During the 16 Days of Activism against Gender Based Violence I always take pause to think about how we are enacting activism in our work at WAVAW.

This year’s global theme is #hearmetoo, it’s an important theme as we continue our journey towards accountability as an organization and encourage systems to do the same. Today I am thinking specifically about systemic change and the law. Access to the Criminal Legal System for survivors remains a topic that we are engaged in daily through our work with survivors in WAVAW’s Victim Service program.

Over the past year in our systemic change project we have been engaged in thinking about how we might answer the question, “How can survivor’s confidence be increased in the Criminal Legal System after sexual assault”. This has lead us to: interview survivors, look at our files, consider what survivors engagement with the system looks like, and inquire with Victim Service workers around the Province about their experiences supporting survivors through the system. Along the way we have asked ourselves who are we seeing come forward, how will we capture the ideas and expertise of survivors who may never have an increased confidence in the system; how will we share their truth. We must continually face the limitations of the system that is tasked with ideas and standards of credibility that are based/rooted/grown  in a colonial, classist, ablest, racist, homophobic, transphobic culture. We will continue to push ourselves as an organization to reflect and represent these truths when we are demanding change for survivors.

It is exciting and necessary to influence/push for/demand change. There are many good people doing exactly that across this land. Perhaps it is not widely known that Bill C-51 has been working its way through our governing systems at the Federal level since June 2017.  Since its introduction feminist Legal Scholars across this country have been providing input and very important information before the committees tasked with this bill on important changes that they believe need to be made. These changes that they, and we, have advocated for are grounded in a commitment to ensuring that our laws consider vast experiences and realities.

What is at stake at this point is clarifying consent only for some. The current language of Bill C-51 risks establishing unconsciousness as the threshold for incapacity in sexual assault law, which will make survivors who are conscious, but severely intoxicated or otherwise incapable of consenting to sexual contact, significantly more vulnerable to sexual violence and less likely to receive justice for this violence in the legal system. Feminist Legal scholars and Senator Kim Pate are concerned about survivors who are not unconscious and at the same time incapable of giving consent due to mental/physical/cognitive disability, and who we know are often targeted due to our society marginalizing those very identities.

Senator Pate wants our support to ensure that changes are made to BillC-51 to reflect these concerns. Senator Pate wants the laws to reflect that: if a survivor lacks the capacity to appreciate the essential features of the sexual activity they are engaging in, cannot understand the risks of the activity, does not understand that they have the choice to engage in it or not, or is unable to communicate consent or communicate withdrawal of that consent, it would be dangerous for a court to find that a survivor is capable of providing voluntary consent. This would ensure that these laws are about more than intoxication, it would ensure that these changes protect more survivors with marginalized identities.

Please write to: justin.trudeau@parl.gc.ca and Jody.Wilson-Raybould@parl.gc.ca and please cc Kim at kpate@sen.parl.gc.ca to say that you stand behind the proposed changes to Bill C-51 that Feminist Legal Scholars and Senator Kim Pate have put before the committee in order to be inclusive and protect survivors.

In Solidarity,

Dalya Israel
WAVAW Rape Crisis Centre