Justice Canada announces support of about $50M per year for victims of crime
The federal government has highlighted the Protecting Victims Act (bill C-16), stating that it seeks to build on recently announced support of around $50 million per year for victims and survivors of crime throughout Canada.
“Our government is strengthening the Criminal Code to better protect victims and survivors, and to ensure abusers and predators face the full force of the law,” said Sean Fraser, Canada’s justice minister and attorney general, in a news release.
The federal justice department described the proposed legislation as “one of the most consequential updates in generations.”
“Bill C-16 represents the most significant advancement in federal victims’ rights since the Canadian Victims Bill of Rights was enacted in 2015,” said Dr. Benjamin Roebuck, federal ombudsperson for victims of crime, in the news release. “It demonstrates that when survivors are heard and systemic issues are identified, Parliament responds.”
The justice department explained that the proposed amendments seek to confront modern threats, protect children from predators, and help fight femicide and sexual, gender-based, and intimate partner violence.
In planned reforms seeking to strengthen the response to these types of crime, the Protecting Victims Act intends to:
- Classify murders in circumstances involving control, hate, sexual violence, or exploitation as first-degree murder
- Define such murders as femicide when a woman is the victim
- Criminalize coercive control, defined as a pattern of controlling conduct against an intimate partner
- Include non-consensual deepfakes in the prohibition against the non-consensual distribution of intimate images
- Criminalize threats to distribute intimate images, including sexually explicit deepfakes, without the consent of the depicted individual
- Raise the maximum penalty for non-consensually distributing intimate images to 10 years of imprisonment
- Amend the criminal harassment offence to cover harassing conduct committed via modern technology and to require that a reasonable person in the victim’s circumstances feared for their safety
- Increase the maximum penalty on summary conviction for sexual assault to two years minus a day
- Make sextortion an aggravating factor in the extortion provision
In contemplated changes aiming to keep kids safe from those trying to take advantage of them, bill C-16 intends to accomplish the following, among others:
- Restore all mandatory minimum imprisonment penalties presently inoperative after courts deemed them unconstitutional
- Permit courts to impose an imprisonment sentence below the mandatory minimum in situations involving grossly disproportionate punishment
- Criminalize threats to distribute child sexual abuse and exploitation material
- Clarify that the child luring offence applies to sextortion
- Prohibit the distribution of bestiality depictions and deepfakes, with a maximum five-year penalty
- Prosecute Canadian citizens and permanent residents who allegedly engaged in child sex tourism
- Introduce amendments to the Mandatory Reporting Act
- Criminalize the involvement of youth in the commission of a crime
- Include counselling youth to commit crimes in the Criminal Code’s aggravating factors
- Help protect children from those who may invite or incite them to expose their sexual organs for a sexual purpose
“By modernizing the Criminal Code, we’re giving law enforcement and courts the tools they need to intervene sooner, to help protect children, and hold offenders to account,” said Rechie Valdez, Canada’s minister of women and gender equality, in the news release. “These reforms reflect today’s realities and strengthen victims’ rights with the goal of making our communities safer.”
Funding for victims and survivors
The federal justice department announced the following investments:
- $8.8 million per year to help provinces and territories implement and improve victim services, victim assistance programs, and the Canadian Victims Bill of Rights, including through the implementation of legal requirements relating to victim impact statements, publication bans, restitution, victim surcharge, and testimonial aids
- $1 million each year for non-governmental organizations to work on projects seeking to support human trafficking victims and survivors
- $3.3 million every year for projects catering to abused children and youth under the Child Advocacy Centres Initiative
- over $1 million for 149 organizations across Canada to support local events, workshops, and activities aimed at spreading awareness about issues and support relevant to victims, survivors, and their loved ones, via the Victims and Survivors of Crime Week in May
