The Supreme Court of Canada recognized intimate partner violence as a new civil wrong on Friday. The majority said it is a “pernicious social ill” that the law must address.
Six justices decided to recognize intimate partner violence as a new tort—an act or omission that injures another, constituting a civil wrong that attaches liability. Justice Nicholas Kasirer, for the majority, accepted that intimate partner violence offends the victim’s dignity, autonomy and equality in a relationship that existing tort law fails to capture. The law cannot sufficiently compensate the victims because it fails to recognize the violence as a cumulative pattern of coercive control, its disproportionate impact on women and its aggravated distinct nature in the intimate partnership setting.
To claim the tort, a plaintiff needs to establish that the defendant intentionally engaged in the abusive conduct, arising from an intimate relationship and that it amounts to coercive control objectively. In her concurring opinion, Justice Andromache Karakatsanis would have included acts or threats of violence that cause physical or psychological harm, instead of limiting the tort to objective coercive control.
The three dissenting justices described this development as “unprecedented” in the common law tradition, as they considered the majority to be formulating the tort from a vacuum of comparative law or legal commentaries. They criticized the majority for creating legal uncertainty, as there is limited guidance on the scope of coercive control and the quantification of damages under the new tort. Several justices previously expressed this concern in the hearing.
Kate Feeney, litigation director at advocacy group West Coast LEAF, said the ruling is a “groundbreaking step” towards addressing discrimination against survivors of intimate partner violence. Niki Sharma, the Attorney General of British Columbia, also welcomed the ruling, adding that:
This ruling will make a meaningful difference for survivors and build on the work underway in British Columbia to better support them, including initiatives such as the Family Law Act modernization project, the Intimate Images Protection Act and our advancing work related to Dr. Kim Stanton’s recommendations to address systemic and legal barriers in BC’s legal system.
Relatedly, New Brunswick’s legislature is also moving to remove the limitation period for intimate partner violence victims to initiate a claim against the perpetrator.
According to police-reported data, there were 356 victims of intimate partner violence per 100,000 population in Canada in 2024. This represented a 14 percent increase from 2018. The rate of women and girls being victims of intimate partner violence was 3.5 times higher than that of men and boys in 2024.
The case, Ahluwalia v. Ahluwalia, concerns a wife who suffered from intimate partner violence in a 16-year marriage. The complained conduct included physical assault, humiliation, isolation of the wife from family, pressure for sex through mistreatment, and financial control. Ruling in favor of the wife, the trial judge recognized the novel tort of family violence. However, the Court of Appeal for Ontario unanimously declared that the law should not recognize the new tort.
