What Have We Learned a Decade Since the Zero Tolerance Act? Reimagining Law as a Shared Pursuit of Justice
Please register for this event by chrlp.law [at] mcgill.ca (emailing the Centre here).
The event is co-sponsored by the听Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism听and the听Law Commission of Canada.
Cases of forced marriage (FM) in Canada occur across religions, ethnicities, and races, and can be traced back to Confederation. Their prevalence gained public attention in 2008 following several high-profile cases and advocacy work done by the South Asian Legal Clinic of Ontario. In 2015 Canada grouped FM, polygamy, and so-called 鈥渉onour killings鈥� under the Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act. The law added new criminal offences to the Criminal Code, including forced marriage, marriage under the age of 16, as well as the offence of officiating or solemnizing a marriage knowing that it is 鈥渋n contravention of federal law.鈥� Alongside amendments that centre on criminal sanctions and immigration control, the Civil Marriage Act was also amended to set, for the first time, a national minimum age for marriage (of 16 years) and a legal requirement of 鈥渇ree and enlightened consent of two persons to be the spouse of each other.鈥�
The 2015 legislation was part of a series of laws that marked Canada鈥檚 move towards 鈥榗rimigration鈥� similarly to other Global North states. Not only that identifying the source of FM, polygamy, or femicide outside the country is factually incorrect, it legitimizes an approach that treats them as 鈥渋mmigrants鈥� problems鈥� and encourages policies that either focus on policing newcomers or turn a blind eye, while the survivor鈥檚 interests and needs are not at the centre of concern. In 2018, under the Liberal government, the Act lost its divisive 鈥榋ero Tolerance鈥� title, but otherwise the law remained intact.
A decade later the public interest in the phenomena that the law purported to prevent has subsided. Meanwhile, women and girls continue to be forced into marriage and femicide remains prevalent. The symposium brings together participants from community and women鈥檚 organizations, government agencies, and the academia to share critical perspectives and explore new directions and possibilities for addressing gendered violence and preventing intergenerational harm 鈥� inspired by Canada鈥檚 history, diverse legal traditions, and unique pluralism in the domain of marriage laws.
Preliminary Program:
Gathering and Refreshments - 8:30-9:00
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Opening Remarks - 9:00-9:30
Shauna Van Praagh, President, the Law Commission of Canada
Nandini Ramanujam, Director of Human Rights Programs, CHRLP
Crimigration, Marginalization, and Resistance - 9:30-11:30
Chair: Lynda Clarke, Concordia University, Department of Religions and Cultures
Deepa Mattoo, Chief Executive Officer of YWCA Toronto and Miriam Zucker, 91涩漫 Law 鈥� A Decade Since the Zero Tolerance Act: Recontextualizing Forced Marriage as a Form of Coercive Control and Reinvigorating Alternatives to Penal Approaches
Dr. Salina Abji, Sociologist & Research Consultant 鈥� 鈥淗onour鈥�-Based Violence and the Politics of Culture in Canada
Hoori Hamboyan, Senior Advisor, Office of the Federal Ombudsperson for Victims of Crime 鈥� Access to Justice for Survivors of Gender-Based Violence
Q & A
Lunch Break - 11:30-12:30
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Building Bridges and Models of Shared Responsibility - 12:30-2:15
**Content warning** Please note that this session includes some sensitive or triggering content
Chair: Miriam Zucker, SSHRC Post Doctoral Fellow, 91涩漫 Faculty of Law
12:30-12:45 鈥� Overview of resources for sexual violence response and support at the Student Wellness Hub by Gabrielle Petrucci, Local Wellness Advisor - Law
12:30-1:00 鈥� Rev. Dr. Anne Marie Hunter, Senior Advisor, Safe Havens Interfaith Partnership Against Domestic Violence and Elder Abuse 鈥� Where Faith and Safety Meet: Working with Faith and Spiritual Communities to Increase Safety and Access to Services
1:00-2:00 鈥� Workshop on restorative & transformative justice models and DEI trauma-informed lawyering
Lead participants:
Nneka MacGregor, Co-founder and Executive Director of the Women鈥檚 Centre for Social Justice
Kate Crozier, Executive Director of Community Justice Initiatives
Sabha Sajjad-Hazai, Senior family law lawyer in private practice and former legal counsel and program lead for the Canadian Muslim Women鈥檚 Legal Centre Project
Coffee Break - 2:15-2:30
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Legal Pluralism and Dialogue: Beyond the Public/Private Divide - 2:30-4:15
Chair: Michel Morin, Universit茅 de Montr茅al Faculty of Law
Natasha Bakht, University of Ottawa Faculty of Law 鈥� Religious Barriers, Legal Pluralism, and Equality: Rethinking State Responses to 鈥淐ultural Violence鈥�
Marie Manikis, 91涩漫 Faculty of Law - Rethinking Prosecutorial Discretion and State Accountability in the Criminal Legal Process
Kirsten Anker, 91涩漫 Faculty of Law 鈥� Indigenous peace-making: dispute resolution that confounds the public/private divide
Q & A
Concluding Remarks - 4:15-4:30
Miriam Zucker, SSHRC Post Doctoral Fellow, 91涩漫 Faculty of Law
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Speaker Biographies:
Lynda Clarke,听Concordia University, Department of Religions and Cultures
Professor Lynda Clarke joined the Department of Religions and Cultures at Concordia University after having held positions in the Department of Religion at Bard College and the Department of Asian and Middle East Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research interests include Shiism, law and gender, and Islam in the West, in connection with which she has engaged with issues related to the use of Muslim law in Canada.
