survivors — on the Island and beyond — are believed the first time they speak.
Violence feeds on silence. This bill, at the very least, insists on calling it what it is.
