Please sign & share: https://www.change.org/p/stop-silencing-survivors-ban-national-security-secrecy-in-violence-against-women-cases For the first time in Canadian history, in May 2025 national security secrecy was invoked to silence a survivor in a catastrophic case of male violence against women. Let's make sure that never happens again.
The case against a Canadian soldier charged with the catastrophic assault of his spouse was shockingly shut down in May 2025 for undisclosed "national security" reasons, silencing the survivor and setting a dangerous precedent. Canada must bar the use of national security confidentiality in cases of male violence against women before it becomes yet one more barrier to women seeking justice and accountability for abuses committed against them. And like any institution, Canada’s military is incapable of impartially and fairly investigating itself. Therefore, any such cases must be handled by independent, specially trained, trauma-informed civilian authorities.
A New and Very Dangerous Precedent
In May 2025, Canada’s Department of Justice (DOJ) invoked the often misused shield of “national security” confidentiality to defend a member of Joint Task Force 2 (JTF2) — an elite special forces military unit — charged with aggravated assault, choking, and assault causing bodily harm after he violently attacked his partner, causing a shattered jaw and traumatic brain injury. (More details Background section below).
Instead of ensuring transparency and accountability, the DOJ employed Section 38 of the Canada Evidence Act – a cone of silence to prevent disclosure of allegedly “sensitive information or potentially injurious information…for the purpose of protecting national defence or national security” – to render key evidence classified and suppress open court testimony, effectively silencing the assault survivor and obstructing justice.
When the full details of such a devastating assault on a woman’s personal security can be disappeared from the public record in the name of Canada’s “national security,” it poses yet another obstacle to women coming forward to report such heinous crimes and seek justice.
A Precarious, Slippery Slope
The imposition of national security confidentiality (NSC) is a precarious, slippery slope. Canadian courts, commissions of inquiry, and legal experts have consistently documented how NSC is constantly over-claimed to hide from possible embarrassment and to cover up incompetence, malfeasance and criminality:
· If the devastating May 2025 precedent is allowed to stand, a survivor in court would find herself up against the full power of state institutions employing limitless resources to argue that the case against an abuser should be significantly constrained, if not thrown out, for “national security” reasons that cannot be disclosed.
· The May 2025 precedent could also be viewed as a “get out of jail free card” by abusers working in federal government agencies, police departments, “sensitive” academic positions, and corporations deemed by Canada to be working in the national interest, all of whom could claim NSC protection to avoid transparency and accountability.
· A survivor challenging the use of state security secrecy would also face an extended wait for trial that involves a separate, protracted Federal Court proceeding to examine the merits of the secrecy application. This would add to trial delays that would allow an abuser to seek dismissal of charges by taking advantage of the Jordan ruling (the right to a speedy trial), under which hundreds of cases of violence against women have been thrown out.
Canada must urgently legislate a ban against the use of state secrecy privilege/national security confidentiality in criminal, family, and civil court proceedings involving male violence against women (and extending to any cases involving harassment, mistreatment, and abuse in family, “intimate partner”, workplace and any other settings). It must also end the biased role of military police in investigating or managing intimate partner violence cases involving Canadian Armed Forces members, and transfer that responsibility to civilian authorities. This can be done via amendments to the Fall 2025 Military Justice System Modernization Act and a bill codifying femicide as a criminal code offence.
Background: Covering Up Catastrophic Injuries
In late May 2025 the Globe and Mail reported that a member of the Canadian military’s elite, secretive Joint Task Force 2 (JTF2) pleaded guilty to assault and possession of illegal ammunition magazines. He received 36 months of probation as part of a deal that saw the more serious charges of aggravated assault choking and assault with bodily harm dropped.
After national security confidentiality was invoked, the survivor declared: “The Department of Justice, citing national security concerns, asserted control over the narrative of [the abuser’s] case. They directed that key portions of my evidence be redacted and not spoken in court. In doing so they have effectively silenced me and compromised the court’s essential role in fully and fairly assessing the evidence to uphold justice. What has been labelled an ‘assault’ left me with catastrophic injuries. I can only conclude that the silence serves to protect the reputation of the Department of National Defence under which [the convicted abuser] served.”
The Globe noted that “National Defence spokesperson Andrée-Anne Poulin acknowledged [that] the request for Section 38 came from Canadian Forces Intelligence Command, which had concerns about ‘some of the information in court documents.’” According to the Globe, the man convicted remains a member of the Armed Forces but has not been actively employed since 2023. An army spokeswoman “suggested he may face disciplinary action, but could provide no further information because of privacy laws.”
The Globe “[saw] photos taken by military police of the victim…that showed her bruised and battered body. Her jaw had been broken and wired shut….Justice Minister Sean Fraser would not discuss why Section 38 was invoked in this case. Nor would he say whether the time has come for ministerial sign-off before Section 38 is used in domestic violence cases.”
