Canada’s gender-based violence laws are improving. Frontline worker conditions are not

A thriving anti-violence sector can better support its workers, who can in turn better help survivors benefit from expanding legal protections. (Unsplash) Canada’s gender‑based violence laws are improving. Frontline worker conditions are not Published: July 29, 2026 11.57am EDT Share article Print article When it comes to gender-based violence (GBV) Canada has made legal and policy strides over the past decades, and indeed the past few years. Once viewed as a domestic matter, GBV is increasingly recognized as a public safety, public health and human rights issue. In 2022, for example, the National Action Plan to End Gender-Based Violence provided a shared framework to guide a co-ordinated national response with provinces and territories. Coercive control is now receiving greater legal recognition through the introduction of a new tort on intimate partner violence by the Supreme Court of Canada. And Bill C-16, the Protecting Victims Act, which was passed into law on June 18, creates a new offence of controlling conduct toward an intimate partner. Despite these legal and policy gains, and the momentum they have generated, support for frontline workers in this sector remains a missing link. Over the past two years — through a collaboration between the Vancouver Aboriginal Friendship Centre Society, the community stewardship of its director of operations Robyn Vermette and Simon Fraser University’s faculty of health sciences — we have conducted research into the experiences and work conditions of frontline workers in the anti-violence sector in British Columbia. We spoke to 66 frontline workers and 21 anti-violence sector leaders and government staff. What we found is a discrepancy between government commitments and realities on the front lines. Inadequate pay and burnout Long-standing leaders in the anti-violence sector recalled the grassroots beginnings of the sector where GBV survivors were supported from kitchens of dedicated volunteers. They took us down memory lane, describing how the sector became increasingly formalized, professionalized and funded by the government from the 1980s on. While the Canadian government pronounced its responsibility in addressing GBV through law and policy, it handed off this expanded mandate to a non-profit sector without corresponding budgetary and technical resources. In many ways, the sector still consists of women volunteers working from kitchens — just now, the kitchens are underfunded organizations and…