My ears perked up when Pierre Poilievre announced his plan to address the epidemic of intimate partner violence (IPV). According to the statement he made in Trois-Rivières, Québec, on April 4, he wants to “keep abusers off the street and behind bars to protect the most vulnerable Canadians.”

Six days later, Liberal leader Mark Carney said his party would “crack down on sexual violence and intimate partner violence,” but offered few specifics. So far, we’ve heard nothing from the NDP’s Jagmeet Singh.

Poilievre’s announcement immediately reminded me of the ways the criminal justice system has failed survivors of IPV over the last 40 years.

He says a Conservative government will create a new offence specific to the assault of an intimate partner that would carry with it tougher sentences, impose “the strictest” bail conditions for anyone accused of IPV, and treat all murders of an intimate partner or children in the family as first-degree murder.

Survivors and family members of victims who criticize the current criminal justice system for not listening to the voices of survivors and for failing to keep them safe are right. We need to listen to their concerns and take steps to address them, but Poilievre’s law and order approach is not the way to go.

Criminal law interventions and initiatives—new laws, changes to laws, new court processes, tougher bail conditions and harsher penalties for those found guilty—have not made significant inroads in the rates of IPV and, in some cases, have made things worse for those subjected to it.

These new proposals will only continue to fail survivors and communities.

We already know that bail conditions prohibiting the accused from having contact with the survivor are highly problematic in IPV cases. After all, these two people are not strangers to one another—they likely got out of the same bed that morning and often share child-related responsibilities and a bank account. Telling one of them they can’t have contact with the other just doesn’t work.

Making bail conditions tougher and automatically imprisoning someone who breaches them means that a lot more people are going to spend time in already overcrowded provincial jails. Both the accused and the survivor may lose faith in the legal system, potentially exposing the survivor to greater risks of harm in the future.

There are no words to adequately describe the horror and tragedy of IPV homicides (including the killing of children or other family members) for families and communities. However, designating all such killings as first-degree murder would deny the reality of homicide. Some homicides are premeditated; sometimes the act is spontaneous, and other times death was not the intention. These different circumstances should carry with them different consequences, which is what the Criminal Code homicide provisions currently provide.

Another reason to be concerned about Poilievre’s proposals is that survivors are sometimes charged with IPV-related offences when they shouldn’t be. This is largely because of Canada’s mandatory charging policies (which themselves should undergo review), which can lead police to charge victims as well as or instead of perpetrators.

Survivors sometimes kill their partner to protect themselves or their children. Poilievre’s policy would have a woman in this situation treated the same way as an abuser who intentionally killed his partner.

This means that tougher bail conditions and automatic first-degree murder charges for killing a partner will harm some of the people Poilievre claims he wants to protect.

While other issues have loomed large in this election campaign, all party leaders should be paying more than lip service to IPV.

Canadians want our next prime minister to address this serious epidemic. That means implementing the recommendations of both the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls and the Nova Scotia Mass Casualty Commission. It means addressing poverty and homelessness, getting serious about judicial education on IPV, implementing effective gun control laws and supporting comprehensive prevention efforts.

We’re not fooled by the facile promises we’ve heard so far to put victims first. They are flawed quick fixes for a deeply entrenched problem that requires society-wide, thoughtful and nuanced changes to public policy, laws and public attitudes.

Pamela Cross is a feminist lawyer and author of And Sometimes They Kill You: Confronting the Epidemic of Intimate Partner Violence (Between the Lines, 2024).