Last week, Canadian Press reported that police had identified intimate partner violence risk factors using a confidential tool and a woman was still killed.

This detail matters. It tells us something deeply uncomfortable but critically important: this was not a case where the danger was invisible. The risk existed, it was identifiable, and it was known. What failed was not awareness, but obligation.

Across British Columbia and Canada, femicide is often framed as unpredictable tragedy. But the reality is far more devastating and far more actionable. Most killings of women by partners or ex-partners are preceded by clear warning signs: escalation, coercive control, threats, stalking, breaches of court orders. Survivors know when their danger is increasing. The problem is that systems are not required to act when that danger is identified.

This is where the distinction between risk assessment and safety planning becomes urgent.

Risk assessment is a structured, evidence-based process designed to identify the likelihood of serious harm or lethality. It looks at patterns of behaviour and escalation, not isolated incidents. Its purpose is not documentation for its own sake. It is meant to trigger system responses: enforcement, court conditions, monitoring, information sharing, and coordinated intervention.

Safety planning is something else entirely. Safety planning is survivor-centred. It supports people in navigating unsafe realities when leaving is not possible, when systems are slow, or when protection is incomplete. It is adaptive, practical, and often quiet. It helps survivors survive danger. It does not reduce the danger itself.

When institutions collapse these two processes, responsibility quietly shifts. Survivors are expected to manage risk that only systems have the power to reduce. “Do you have a safety plan?” becomes a substitute for protection. This is not prevention. It is abandonment framed as support.

The Canadian Press reporting (hyperlink) exposes a deeper structural problem: discretion. When risk assessment is optional, accountability is optional too. Once risk is formally identified, institutions inherit responsibility, legal, moral, and operational. That responsibility requires resources, coordination, and scrutiny. When systems are allowed to choose whether or not to assess risk, they are incentivized to avoid it.

This is what BWSS has described as the “hot potato” problem. No one wants to hold documented high risk if they are not required to act on it. So, risk remains confidential, siloed, or under-used. Survivors pay the price.

Confidential risk tools do not prevent femicide actually accountability does.

Mandatory, standardized risk assessment changes the architecture of response. It removes individual discretion and replaces it with system obligation. It ensures that risk follows the case across policing, Crown counsel, criminal courts, family courts, and child protection. It makes danger visible not just at the frontline, but at institutional and government levels, where resourcing and oversight decisions are made.

Safety planning still matters. Survivors deserve support that respects their choices, constraints, and expertise in their own lives. But safety planning cannot be asked to carry the weight of prevention. That responsibility belongs to institutions with the authority to intervene.

This is why BWSS has consistently called for mandatory risk assessment across all systems responding to gender-based violence. And this is why the Attorney General’s recent move to prioritize standardized risk assessment matters. It signals recognition that prevention requires infrastructure, not just awareness.

The Canadian Press case is not an outlier, it is actually a warning that risk was identified and action was not guaranteed, in that gap is where women die.

BWSS’s report, Mandatory Risk Assessments: A Public Safety Imperative for Survivors of Gender-Based Violence will be released in early 2026 and it is an urgent intervention in this moment. Additionally, early next year, we will release a framework that sets out clear implementation pathways and accountability mechanisms because knowing the risk is not enough.

Make no mistake about it, risk assessment identifies danger, safety planning navigates it and only systems can reduce risk, victims can only survive it.

On the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers, we stand in solidarity with sex workers across British Columbia and honour those who have lost their lives to violence, neglect, and systemic failure.

Sex workers live and work in communities throughout BC, in urban centres, small towns, rural and remote regions, and along major transportation corridors. While public attention has often focused on Vancouver, violence against sex workers and sexual exploitation are province-wide realities, shaped by criminalization, stigma, poverty, racism, colonialism, and the absence of accessible, community-based safety supports.

Sex workers face elevated risks of physical and sexual violence, particularly Indigenous women, racialized women, trans and gender-diverse people, migrants, people who use substances, and those working in isolated or under-resourced regions. In many parts of the province, sex workers contend with limited or nonexistent peer supports, outreach services, safe spaces, or non-police safety mechanisms, increasing vulnerability and isolation.

