As Bill C-16 — the Protecting Victims Act — moves through Parliament, advocates are raising concerns that the proposed laws could leave some of the most vulnerable older adults unprotected.
It comes as Statistics Canada data from October 2025 shows there has been a 49 per cent increase in the rate of family violence against seniors since 2018.
The bill would create a new Criminal Code offence for coercive control, which is defined as a pattern of behaviour meant to dominate, isolate or intimidate a partner. It is framed as a response to intimate partner violence, applying to current or former romantic partners.
But testimony before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights on April 20 suggests that limitation may exclude many older adults experiencing similar patterns of abuse.
“The coercive control offence under Bill C-16 is currently limited to intimate partner relationships that may capture an important part of violence against women, but it does not capture the full reality of abuse experienced by older women,” Rizwan Khan, a legal researcher and analyst at the National Institute on Aging, told the committee.
“Many older women are not being coercively controlled by a spouse or partner. They are being controlled by sons, other relatives and, in some cases, informal caregivers. Yet, if the same pattern of abuse is carried out by a son rather than a spouse, the proposed offence would not apply.”
Data suggests elder abuse, particularly within families, is growing in Canada.
According to Statistics Canada, there were 7,622 senior victims of police-reported family violence in 2024, representing 98 victims per 100,000 people aged 65 and older.
More than one-third, or 34 per cent, were victimized by a family member.
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Fifty-seven per cent of senior victims of family violence were women in 2024, the data shows.
While Canada does not currently track statistics of coercive control as a distinct offence, data from other jurisdictions that do suggest the behaviour is widespread.
In England and Wales, where coercive control is criminalized, police recorded 49,557 offences in the year ending March 2025, up from 45,310 in the previous year.
Joanne Blinco, executive director of the Alberta Elder Abuse Awareness Council, described to the committee how abuse frequently occurs under the guise of caregiving.
“When we’re dealing with older adults, what does come forward is the son who, in our statistics, between the ages of 45 and 49 is the most prevalent in terms of person who is causing harm … they come forward to help. They come forward under the umbrella of providing support,” she said in committee testimony.
She told the committee that warning signs are often subtle and easily missed.
“There is decline in their health … for example, they have no hearing aids. Their glasses are not replaced. They look dishevelled. They’re not attending community activities anymore. They’re not participating in the same way. Their personalities, we’re seeing differences; where they might have been outgoing, now they’re becoming much more reserved,” Blinco said.
Social isolation, she added, can make identifying abuse more difficult.
“The difference, as well, with an older adult is that their circle of isolation is tighter. So when you’re looking at child abuse, they attend school, other people have eyes on them. But when you’re dealing with situations of elder abuse, and they’re not going to their church anymore. they’re not going to the senior center anymore, those are really hard to identify,” she said.
Khan told the committee that women are more often targeted, and the dynamics of coercive control can shift over a person’s lifetime.
“The prevalence of coercive control is, in fact, directed towards women. It starts off with intimate partners when they’re younger, and as they get older, it shifts because the dynamics and the dependency of older individuals shifts away from spouses and more onto their children and other loved ones because of the dependence and trust and the need for them to help with their caregiving,” Khan said.
He added that while coercive control primarily affects women, it does not mean men are not also impacted.
He also said that caregiving relationships can create power imbalances similar to those seen in intimate partner violence.
“Most caregivers provide compassionate and appropriate support, but not every caregiving relationship is free from harm. Where one person depends on another for daily living, there is an obvious power imbalance,” he said.
“In some cases, that imbalance can be exploited in ways that are functionally indistinguishable from coercive control by an intimate partner. That is why leaving caregivers outside the scope of the offence creates an additional and significant gap. ”
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