We need your help to improve protections for intimate partner violence & family violence. If you have experience with restraining orders, peace bonds, bail release orders or other protection orders in Ontario, complete our surveys now until April 11 2025! https://t.co/y6K0YPmEsq

Join LCO's Laura Snowdon on Oct 24 at the Osgoode International Access to Justice Forum! Part of the “Gender-Based Violence” panel, she’ll be highlighting findings from the LCO’s international review of protection order strategies. Details & registration:

Many thanks to the organizations committed to Motion CC8.2: @AuraFreedom, @schliferclinic, @NWRCT, @whiteribbon, @WomanACT, Women’s Habitat of Etobicoke, and @YWCAToronto. We're looking forward to the next steps!

LCO Counsel Laura Snowdon joined the City of Toronto GBV/IPV Working Group consultation on Monday and shared expertise on recommendations for implementing Motion CC8.2 and addressing the declared epidemic of gender-based and intimate partner violence.

As our law reform project continues, we look forward to advancing more evidence-based recommendations to strengthen legal protections for intimate partner violence in Ontario.

Thank you to MPP Jess Dixon for the invitation, and to MPP Dixon, MPP @PeggySattlerNDP, and MPP @kristynwongtam for their thoughtful questions engaging with our work.

In part, we called on Ontario to make protection orders available on an emergency basis, and to create a confidential database of protection orders that can be accessed by courts, law enforcement, and gender-based violence service providers across the province.

I advocated for nine recommendations that the @LCO_CDO believes will improve the safety of predominantly women and children who seek legal protection from intimate partner violence.

Last week, I testified before Ontario’s Standing Committee on Justice Policy to explain why protection orders are failing to prevent intimate partner violence, and how we can improve them.

pg. 104-110 of the TMU report outlines the outsized backlash these students faced, much of it coming from lawyers - as the report states, "the students have already endured enough" https://t.co/TIxch143Ut

Finally, CJ MacDonald calls for reparations from members of the legal community who argued, for example, that student signatories are not fit to be called to the bar because they have become “shills for Hamas.”

CJ MacDonald's report also includes extremely well-deserved recognition of two faculty members, Prof. @JoshuaSealy and Prof. Hilary Evans Cameron, who acted as support persons for some of the respondent students, and to whom the external review team is indebted.

As one brave student put it, "I wanted to stand by why I came to this school and what I believe in, and that’s doing what is right even when it’s hard."

Overwhelmingly, students told him "they felt compelled to speak out in support of Palestinians and call for a ceasefire because it was 'the right thing to do', in light of what many of the signatories viewed as a disproportionate response to the October 7 attacks by Israel."

He emphasizes "there was a huge gulf between what the students genuinely intended — to show solidarity with Palestinians, support a ceasefire and encourage LASL administration to take an unequivocal stand against the war — and how the letter landed."

Chief Justice MacDonald purposefully centers students' intentions in his report finding that TMU/LASL law students' pro-Palestinian letter was a valid exercise of student expression.

Always a joy to welcome new colleagues for the summer - and I'm especially lucky to be joined by Farah, Lindsay, Yasmeen and Yasmine on our protection orders project ☀️

When four of the country’s leading scholars on domestic violence are arguing against a Bill seeking to criminalize coercive control by raising serious concerns about its implementation making matters worse for those whom the Bill aims to protect, I hope legislators are listening.

Today, LCO Counsel Laura Snowdon (@laurahsnowdon) shares #IPV insight from her ongoing work in the LCO's Improving Protection Orders project and lessons from her time at @NSMassCasualty Commission at the 2023 Intimate Partner Domestic Violence Court Education Program.

Catch the recording of our panel on the intimate partner violence epidemic and protection orders during Access to Justice Week 2023 at the link below cc @nehachughlaw @DeepaMattoo @francesechapman