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.