Miriam Zucker, SSHRC Post Doctoral Fellow, 91涩漫 Faculty of Law
Dr. Miriam Zucker received her SJD from the University of Toronto and holds a Master of Laws degree (LLM, Public and International Law specialization) and a Bachelor of Laws degree (LLB). Her work on the intersections of gendered violence and state violence among Indigenous and racialized communities has been disseminated through public presentations and publications in scholarly journals and has been recognized with the. Her current research, supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), examines Canada鈥檚 legal response to forced marriage under the Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act (2015) and its impact on survivors, individuals at risk, and their families.
Deepa Mattoo, Chief Executive Officer of YWCA Toronto
Deepa Mattoo is an award-winning lawyer, intersectional feminist, and social justice advocate who currently serves as the Chief Executive Officer of YWCA Toronto. With a career spanning over 28 years, her work is defined by a commitment to advancing equity, anti-oppression, and the rights of survivors of gender-based violence.
Dr. Salina Abji, Sociologist & Research Consultant
Salina Abji has a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Toronto and a Master鈥檚 degree (MSt.) in Women鈥檚 Studies from Oxford University. Her SSHRC-funded postdoctoral fellowship at Carleton University examined Canada's immigration detention system, focusing on experiences of detention and anti-border activism among GBV survivors. She has published research on citizenship and migration, gender-based violence, and social justice activism in scholarly journals like Citizenship Studies, Signs, Social Politics, and Studies in Social Justice. As a research and evaluation consultant, Salina has worked with national and provincial settlement and GBV organizations to build capacity for trauma-informed, intersectional, and culturally-responsive approaches to service provision. In 2021, she was awarded a Trailblazers in Social Justice award from the South Asian Legal Clinic of Ontario (SALCO) for her research and activism addressing structural racism and gender-based violence affecting Ontario鈥檚 diverse South Asian communities.
Hoori Hamboyan, Senior Advisor, Office of the Federal Ombudsperson for Victims of Crime
Hoori Hamboyan has a background in social work and law and is currently a senior advisor at the Office of the Federal Ombudsperson for Victims of Crime. She was the lead investigator for the office鈥檚 systemic investigation on the experiences of survivors of sexual violence and the criminal justice system. Prior to working with the OFOVC, she was chair of the federal interdepartmental working group on harmful practices for many years. Before joining the federal civil service, she was a child protection social worker and worked in grassroots refugee rights advocacy and counselling with survivors of sexual violence and armed conflict.
Rev. Dr. Anne Marie Hunter, Senior Advisor, Safe Havens Interfaith Partnership Against Domestic Violence and Elder Abuse
Anne Marie Hunter is an ordained United Methodist pastor who has worked extensively in the field of domestic violence and elder abuse since 1984. Hunter holds a Master of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School and a Ph.D. in Religion and Society from Drew University. Hunter has worked for two domestic violence service agencies and served as the pastor of East Saugus United Methodist Church in Massachusetts. In 1991, Hunter and a circle of friends founded Safe Havens Interfaith Partnership Against Domestic Violence and Elder Abuse, a religiously diverse nonprofit organization that works locally and nationally to strengthen partnerships between diverse faith communities and frontline workers to provide support services to domestic and sexual violence survivors.
