The BC Prosecution Service has announced that Jordan Kealy, MLA for Peace River North, has been charged with one count of sexual assault. The BC Prosecution Service has also confirmed that a Special Prosecutor was appointed because the accused is an elected public official.

The criminal court process must now proceed independently and fairly. Every person charged with a criminal offence is entitled to due process and the presumption of innocence.

At the same time, accountability is not limited to the courtroom.

Criminal courts determine whether an offence has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Public institutions have a separate responsibility to maintain public confidence, uphold accountability, and demonstrate leadership while legal proceedings are underway.

But this moment also raises a broader question.

Political parties are gatekeepers to public office.

They recruit candidates, vet candidates, nominate candidates, support candidates, and ultimately ask the public to place trust in those individuals as lawmakers and decision-makers. Communities therefore have a legitimate interest in understanding what standards exist to identify and respond to concerns involving sexual violence, violence against women, harassment, coercive control, and abuse before individuals become elected officials.

Public confidence is shaped not only by what happens after charges are approved. It is also shaped by how concerns are received, assessed, and addressed before a situation reaches that point.

Increasingly, communities want to know not only whether an individual will be held accountable, but whether institutions acted responsibly when concerns first emerged. They want to know what was known, when it was known, who was responsible for acting, and what actions were taken in response.

For decades, Battered Women’s Support Services has worked with survivors navigating systems where warning signs were minimized, concerns were dismissed, reports were fragmented across institutions, or responsibility was deferred until harm became impossible to ignore.

Violence against women is rarely sustained because no one knows.

More often, warning signs are downplayed, normalized, explained away, treated as private matters, or regarded as someone else’s responsibility. Action is delayed until public exposure, legal intervention, or tragedy forces a response.

This reality is familiar to many survivors. The harm they describe is often not limited to a single act of violence. Many speak about raising concerns, seeking help, attempting to be believed, or watching warning signs go unaddressed. Similar questions have emerged repeatedly in public cases involving individuals in positions of authority and trust.

The issue is not whether someone is entitled to due process. They are.

The issue is whether public institutions recognize that due process and public accountability are not competing principles. Both are necessary. Both are essential to maintaining confidence in democratic institutions.

When serious criminal charges involving sexual violence are approved against an elected official, communities are entitled to ask what accountability looks like while the legal process unfolds. They are also entitled to ask how someone came to occupy a position of public trust, what safeguards existed, and how concerns were addressed along the way.

Survivors and communities are watching how institutions respond.

They are watching whether accountability is treated as a public responsibility or postponed until after a legal outcome is reached. They are watching whether warning signs are taken seriously or minimized. They are watching whether leadership carries responsibilities beyond avoiding conviction.

Court proceedings will determine the outcome of the criminal case. Public confidence will also be shaped by how institutions account for the decisions, standards, and actions that brought us to this point.

Public office is not simply a position. It is a responsibility that depends on public trust. The questions that matter most are not only about what happens now, but what happened before someone was entrusted with the authority to represent the public.

BWSS was honoured to participate in a collective tribute video recognizing Kuldeep Ahluwalia following the Supreme Court of Canada’s landmark recognition of the new tort of intimate partner violence. The decision in Ahluwalia v. Ahluwalia represents an important moment in how Canadian law understands coercive control and patterns of abuse within intimate relationships. The tribute video brings together advocates, community leaders, organizations, lawyers, survivors, and frontline workers from across British Columbia and Canada to collectively acknowledge the significance of this moment and express gratitude to Kuldeep Ahluwalia for carrying this case forward.

To Survivors Accessing BWSS,

You may have heard about the landmark ruling by the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) in Ahluwalia v. Ahluwalia recognizing a new tort of intimate partner violence.

A tort is a type of legal claim that allows someone to seek compensation for harms they have experienced. Unlike criminal or family law proceedings, tort claims are civil actions for damages. Many women accessing BWSS are navigating family law, immigration, criminal law, and child protection matters. This new tort exists within the civil legal system.

Last year, Battered Women’s Support Services intervened in the Ahluwalia case and asked the Supreme Court of Canada to:

• Recognize intimate partner violence as a standalone legal harm;
•  Address systemic barriers experienced by survivors, including Black, Indigenous, and racialized women;
• Provide a clearer and more accessible pathway to legal redress for survivors of intimate partner violence.

On May 15, 2026, Supreme Court of Canada released its decision in the Ahluwalia case, recognizing a new tort of intimate partner violence grounded in coercive control. This marks an important moment in access to justice for victims and survivors.

What survivors should know:

Unlike family law, there are generally very limited low-income legal representation options for civil claims, including claims under this new tort of intimate partner violence.

In addition, successful civil claims often depend on whether both parties have financial means and resources. To pursue a civil claim, a survivor must usually either:
• pay legal fees directly; or
• find a lawyer willing to work on a contingency fee basis.

A contingency fee arrangement means the lawyer is only paid if the case is successful, usually through a percentage of a settlement or damages award.

For compensation to be recovered, the perpetrator of abuse must also have assets, income, insurance coverage, or financial resources available to satisfy any damages awarded by the court.

At this time, BWSS does not provide civil litigation representation or legal advocacy related to tort claims for intimate partner violence. We are actively exploring what supports and information may be possible in the future as we continue to assess the implications of this decision.

At the same time, this ruling will benefit survivors beyond civil lawsuits themselves. The Supreme Court of Canada directly addressed many of the issues raised by BWSS and other interveners, including coercive control, patterns of abuse, autonomy, entrapment, and systemic barriers survivors face. Survivors and their lawyers may draw on this language in other legal contexts moving forward.

