The following statement was issued by Battered Women’s Support Services on December 19, 2025 in response to the killing of Pamela Jarvis and ongoing delays in implementing femicide prevention measures in British Columbia.
Another woman has been killed in British Columbia while governments continue to promote a public safety narrative that claims progress.
Pamela Jarvis, 45, was killed in Merritt. Her husband has been charged with second-degree murder. This killing occurred after months of warnings, letters, meetings, task forces, and assurances that action on femicide prevention was underway. It did not happen in the absence of policy discussion rather it happened during it.
Since August 2024, 40 women have been killed in British Columbia. Statistics Canada reports a 53% increase in women killed by intimate partners. These deaths are most often predictable, they follow a pattern and overwhelmingly perpetrated by men known to the victim.
Yet as women continue to be killed, the Province is advancing a year-end public safety narrative focused on declining crime rates, reduced police interactions, falling charge approvals, and repeat-offender initiatives.
What these measures simply do not capture is the violence that kills women.
Femicide and intimate partner violence largely occur outside the metrics currently being used to claim public safety success. This form of violence happens in homes and relationships, often following documented patterns of escalating risk. A reduction in police interactions is not the same as a reduction in danger. When women are being killed at increasing rates, claims that “crime is down” ring hollow.
“This is not a contradiction, it is a choice to frame this form of violence in this way,” said Angela Marie MacDougall, Executive Director of Battered Women’s Support Services. “Women are being killed while governments point to indicators that do not measure their safety.”
Since May 2025, BWSS and a coalition of more than 100 organizations have been pressing all levels of government to implement five concrete, evidence-based actions to prevent femicide. Over that period, there have been repeated meetings, reference groups, correspondence, and public commitments. What has not happened is implementation.
While some progress has been signaled on risk assessment, four of the five prevention actions remain unimplemented and without them, identifying risk does not translate into protection.
Importantly, bail reform and repeat offender schemes likely would not have prevented many of the killings that occurred during this period. These approaches do not address coercive control, escalating intimate partner violence, or known risk factors already flagged in confidential police tools. Unfortunately, they respond after harm occurs and not before.
“What we are witnessing is a failure of governance,” said MacDougall. “Municipalities pass motions without timelines. The Province convenes working groups without mandates. The federal government signals movement that remains incomplete and meanwhile, women continue to die.”
As British Columbia approaches the end of another year, the same femicide prevention measures remain stalled in discussion and the passage of time does not reduce risk it increases it.
BWSS is calling on journalists to direct questions to elected officials:
• Who is accountable for implementing the five femicide prevention actions?
• What are the timelines for implementation?
• Why are women still being killed while these measures remain unimplemented?
Pamela Jarvis’s death is not an anomaly. It is part of a known and growing pattern of femicide in British Columbia. As the province enters another holiday period, the same prevention measures that have been discussed for months remain unimplemented. The passage of time does not reduce risk, it increases it.
Every day spent in process rather than action leaves women and girls at known risk, and another year is closing with the same failures intact.
