{"id":168695,"date":"2023-07-21T18:06:20","date_gmt":"2023-07-21T22:06:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/?p=168695"},"modified":"2023-07-21T18:06:20","modified_gmt":"2023-07-21T22:06:20","slug":"toronto-city-council-wants-to-declare-gender-based-violence-an-epidemic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/toronto-city-council-wants-to-declare-gender-based-violence-an-epidemic\/","title":{"rendered":"Toronto city council wants to declare gender-based violence an epidemic"},"content":{"rendered":"

At Olivia Chow\u2019s first city council meeting as mayor yesterday, she put forward a motion to help deal with the on-going issue of gender-based and intimate partner violence by wanting to declare it an epidemic.<\/p>\n

If accepted, Toronto will be part of the 30 municipalities and regions in Canada that have declared this as an epidemic, joining the City of Ottawa, the Region of Peel and Renfrew County in the edict.<\/p>\n

In a report<\/a> from the Ontario Association of Interval & Transition Houses (OAITH), they found that in 2021 to 2022 there were 52 murders of women, or \"femicide,\" in the province.<\/p>\n

The Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice and Accountability (CFOJA) describes femicide as \u201cthe killing of all women and girls primarily by, but not exclusively, men.\u201d From 2018 to 2022, they found that 850 women across Canada were killed from gender-based discrimination; that adds up to \u201cat least one woman murdered every 48 hours.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe say \u2018at least\u2019 because not all accused are brought to justice. For many women and girls, no accused has yet to be identified and, for some, never will be. For other women and girls, their deaths \u2013 although likely a homicide \u2013 may never be officially designated as such,\u201d says the CFOJA in their yearly report<\/a>.<\/p>\n

With the passing of this motion, city council is hoping to \u201curge provincial and federal governments to rightfully declare intimate partner and gender-based violence an epidemic,\u201d they state in the mayor's first agenda item. They are also advocating for the term femicide to be added into the Criminal Code of Canada.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery 48 hours, a woman died because of intimate partner violence. That's just about the duration of council meetings,\u201d says Chow in the council meeting.<\/p>\n

With this item, Chow and city council urge the provincial and federal government to enact 85 recommendations for the inquest of the 2015 triple homicide in Renfrew County. The victims Carol Culleton, Anastasia Kuzyk and Nathalie Warmerdam all knew the perpetrator Basil Borutski. In the agenda, Chow writes that the inquest \u201c[would] provide a roadmap to preventing intimate partner violence from escalating to femicide.\u201d<\/p>\n

The impact of intimate partner violence has already been acknowledged by the city in 2021 through Toronto Public Health the Intimate Partner Action Plan, which was done to address the issue.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you go through the violence in a marriage it is very difficult. I can tell you it was difficult because you felt ashamed and you felt like it was your fault. You didn\u2019t talk about it but you lived it everyday,\u201d says Coun. Julia Nunziata. \u201cWomen are coming forward now. They are not ashamed.\u201d<\/p>\n

The agenda item is currently amended and will need to go through at the next city council meeting.<\/p>\n

Listen to the story below:<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At Olivia Chow\u2019s first city council meeting as mayor yesterday, she put forward a motion to help deal with the on-going issue of gender-based and intimate partner violence by wanting to declare it an epidemic. If accepted, Toronto will be part of the 30 municipalities and regions in Canada that have declared this as an…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":120,"featured_media":168823,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[57],"tags":[28542,28541,28540,10610],"radio":[1380],"origine":[267,269,273],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168695"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/120"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168695"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168695\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":168861,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168695\/revisions\/168861"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/168823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168695"},{"taxonomy":"radio","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/radio?post=168695"},{"taxonomy":"origine","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/origine?post=168695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}