Let no one say the federal Liberals didn’t keep their promise. And let no one say Prime Minister Mark Carney has abandoned Justin Trudeau’s feminism, despite declining to attach the F-word to his foreign policy . The Liberals’ 2025 election campaign platform promised to “protect victims of sexual violence and intimate partner violence by making murder motivated by hate a … first-degree offence, including femicide.” (“Including femicide” is a strangely tacked-on phrase that have indicated just how seriously they were considering demands that murdering women be established as a whole separate crime.)

Now we have Bill C-16 , which passed first reading in the House of Commons on Tuesday.

“ Federal crime bill proposes tackling femicide, gender-based violence,” one headline proclaimed. Another: “ Justice bill takes aim at femicide .” It’s good, right? Other than murderers and perhaps 96 per cent of law professors, who could be against tougher penalties for murderers — both in general and specifically in the context of domestic violence, which is what “femicide” most often refers to? Between 2011 and 2021, Statistics Canada reports , two-thirds of female murder victims fell prey to their intimate partners, while male victims were far more likely to be killed by other acquaintances.

Minor detail, though: C-16 doesn’t establish any new crime of “femicide” at all. It’s a scam, like these activist-flavoured Liberal bills almost always are.

The word “femicide” appears three times in the bill: once in the preamble (which is not binding law) and twice in subheadings (which are also not binding law) . It never appears in the proposed legislative language, and for a very good reason: The bill doesn’t just apply to female victims, thus rendering the “femicide” branding meaningless.

C-16 states that upon its passing, it shall henceforth be considered first-degree murder “when the death is caused … while engaging in, or after having engaged in, a pattern of coercive or controlling conduct with intent to cause the victim to believe that the victim’s physical or psychological safety is threatened, in the case where the victim is that person’s intimate partner; while exercising control, direction or influence over the movements of the victim with intent to exploit the victim (i.e., in the context of human trafficking); while committing or attempting to commit an offence of a sexual nature or an offence for a sexual purpose; or while motivated by hate based on colour, race, religion, national or ethnic origin, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or mental or physical disability.”

That all sounds fine to me. But conspicuously missing, you will notice, is any reference to the victim’s gender. All that those people demanding a law against femicide specifically get is a subheading attached to the above-quoted paragraph: “Femicide, including of intimate partner, and other aggravated circumstances.”

Note: “and other aggravated circumstances.” “Femicide” in this bill is nothing more than an example. It has no business being in all those news headlines.

Once the justice minister of the day humours the activist crowd, one can imagine government lawyers and other advisers explaining to him that we should probably avoid treating victims of crime and their assailants differently based on their sex, or indeed any other immutable characteristics. (Some might even call that discriminatory.)

The fact female homicide victims are much more likely to have been killed by an intimate partner than male victims doesn’t make “femicide” a separate crime, after all. Killing someone over any of their immutable characteristics is already an aggravating factor in homicide, needless to say; it’s what we colloquially call a “hate crime.” And so ultimately, this probably doesn’t really matter all that much. The justice system either does right by female victims or it doesn’t. It either does right by victims, period, or it doesn’t.

It does matter, however, that they’re trying to sell a bill as something it isn’t — namely, claiming it’s specifically about the murder of women. And what’s perhaps most extraordinary is, we all know they won’t suffer for it.

National Post
cselley@postmedia.com