The Real National Security Crisis
Claiming “national security” to protect an abuser is insulting and harmful to Canadian women, whose personal security is already imperiled by an epidemic of male violence:
· The Final Report of the Mass Casualty Commission called for “all levels of government in Canada [to] declare gender-based, intimate partner and family violence to be an epidemic that warrants a meaningful and sustained society-wide response.”
· The Provincial Network for VAW Coordinating Committees notes that 106 municipalities in Ontario have recognized intimate partner violence as an epidemic.
· Women and Gender Equality Canada reports that approximately 44 per cent of women who have been in an intimate relationship – or about 6.2 million women aged 15 and older – have experienced some form of psychological, physical or sexual abuse in a relationship during their lives.
· The Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice and Accountability reported 187 femicides in 2024, one every other day.
· In 2023, then Canadian Justice Minister Arif Virani wrote: “The Government of Canada is committed to ending the GBV epidemic in all its forms, and is working to address any gaps in the Criminal Code to ensure a robust justice system response.” [Emphasis added]
The Canadian Military’s Cult of Secrecy
Secrecy and impunity have long characterized the military’s handling of violence against women.
For decades, researchers and advocates have documented systemic failures, a culture of silence, and a refusal to protect the victims of assault by Canadian Armed Forces members. This insidious pattern has been reported by, among others, Deborah Harrison and Lucie Laliberte’s No Life Like It (1994) and Deborah Harrison et al’s landmark 2000 Report on the Canadian Forces’ Response to Woman Abuse in Military Families to Marie Deschamps’ 2015 External Review into Sexual Misconduct and Sexual Harassment in the Canadian Armed Forces (which exposed an “underlying sexualized culture” in the Canadian military) and Louise Arbour’s 2022 Independent External Comprehensive Review of the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces.
Despite decades of such evidence, this same institution continues to hide behind confidentiality, prioritizing reputation over responsibility. The May 2025 case shows how deeply this rot runs: military police investigated, national security was invoked, and the survivor was silenced.
As Harrison’s 2000 report illustrated, “Early in their marriages, many military members instruct their spouses not to discuss difficulties with other members of the military community. Abusive members instruct their spouses especially vigorously. The result is a strong taboo amongst spouses against disclosing problems. Spouses, especially officers' wives, who are known to 'gossip' are often ostracized by other members of the wives' community. Abuse perpetrators instruct their spouses not to consult such professionals as military chaplains, social workers, and Family Resource Centre counsellors. The taboo against disclosing woman abuse is so strong that even spouses who are not being abused are unwilling to be seen helping themselves to pamphlets about local women's shelters that are piled on display tables at military sports expos. Some spouses are forbidden by their husbands to exchange pleasantries with women's shelter workers who live on base.”
Women’s Security Threatened by Secrecy Creep
Jennifer Dunn, executive director of the London Abused Women’s Centre, told the Globe: “When we see stuff like this, women ask themselves why would I bother to report at all. It completely minimizes the seriousness of intimate partner violence."
Megan MacKenzie, professor of international law and human security at Simon Fraser University, shared with the Globe “[that] the Armed Forces did a great disservice to [the survivor] and other victims of intimate partner violence. She noted that the special-forces community is very insular, and that it took a lot of courage for [the survivor] to press charges. ‘To come forward and then have the government decide that national security trumps personal safety is setting a precedent that spouses of Canadian Armed Forces members are not going to be protected.’”
As noted above, the abuse of national security confidentiality will not stop with this one case. In an age when national security is an overly-broad claim used to justify any abuse of power (and when Canada does not have a single, comprehensive legal definition for “national security” in its statutes), the door that was opened in May 2025 must immediately be slammed shut via legislative amendments.
What Ottawa Must Do
Canada cannot effect a “robust justice system response” to male violence against women with such a dangerous precedent, one which must be seen as part of a wider government attack on the rights of women.
During the 2025 federal election the Liberal Party of Canada promised to "Continue to move forward on the development of a 10-year National Action Plan to End Gender-Based Violence." But that promise is in danger of being permanently placed on the back burner, from the May 21, 2025 mandate letter that failed to mention women, gender equity, equality, sex or “Gender-Based Analysis Plus” (GBA+) to the 80% cuts planned for the Department for Women and Gender Equality.
On July 28, 2025 the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women joined over 430 organizations in issuing an open letter to the Prime Minister of Canada, Gender Equality is not Optional. “Globally, women’s rights and gender equality are under attack from regressive movements and governments alike,” the letter read. “Here in Canada, for the first time since the Harper era, we are facing an unprecedented and catastrophic rollback of support for these hard-won and fundamental freedoms.”
Among those freedoms under attack is the spectre of national security confidentiality being invoked to prevent women from seeking justice and accountability for the serious harm done to them every hour of every day in this land.
A major step in the direction of upholding the rights of women is for the Canadian government to ensure national security confidentiality is never imposed in such cases again. In addition, military police must no longer investigate or manage intimate partner violence cases involving Canadian Armed Forces members: such investigations must fall under civilian jurisdiction to ensure independence and fairness.
These modest steps would help ensure that what happened to the survivor of male violence against women in May 2025 never happens again.