The Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) ruled Friday that intimate partner violence will be recognized as a basis for pursuing civil damages, which one Vancouver advocate says fundamentally changes how Canadian law understands what it means to be a victim of coercive control.
And this landmark decision, according to Angela Marie MacDougall, is a testament to the extraordinary courage and determination of one woman, Kuldeep Kaur Ahluwalia.
“Ahluwalia…really stood in her power and used her voice to pursue justice through years of litigation,” said MacDougall, the executive director of Battered Women’s Support Services (BWSS).
Ahluwalia lived in an abusive relationship for almost 20 years, MacDougall says.
“She experienced what many victims of intimate partner violence experience: coercive control that includes a range of behaviours, including economic abuse, surveillance, clearly physical abuse, all of the dynamics of power and control and domination in relationships,” she said.
“Her leaving and her survival also meant her wanting justice, and justice for the fact that she had been harmed for all of those years by her partner.”
The case centred on whether someone should be able to claim compensation for the tort of intimate partner violence.
“A tort is a type of civil legal claim where a person asks for damages because someone else caused them harm,” the SCC published in a Case in Brief document.
“In this case, the Court had to decide whether existing torts, such as assault and intentional infliction of emotional distress, are enough to address the harm caused by coercive and controlling conduct in an intimate relationship, and whether a new tort should be recognized.”
The SCC ruled that existing torts don’t fully address the issue. This new tort was necessary to create a recognition in the Canadian legal system that is completely distinct from others.
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MacDougall says it is “remarkable” that the court took on the case.
“What it does is that it creates the opportunity to compensate, qualitatively, the very different wrongs that occur in abusive relationships,” she said.
“It’s been a long time in the making here and acknowledged some really important factors about intimate partner violence,” she said.
B.C. Attorney General Niki Sharma says B.C. was the only provincial government in Canada to intervene in this case.
“We did so to support the establishment of a new intimate partner violence tort so that survivors can be seen, heard, and supported with meaningful pathways to accountability for the harm they have experienced,” Sharma said.
“We are proud to have played a role in this historic outcome. The court’s recognition of a new tort will allow survivors of intimate partner violence to seek compensation from their abuser for the unique harms that were not sufficiently captured by the existing legal remedies.”
One of the most powerful passages in the ruling, according to MacDougall, is when one of the judges recognizes that the victim is, in effect, not just an “abused spouse” but is an “unfree spouse,” meaning the essence is that it is not about being bruised, but being unfree.
“That equality piece, that liberation, that freedom in a relationship, is powerful and a recognition at the heart of what abusive relationships are, which are about domination, subjugation, isolation,” she said.
“This shines a light on that factor, and then it now creates the space to qualitatively assess the impact of that.”
MacDougall says this is a momentous decision because new torts are rare.
“The fact that this happened is very telling,” she said.
“All hands raised to Kuldeep Ahluwalia and for her courage and vision and willingness to stay the course.”
The decision is a result of Ahluwalia’s refusal to allow her experiences to be erased, MacDougall says.
“It’s really her victory today.”