Preventing violence against sex workers requires more than individual services carrying impossible burdens. It requires the Province of British Columbia to treat sex worker safety and dignity as a core public safety and human rights responsibility, one that is consistent across regions, informed by lived experience, and grounded in non-carceral, rights-based approaches.

On this day, we call for provincial leadership that recognizes sex workers as fully human and deserving of safety, dignity, and protection, regardless of where they live or work. We affirm the importance of sex worker-led and community-based responses, and the need for sustained, coordinated action that does not leave people behind based on geography, criminalization, or social exclusion.

We remember those lost, we stand with those living and we commit to advancing safety, dignity, and justice for sex workers across British Columbia.

Endorsed by:

Haida Gwaii Society for Community Peace

Trail FAIR Society

This week, Canadians witnessed two significant developments in the effort to address gender-based violence. The federal government announced proposed changes to the Criminal Code that move toward naming violence against women more accurately and more honestly. Legislative reform is important, but for us at Battered Women’s Support Services the most consequential news came from British Columbia.

On the same day as the federal announcement, British Columbia’s Attorney General confirmed that one of the Province’s top priorities in responding to the Stanton Report will be the creation and implementation of standardized screening, risk assessment and safety planning across both the criminal and family law systems. This commitment represents a long overdue recognition that the way institutions identify and respond to risk often determines whether a woman lives or dies.

Women in British Columbia have been killed after their risk was overlooked or downgraded. Others were killed even when formal tools were used but the results were not acted upon. These deaths were not unpredictable. They were preventable. When risk assessment is inconsistent, delayed or left to individual discretion, danger escalates unchecked. When systems fail to communicate, survivors fall through the gaps that institutions created.

This announcement from the Attorney General is a response to a femicide emergency that has become impossible to ignore. It is also one of BWSS’s Five Asks. We have repeatedly called for mandatory, standardized risk assessment across all systems. We know from decades of work that risk assessment is one of the few evidence-based tools that can reliably flag escalating danger. It gives police a clearer picture. It informs Crown decision making. It helps judges understand the level of threat women and children face. It guides safety planning and ensures that family court processes do not undermine survivor safety.

The commitment from the Province is a significant step, but its impact will depend entirely on implementation. Standardization means every case is screened. It means the same indicators of danger are recognized across police, Crown, courts and child protection. It means tools are updated to reflect what we know about coercive control, separation risk, strangulation, threats to children and systems abuse. It means that when high risk is identified, every actor involved understands what must happen next.

It is important to acknowledge how we arrived at this moment. Survivors have been naming their experiences for years. Families have spoken out after tragedies. Advocates across the province have insisted that risk assessment can no longer be optional. Researchers such as Dr Kim Stanton have laid out the systemic failures in detail. This announcement would not have happened without that sustained and often exhausting work.

The Province has taken a step that has the potential to save lives. It will only matter if it is carried out with urgency, consistency and courage. Every day without full implementation is a day when women remain at risk. Standardized risk assessment must become a foundation of public safety in British Columbia.

Over the coming days we will share more about what risk assessment is, why it matters, how it prevents femicide and what effective implementation looks like. We will outline how this commitment fits within BWSS’s Five Asks for a safer British Columbia. Most importantly, we will continue to centre the women who should still be here. Their lives guide our work. Their absence reminds us why this commitment must be fulfilled.

Our Five Asks:

1. Mandatory, standardized risk assessment across all systems including police, Crown, courts, MCFD and family law so that danger is identified and acted on consistently.
2. Municipal GBV Task Forces in every community to ensure local governments treat gender-based violence as a core public safety responsibility.
3. Stabilized core funding for frontline anti-violence services so survivors can access crisis response, legal advocacy, housing support and counselling without delays or gaps.
4. A long term provincial GBV prevention campaign to increase public understanding of coercive control, strangulation, stalking, digital violence and other indicators of risk.
5. A dedicated GBV lead within Public Safety and Attorney General offices with responsibility for coordinating system change, ensuring oversight and monitoring implementation across ministries.