COLUMN: Viewpoint – They laughed at intimate partner violence

They laughed at her! On May 12, 1982, NDP health critic Margaret Mitchell rose in the House of Commons to address the issue of domestic violence. “One in ten Canadian husbands beat their wives regularly,” Ms. Mitchell reported. At her words the predominantly male House of Commons erupted in laughter. She went on with determination and courage, telling her colleagues that of the 10,000 charges laid against abusive partners by Canadian women, so far only two had resulted in convictions. At that point, members of Parliament began heckling Ms. Mitchell.

It’s hard to believe those attitudes existed just a generation ago. While supports for abused women, and stricter penalties for their abusers, have been instituted over the last decades, partner violence is still a huge problem. A news item on Jan. 17 reports that Agape House in Steinbach is seeing an increased need for its services for abused women. In fact demand continues to exceed capacity. I wasn’t able to access the 2025 annual report for Agape House, but the 2024 report I found online, records a 45 percent increase in domestic violence incidents over the previous year, reaching levels the shelter has never seen before.

Statistics like that make clear the importance of quickly and effectively implementing new legislation dealing with intimate partner violence. One such piece of legislation, The Disclosure to Protect Against Intimate Partner Violence Act, will become law in Manitoba on March 1.

A document issued by the Manitoba Ombudsman gives some good examples of how the law might work. If a man is in a counseling group for violent behaviour and discloses his ongoing obsessive need to stalk or harm his partner, the new law will give the man’s counselor permission to break the confidentiality of the counseling relationship to report his client’s dangerous intent to the police. They will in turn inform the woman at risk and provide her with protection.

If an employment or welfare counselor is meeting with a woman and asks her about her visible physical injuries and the woman admits her partner is assaulting her, the counselor can now directly report the threat to police, ask them to investigate and take steps to insure the client’s safety.

The new legislation also insures that when a woman discloses her concerns that a partner may be abusing her child to medical or education staff, they will be required to pass on that information to the proper authorities.

Finally, and probably most importantly, if a woman suspects her partner may have an abusive history she can now request information about his possible past involvement with violence or domestic abuse and be given access to his police records. This will mean she can better understand her own risks and hopefully safely leave the relationship before things escalate.

The new Disclosure to Protect Against Intimate Partner Violence Act has been dubbed Claire’s Law in memory of a woman named Claire Wood who was murdered by her husband and whose family wished she’d had more information about her partner’s past. Former Manitoba Families Minister Rochelle Squires chose the name Claire’s Law when she introduced the legislation in 2022. Ms. Squires was determined to do something to address the fact that Manitoba had one of the highest rates of intimate partner violence in the country.

We’ve come a long way since political representatives laughed at a fellow legislator trying to inform them about the problem of intimate partner violence in the 1980s. Hopefully legislation like Clare’s Law will continue to propel us forward so rates of domestic abuse will take a permanent downward turn.