The legal community is already debating whether the new tort of intimate partner violence will make family law proceedings longer, more complex and more contentious. From where we stand, that debate begins in the wrong place.
For more than 30 years, BWSS has provided specialized family law advocacy for victims and survivors of intimate partner violence. We intervened before the Supreme Court of Canada in Ahluwalia because we believed Canadian law needed to recognize what women have been telling specialized intimate partner violence services for decades.
Intimate partner violence is not experienced as a series of isolated incidents. It is experienced as coercive control — a pattern of domination that strips women of their dignity, autonomy and equality. A pattern that shapes parenting, finances, housing, relationships, decision-making and every attempt to seek safety.
Critics argue that recognizing coercive control will make family law more complicated. Women have been living that complexity all along. Family law is already one of the most difficult places to be when the person using coercive control is also the person you are required to negotiate with, parent with, disclose to, or appear before a court against.
The debate should not begin with whether this makes family law more complicated. It should begin with why women have spent decades trying to fit the reality of coercive control into legal frameworks that were never designed to recognize it.
This is The Downplay Effect. When coercive control is reduced to a series of isolated incidents, the pattern disappears. When the pattern disappears, so do its impacts on women’s dignity, autonomy, equality and safety.
The new tort recognizes the pattern — it does not create the complexity. And recognition is where meaningful justice begins.
To this survivor, who fought for justice after 54 years, and to her now adult children who chose to stand beside their mother after a lifetime of witnessing abuse: your courage reminds us that truth has the power to outlast fear.
Background: In May 2026, the Supreme Court of Canada recognized a new civil tort of intimate partner violence in Canadian common law (Ahluwalia v. Ahluwalia, CP24). In July 2026, an Ontario woman was awarded $400,000 over her husband’s decades-long abuse — reported as the first award of damages under the new tort (Financial Post).
