Criminalization of coercive control may be a reality in Canada

February 17, 2026

In December 2025, the federal government introduced Bill C-16: Protecting Victims Act, which proposes significant changes to various laws, including the Criminal Code. The stated purpose of this Bill is “to better protect survivors of gender-based violence, sexual violence and intimate partner violence and keep kids safe from predators.”

A key component of Bill C-16 is the criminalization of coercive control.

What is coercive control?

Coercive control is a form of violence within the family that involves a pattern of behaviour over time designed to induce feelings of fear, helplessness and a complete loss of agency, freedom and independence in another person. This pattern is cumulative and usually involves a number of abusive tactics repeated over time, including psychological abuse (which could be things like verbal abuse, intimidation, threats, surveillance, stalking), social isolation and financial abuse (which could be things like limiting or taking away any kind of access to money or financial resources). It can include physical violence but doesn’t always.

Coercive control is included in the definition of family violence in the federal Divorce Act, and in Ontario’s Children’s Law Reform Act. Its presence has to be considered by judges when making parenting decisions.

Coercive control is not currently listed in the Criminal Code. However, various existing offences criminalize behaviours that are often associated with this kind of violence (for example, offences like criminal harassment, threats of bodily harm, mischief, forced confinement and so on).

Past attempts to criminalize coercive control

This is not the first time Canada has considered criminalizing this kind of violence. A private member’s bill, Bill C-332, was introduced in May 2023 by MP Laurel Collins. This Bill made its way through the House of Commons process all the way to the Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs, but it ultimately failed to pass before the last federal election was called.

Instead of reintroducing this past Bill, the government has included the criminalization of coercive control as one element of Bill C-16. The language around criminalization, including the definition of coercive control in this new Bill, is very similar to what was included in Bill C-332.

We continue to be concerned with criminalization as a strategy to address coercive control

At Luke’s Place, through our work supporting survivors of intimate partner violence (IPV) in family court, we have developed a deep understanding of the many ways different legal systems intersect with and affect women’s family law experiences.

We have followed discussions about the criminalization of coercive control with great interest and through the lens of the potential impact of such a move on survivors and their engagement with both criminal and family law.

Luke’s Place engaged in extensive advocacy in response to Bill C-332 to raise concerns with the unintended consequences of creating a new criminal offence before first addressing the systemic failures of the criminal justice system for survivors. In our Brief to the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, we shared some of the following concerns:

The criminal law has largely failed survivors of gender-based violence.

Given that police reporting rates of IPV are generally low (approximately 30%), a new offence may affect only a small number of victims.

Abusers have been very successful in using other legal and policy responses to IPV against their victims (e.g. mandatory charging). Criminalizing coercive control presents the same possibility; in particular, that abusers will manipulate the intent of the law to have their partner charged.

By its nature, coercive control is hard to define, making it difficult for police to accurately assess, especially if the abuser is making counter-claims.

It may prove difficult to determine the elements of the offence.

Establishing what evidence will be necessary to lead to a finding of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt may prove challenging.

There is likely to be a differential impact of criminalization on women from marginalized communities (for example, women with criminal histories, Indigenous and racialized women, women with disabilities).

Criminalization will have an impact on survivors’ family law and child protection cases.

A carceral approach is expensive and does not offer either healing to survivors or a meaningful opportunity for abusers to take responsibility, heal and learn new behaviours for moving forward.

We continue to have these same concerns in response to Bill C-16.

Importance of delayed implementation

If Bill C-16 passes, time needs to be spent now thinking about how the criminalization of coercive control will effectively be implemented. We strongly believe that any addition of coercive control to the Criminal Code needs to be paired with extensive public legal education and very specific, in-depth training for police and all other legal system professionals who will be implementing this new law. All of this work should take place before the new law comes into effect.

In our Brief to the Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs, we advocated strongly for the delayed implementation of criminalization and referenced examples from other jurisdictions where the law was passed but not immediately implemented. We ultimately recommended that the government first build the necessary infrastructure to support survivors of intimate partner violence to engage meaningfully in the criminal system before simply adding more laws to the Criminal Code.

Current status of Bill C-16

As of today, Bill C-16 has passed second reading in the House of Commons and has been referred to the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights. Luke’s Place continues to believe that criminalization may not be the best approach to dealing with coercive control. We will continue to monitor the status of this Bill and provide updates on our Blog as it continues to progress through the legislative process.

More on our advocacy regarding the criminalization of coercive control:

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