We are grateful to Kuldeep Kaur Ahluwalia for bravely taking on this challenge, including for a period of time as an unrepresented litigant. This new tort of intimate partner violence represents an important moment for all who care about victims and survivors of intimate partner violence.

Yours sincerely,

BWSS Battered Women’s Support Services Association

Angela Marie MacDougall

Executive Director

Today, the Supreme Court of Canada released a landmark decision recognizing, for the first time in Canadian history, a new tort of intimate partner violence grounded in coercive control, a historic legal development that fundamentally changes how Canadian law understands intimate partner violence, coercion, autonomy, dignity, and equality within intimate relationships.

Today is also a testament to the extraordinary courage and determination of Kuldeep Ahluwalia, who stood in her power and used her voice to pursue justice through years of litigation beginning during the COVID lockdown period, much of it while self-represented. Today’s decision is the result of her persistence, courage, and refusal to allow her experiences to be minimized or erased. Today is her victory.

For decades, survivors and anti-violence organizations have tried to explain that intimate partner violence is not simply a series of isolated assaults or incidents, but an ongoing pattern of domination, surveillance, intimidation, humiliation, financial control, fear, and entrapment that strips away autonomy and freedom.

In its majority decision in Ahluwalia v. Ahluwalia, the Court recognized that intimate partner violence can constitute “coercive and controlling conduct that undermines autonomy” through “tactics of isolation, manipulation, humiliation, surveillance, economic abuse, sexual coercion, and intimidation that can control and entrap intimate partners.”

The Court further recognized that intimate partner violence is often “greater than the sum of its parts,” rejecting narrow incident-based understandings of violence that fail to account for cumulative patterns of coercion and domination over time.

Writing for the majority, Justice Kasirer stated:

“The new tort is tied to the intimate partnership and is distinct from existing torts in that it seeks to compensate a qualitatively different wrong of coercive control, and a qualitatively different harm of the loss of autonomy.”

In one of the most powerful passages of the decision, Justice Kasirer wrote:

“I am not just a bruised spouse, I am an unfree spouse.”

“This decision represents a profound shift in how Canadian law understands intimate partner violence,” said Angela Marie MacDougall, Executive Director of Battered Women’s Support Services Association.

“For decades, survivors have tried to explain that intimate partner violence is not merely episodic violence, but a condition of coercion and control that shapes daily life. Survivors adapt their behaviour to survive. They live under surveillance, intimidation, isolation, economic control, fear, and threats that are often minimized as relationship conflict or private dysfunction. Today, the highest court in the country recognized that reality in law.”

The Court found that existing torts failed to fully account for the distinct harms caused by coercive control and often left survivors trying to fit cumulative experiences of domination and abuse into fragmented legal categories.

Importantly, the Court explicitly recognized that intimate partner violence is profoundly gendered and acknowledged the heightened vulnerability experienced by Indigenous, racialized, disabled, and marginalized women.

BWSS intervened before the Supreme Court of Canada alongside counsel from Lawson Lundell LLP, with a focus on the experiences of Indigenous, Black, racialized, disabled, and marginalized women experiencing intimate partner violence and coercive control, realities specifically recognized by the Court in its reasons.

“The significance of this development in Canadian law for the appellant, Kuldeep Ahluwalia, and for organizations like Battered Women’s Support Services and the women they help cannot be understated,” said Caitlin Ohama-Darcus, Lawson Lundell LLP, counsel for BWSS.

“In a judgment released this morning, the Supreme Court of Canada has recognized a new tort of intimate partner violence. As stated by the majority (per Kasirer J.), ‘The new tort is designed to recognize that gap in the law and to equip judges with resources in the private law toolbox to respond to the distinctive wrong of intimate partner coercive control and the distinctive injury to victims’ autonomy that goes beyond the physical and psychological losses it brings in the intimate partner setting. This is a matter of access to justice[.].’”

“This is a momentous day for victims and survivors of intimate partner violence, to have the specific form of harms they experience clearly recognized by the Supreme Court of Canada is a huge victory. Access to justice means access to meaningful remedies. The Supreme Court of Canada’s recognition of new tort of intimate partner violence is a significant step in the direction towards addressing and ultimately ending domestic violence in Canada.”

The Court also explicitly recognized forms of coercive control including financial control, litigation abuse, surveillance, intimidation, social isolation, threats involving children, and post-separation coercion and control.

Importantly, the Court distinguished intimate partner violence from “mere grievances” or “high-conflict disputes,” recognizing that coercive domination cannot be reduced to mutual dysfunction or ordinary relationship conflict.

“This decision matters far beyond civil damages,” said MacDougall. “It reshapes how coercive control, cumulative harm, post-separation abuse, and inequality within intimate relationships may be understood across legal systems and public institutions. It challenges systems that continue to interpret coercive domination as mutual conflict, communication problems, or isolated incidents.”

While BWSS recognizes today’s decision as historic, the organization cautions that legal recognition alone will not end violence against women.

Survivors still face enormous barriers to safety, housing, financial security, immigration stability, child custody, and meaningful access to legal representation. Many survivors continue to encounter systems that minimize coercive control, misunderstand cumulative harm, or fail to recognize the realities of post-separation abuse.

“Today’s ruling changes the legal landscape,” said MacDougall. “But survivors still need systems that believe them, protect them, and respond to the full reality of coercive control. Legal recognition alone does not guarantee safety, accountability, or justice. This decision must become part of broader structural change.”

For decades, survivors and anti-violence movements have tried to explain that intimate partner violence is not simply a collection of incidents, but a pattern of coercion and control that deprives women of autonomy, equality, dignity, and freedom.

Today, the Supreme Court of Canada recognized that reality in law.