Enough is Enough: Femicide and Domestic Violence in Canada

On October 19th 2021, a 24 year-old woman, Romane Bonnier, was murdered by her ex-partner in broad daylight at approximately 4:30 PM on the corner of Aylmer and Milton Street in downtown Montreal—just steps away from McGill University and in the center of the area it students have dubbed its “Ghetto”. The killer, 36 year-old François Pelletier, stabbed Bonnier numerous times in the upper body. Bonnier was rushed to the hospital in critical condition where she died not long after. Pelletier was arrested at the scene and brought into custody to face first degree murder charges. 

Since the beginning of 2021, 17 women in Quebec have been killed by men. Romane Bonnier’s tragic death points to a pattern of increasing rates of femicide – the gender-based killing of women/girls – across Canada and an alarming surge in violence against women. 

Enough is enough: women should be able to walk down the street without fear of violence and death. 

Evidence shows that since 2020, intimate partner violence has become more common across the globe and in Canada. According to the Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice and Accountability (CFOJA), between January and June of 2019, 60 women and girls were killed due to femicide. During the same period in 2020, the number rose to 78 women and girls. In only the first half of 2021, the number has reached 92 women and girls dead due to femicide. Unsurprisingly, women of colour and particularly Indigenous women, are overrepresented within these numbers. Of the reported 92 female victims, 12% are Indigenous, despite their making up only 4% of the overall female Canadian population. What is clear is that despite movements towards women’s liberation that have been popularized in Canadian politics and society, female bodies continue to bear extreme violence at increasing rates. 

The United Nations has called this increased violence a “shadow pandemic” of sexual violence that has emerged alongside the larger COVID-19 pandemic. Women’s risk factors that make them susceptible to violence have been exacerbated, such as public health measures like lockdowns limiting access to social resources, along with economic devastation. 

Economic devastation, such as job loss that was common during the pandemic, may have forced women to move in with their (potential) abusers, increasing the risk of violence and increasing an abuser’s access to a partner. During public health lockdowns, it is harder to escape, ask for help, seek information on available resources, or even call a helpline, when quarantined with one’s own abuser. Even if a victim had managed to escape amidst the pandemic, social services such as shelters would have become nearly impossible to secure since they were forced to limit their capacity to lessen the risk of spreading COVID-19. Shelters have had to turn women away, sending them right back to their abusers or onto the streets—both options putting these women at significant risk of sexual violence. 

“We, as in violence against women organizations, advocates and survivors, have been naming that there is a shadow pandemic happening,” says Farrah Khan, the manager of Ryerson University’s Office of Sexual Violence Support and Education, “and that is gender-based violence.” 

In response to increased violence against women during the pandemic, the federal Canadian government announced a 50 million dollar emergency fund to be distributed to organizations that provide social services to women survivors who have experienced gender-based violence. But the fund does little to actually address the violence itself, throwing money into a void while the numbers of women murdered due to gender-based violence accumulates. This illustrates the government’s indirect acceptance of the status quo since, if the government truly wanted to protect women, it would not have taken a public health emergency for the government to open its wallet to these already thinly stretched organizations. 

On top of this surge in violence against women, survivors do not report their experiences, silenced until it is too late. In fact, only 5% of incidents of sexual assault are formally reported to the police. Feelings of self-blame, fear of being blamed, fear of disbelief, fear of job loss and poverty, fear of physical endangerment and fear of death, all contribute to reasons why survivors do not come forward. But even when women do report, overwhelmingly survivors also report a negative experience with the police,

This silence feeds the continuity of gender-based violence and femicide to a point where someone can commit a murder in the broad daylight steps away from both a University and an elementary school. 

In addition to everything else, only 1% or less of those reported sexual assault incidents result in the offender being convicted. What this shows is that from the streets, all the way up to the judicial system, Canadian society does not take seriously the most heinous of crimes

You might find yourself wondering how any of this is possible considering Canadian case law that is in place to protect women from gender-based violence. But the reality is that there are major gaps in legislation that fail women, like for example, R v. Seaboyer in 1991, which discredited the idea that rape is most often perpetrated by strangers. The myth lives on and continues to deter women from coming forward against people that they know—particularly in cases of marital rape and intimate partner violence as juries are not as likely to believe women based on the victim’s past relationship with the accused. 

This illustrates a gap in formal legislation and society that must be closed. Otherwise women will continue to bear extreme violence in Canada and the courts will continue to fail in bringing about justice. Closing the gap will require adopting “believe women” mandates from local society, the courts, and all levels of the penal system. ‘Believe women’ refers to a baseline respect for women who come forward about their experience of sexual assault—where we treat women as knowers of their own truths rather than vindictive claimants of false accusations. This will help to normalize conversations about violence rather than allowing stigmas that are wrapped up in the topic to continue to silence women. Further, any mandate that aims to protect women must center women that are most vulnerable, namely women of colour and Indigenous women. Otherwise, some women will continue to fall through the cracks and change will thus never be accomplished. 

The shadow pandemic is a wake up call: enough is enough. 

Edited by Naya Sophia Moser

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Riyana Karim

Riyana Karim-Hajiani is a student at McGill University pursuing a B.A. in Political Science as an Honours student. Currently in her third year at McGill, she has been a longstanding staff writer with the Catalyst. Particularly, she explores Indigenous socio-legal issues pertaining to the laws that affect Indigenous peoples and the rights of Indigenous peoples in Canada. She is an advocate for social justice and for rights distribution.