Laura Snowdon

We need your help to improve protections for intimate partner violence & family violence. If you have experience with restraining orders, peace bonds, bail release orders or other protection orders in Ontario, complete our surveys now until April 11 2025! lco-cdo.org/POsurveys

Join LCO's Laura Snowdon on Oct 24 at the Osgoode International Access to Justice Forum! Part of the “Gender-Based Violence” panel, she’ll be highlighting findings from the LCO’s international review of protection order strategies. Details & registration: yorku.ca/ia2j/

Many thanks to the organizations committed to Motion CC8.2: @AuraFreedom, @schliferclinic, @NWRCT, @whiteribbon, @WomanACT, Women’s Habitat of Etobicoke, and @YWCAToronto. We're looking forward to the next steps!

LCO Counsel Laura Snowdon joined the City of Toronto GBV/IPV Working Group consultation on Monday and shared expertise on recommendations for implementing Motion CC8.2 and addressing the declared epidemic of gender-based and intimate partner violence.

As our law reform project continues, we look forward to advancing more evidence-based recommendations to strengthen legal protections for intimate partner violence in Ontario.

Thank you to MPP Jess Dixon for the invitation, and to MPP Dixon, MPP @PeggySattlerNDP, and MPP @kristynwongtam for their thoughtful questions engaging with our work.

Last week, I testified before Ontario’s Standing Committee on Justice Policy to explain why protection orders are failing to prevent intimate partner violence, and how we can improve them.

pg. 104-110 of the TMU report outlines the outsized backlash these students faced, much of it coming from lawyers - as the report states, "the students have already endured enough" torontomu.ca/content/dam/re…

Finally, CJ MacDonald calls for reparations from members of the legal community who argued, for example, that student signatories are not fit to be called to the bar because they have become “shills for Hamas.”

CJ MacDonald's report also includes extremely well-deserved recognition of two faculty members, Prof. @JoshuaSealy and Prof. Hilary Evans Cameron, who acted as support persons for some of the respondent students, and to whom the external review team is indebted.

Chief Justice MacDonald purposefully centers students' intentions in his report finding that TMU/LASL law students' pro-Palestinian letter was a valid exercise of student expression.

Always a joy to welcome new colleagues for the summer - and I'm especially lucky to be joined by Farah, Lindsay, Yasmeen and Yasmine on our protection orders project ☀️

When four of the country’s leading scholars on domestic violence are arguing against a Bill seeking to criminalize coercive control by raising serious concerns about its implementation making matters worse for those whom the Bill aims to protect, I hope legislators are listening.

@nehachughlaw It's avant-garde!

@eden_hoffer 🙋‍♀️ I'm a lawyer (sorry!) leading an IPV law reform project at the @LCO_CDO on protection orders (restraining orders, peace bonds, etc). We'll share a consultation paper soon & would love to learn from all of you. More here on what we're up to & my contact: lco-cdo.org/en/our-current…