'I burst into tears': Advocates angry at Ontario's intimate partner violence response

The Ontario government's response to inquest recommendations to reduce intimate partner violence (IPV) is disappointing, advocates and family members of the victims say.

Supporters of victims of IPV gathered Wednesday in Petawawa on the one-year anniversary of an inquest into the 2015 murders of three women by the same man in and around Renfrew County: Carol Culleton, Anastasia Kuzyk and Nathalie Warmerdam.

The inquest's jury suggested groups including the provincial and federal governments adopt a list of 86 recommendations, including many preventative measures.

Ontario, which was the subject of most of the recommendations, filed its initial response in February and sent the second response to the coroner's office on Tuesday.

Of the 30 recommendations the government addressed in the second response, eight were rejected, 10 were accepted and another 12 were partly accepted.

Pamela Cross, advocacy director of the non-profit organization Luke's Place, said she "burst into tears" when she read the Tuesday update.

"I just saw that first page, full of rejected, rejected, rejected, and I just didn't even want to turn the page," she said.

Cross, who is a lawyer and researcher, added most of the rejected recommendations had called for greater transparency and accountability from the provincial government.

"If we can't get the government to agree that they have an obligation to be both transparent and accountable, we're really in trouble," she said.

Province declines to call IPV an epidemic

A call to formally declare IPV an epidemic was among the recommendations rejected by the province.

In its response, the province argued "epidemic" is a term used for the spread of disease and therefore does not apply to IPV.

Cross said that since the inquest concluded, dozens of municipalities have declared IPV an epidemic, including Renfrew County and Ottawa just to its east.

Chantel Butterfield, executive director at the Sexual Assault Survivors' Centre of Sarnia-Lambton, said she was heartbroken by the rejections.

"Declaring intimate partner violence an epidemic would cost the Ontario government nothing and yet they rejected the opportunity to do so," she said.

"I think that it really sends the message that women, girls and gender-diverse people are not important."

Other rejected recommendations includes establishing an independent IPV commission and funding safe rooms to be installed in survivors' homes in high-risk cases.

'Disservice' to victims, relatives say

Malcolm Warmerdam, whose mother Nathalie was one of the three women killed in 2015, said that even the recommendations the government partly accepted felt underwhelming.

"[It] seemed like they said the word accepted, but (didn't actually mean) that," he said.

In response to other recommendations, Warmerdam said the government merely listed existing grants that didn't necessarily apply.

"What we got from Ontario and these responses was that they were going to give non-sustainable funding to our existing one-size-fits-all solution that we heard was not working," he said.

Warmerdam's daughter Elizabeth Rautapuro said she lost her mother before she had the chance to "truly know her."

"The inquest was a chance for things to finally change," Rautapuro said. 

"But the government of Ontario's refusal for concrete action is a disservice to the mothers, sisters and daughters that have been lost to intimate partner violence."

Solicitor General's statement

In an emailed statement, a spokesperson for Ontario's Ministry of the Solicitor General — which operates the correctional, probation and parole systems — said the province has invested $112 million in bail enforcement and prosecution teams, and $250 million to combat violence against women and support victims.

"The individual who committed these heinous crimes should never have been released in the first place and was given too many second chances by the justice system. That has to change," the statement reads.

"We know there is more to do, and the Renfrew Jury recommendations will help inform future investments made to fight violence and ensure the justice system is there to protect victims of crime."