Nneka MacGregor, Co-founder and Executive Director of the Women鈥檚 Centre for Social Justice
Nneka MacGregor, LL.B. is co-founder and Executive Director of the Women鈥檚 Centre for Social Justice (). A Black Intersectional abolitionist feminist, international speaker, and Transformative Accountability/Justice practitioner, Nneka is an expert advisory panel member of the Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice and Accountability and founder of the . Her research focuses on sexual violence, and the intersection of strangulation, Traumatic Brain Injury and GBV. She received the 2019 PINK Concussions Award and the 2020 YWCA Women of Distinction Social Justice Award and one of two 2024 (AiR) at the University of Guelph, in Ontario, Canada.
Kate Crozier, Executive Director of Community Justice Initiatives (CJI)
Prior to working at CJI, Kate spent most of her career working with women impacted by violence. Along the way she had the opportunity to work with criminalized youth, unhoused women, as well as men impacted by sexual harm 鈥� all of which helped her understand how people whose needs are not met often become criminalized. Kate has spent 20 years working to address the impacts of gender-based violence, through a mix of feminist anti-violence and restorative justice work. Both of these fields have fed her interest in tackling both personal and systemic issues through non-carceral pathways. Through her different roles in the CJI Kate has come to highly value the de-professionalization of restorative justice work, and she is proud of the CJI's legacy of equipping community members to facilitate mediations, groups, and circles.
Sabha Sajjad-Hazai, senior family law lawyer in private practice
Sabha Sajjad-Hazai launched Canada鈥檚 first faith-based legal clinic pilot project supporting survivors of gender-based violence in diverse Muslim communities navigating the family law system in Ontario. She has spent more than two decades advancing access to justice initiatives focused on Muslim women鈥檚 legal rights in Canada. She frequently speaks and teaches on the future of law, exploring how technology and artificial intelligence can expand access to legal services for underserved communities. She is a faculty member with The Advocates鈥� Society and a deputy judge in Central West Region Ontario. She also contributes to professional development programming through the Law Society of Ontario and mentors emerging lawyers at Toronto Metropolitan University Lincoln Alexander School of Law.
Michel Morin, Universit茅 de Montr茅al Faculty of Law
Michel Morin is a Full Professor at the Faculty of Law of the Universit茅 de Montr茅al. His research focuses on Comparative Legal History of public and private law and the evolution of Aboriginal Peoples鈥� rights.听His book, co-authored with Arnaud Decroix and David Gilles "Les tribunaux et l'arbitrage en Nouvelle-France et au Qu茅bec de 1740 脿 1784" (Courts and Arbitration in New France and Quebec, 1740-1784), was awarded the Rodolphe Fournier 2013 prize (ex aequo) by the F茅d茅ration des soci茅t茅s d'histoire du Qu茅bec (Federation of Historical Societies of Quebec) and the Chamber of Notaries. In 2023, Professor Morin was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
Natasha Bakht, University of Ottawa Faculty of Law
Natasha Bakht is a professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Ottawa whose research focuses on the intersection of religious freedom and women鈥檚 equality. She has written extensively in the area of religious arbitration. Her research on the niqab analyzes the unwarranted popular panic concerning Muslim women who cover their faces and explores systemic barriers to inclusion perpetuated by Canada鈥檚 legal and political system. Her book In Your Face: Law Justice and Niqab-Wearing Women in Canada was listed in the Hill Times 100 Best Books of 2020 and received the 2020-2021 Huguenot Society of Canada Award. Prof Bakht is the President of the Canadian Association for the Study of Islam and Muslims. She is also an award-winning dancer and choreographer, trained in Bharata Natyam and specializing in Indian contemporary dance.
Marie Manikis, 91涩漫 Faculty of Law
Marie Manikis is an Associate Professor and William Dawson Chair at the Faculty of Law, 91涩漫. She is also a Research Associate at the Centre for Criminology, University of Oxford and at the International Centre for Comparative Criminology, University of Montreal. Her research is interdisciplinary and comparative and analyses prosecutorial discretion, state accountability, as well as victim and community participation across criminal legal processes. She is the author of Victims as Agents of State Accountability (Oxford University Press, 2026) and has published in leading journals. Her award-winning scholarship has been cited by several courts, and she regularly advises governmental and non-governmental bodies in Canada and the United Kingdom.
Kirsten Anker, 91涩漫 Faculty of Law
Kirsten Anker is Associate Professor at 91涩漫 Faculty of Law, teaching property, equity & trusts, legal theory and Aboriginal law/Indigenous legal traditions. She has published research on a legal pluralist framework for the co-existence of state and Indigenous legal orders, the integration of Indigenous legal traditions in formal legal education, and ecological jurisprudence.
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