Held Space

Reader. Trying to move gently in a world of knaves.

[Arminder Randhawa 🦋 @ArminderRand]

Today marks a significant moment in Canadian legal history with the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in Ahluwalia v Ahluwalia and the recognition of a new tort of family violence.

For years, many victim-survivors have lived through patterns of coercive control, intimidation, isolation, psychological abuse, financial abuse, threats, surveillance, and post-separation abuse that profoundly altered their lives, yet often did not fit neatly within traditional legal frameworks focused primarily on physical violence or isolated incidents.

This decision reflects an evolving understanding that family violence is not always visible bruises or singular explosive events. It is often a pattern of domination, entrapment, fear, deprivation of liberty, and ongoing psychological harm across time.

The recognition of family violence as its own tort is significant because it acknowledges the seriousness and cumulative impact of coercive and controlling behaviour within intimate and family relationships. It signals that these harms are real, measurable, and deserving of legal recognition.

This decision will likely shape important conversations across family law, civil litigation, criminal law, risk assessment, and professional practice. It also raises critical questions about how systems identify, assess, document, and respond to coercive control moving forward.

For many survivors, this ruling is more than a legal development. It is validation that what happened to them was not simply ���conflict,” “poor communication,” or “a difficult relationship.” Patterns of coercive control can fundamentally alter a person’s autonomy, safety, psychological functioning, parenting, financial stability, and ability to participate freely in daily life.

We still have substantial work ahead in ensuring coercive control is properly understood and appropriately responded to within legal and institutional systems. However, today represents an important step in acknowledging the realities many survivors have been describing for decades. -via Trish Guise MSc, MBA, Expert in Coercive Control @TrishGuise

[Schlifer Clinic @schliferclinic]

The Schlifer Clinic is encouraged by this landmark decision and proud to have intervened. A key step forward recognizing the harms of IPV and survivors’ right to compensation, including the impact of intersecting identities. Read the complete statement: https://t.co/Bq0rclFBA1

[Alison Boyce @Ali__B]

The Supreme Court recognizes new legal basis for a civil claim of ‘intimate partner violence’

https://t.co/USgpmj5qoE

[Held Space @held_space]

@Lawsome_ This is correct in law and in life. Very good.

[Held Space @held_space]

@nationalpost This is necessary. Family lay lawyers need to be trained in how to advise clients and advance these claims as a stand alone aspect of a pleading. Judges need to be educated on how to apply and order damages as a matter of course when any form of abuse is present.

[National Post @nationalpost]

A review of 39 cases of lawyers committing child sex abuse finds most are still licenced https://t.co/UeEkpPPoS6

[Held Space @held_space]

@cbcwatcher This person speaks and looks increasingly artificial every day. Are we sure he was not replaced during his leave? At best, he is a hired actor.

[Held Space @held_space]

@CTVNews I do not believe you.

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@MarkJCarney I believe that you might be insane.

[Held Space @held_space]

@DavidColetto @abacusdataca The average Canadian in this climate of heavy, incessant anti-Trump propaganda, would have no ability to consider this hypothetical in any statistically reliable way. The bandwidth for such an inquiry is next to nonexistent.

[Held Space @held_space]

@RealAndyLeeShow This is exactly what happened in our small town in Ontario.

[Held Space @held_space]

@RealAndyLeeShow @DavidStaplesYEG They did it in my small Ontario town and now have a federally funded group dedicated to eliminating it. We also have several homes in town with their signs on lawns as a perpetual reminder that our town is on hate watch.

[Held Space @held_space]

@scoopercooper What do you think this means on the ground?

[Held Space @held_space]

@mapleblooded So flippant. So callous. So evil.

[Held Space @held_space]

@ryangerritsen Something is profoundly wrong. At the same time, intuition is a tool they fear. You are hearing the energy behind the words and it is, as you suggest, sinister and foreboding. There’s power in naming it as such in the face of the spectacle, the reporting, and the polling.

[Held Space @held_space]

@FoodProfessor I must say, I love them. Packed in olive oil. Any time of day. On rye. Or Stonewall Kitchen crackers.

[Held Space @held_space]

@gmforbes35 I noticed this too. What is going on here? Why does she appear to be towering over Carney? In the seated photo, she is wearing flats.

[Held Space @held_space]

I truly do not know what is real. Yesterday, the photos circulating had Carney looking physically shrunken. He literally appeared to be child sized next to Gladu and Solomon. At the same time, the level of outrageousness attached to a person who, only moments before, actively criticized the very practice she then adopted, feels purposefully sensationalistic. I know folks throw around the concept that politics is theatre, but yesterday felt beyond. Is it a script? Who wrote it? What is the intended audience? When will the curtain lift?

[Held Space @held_space]

@MarilynGladuSL If it can happen in Sarnia-Lambton, it can happen in Huron-Bruce. Be awake!