EVA BC welcomes the release of BC’s Chief Coroner’s report, Our Time to Act: A Review of Intimate Partner Violence-Related Deaths in British Columbia, 2016-2024 on April 27. The report documents the results of the death review panel that examined intimate partner violence-related deaths between 2016 and 2024. The recommendations from this report echo those from previous IPV death review panels in BC, and other reports that looked at system accountability and response to intimate partner violence. 

EVA BC’s executive director, Ninu Kang, was part of the death review panel that included experts from health care, law enforcement, gender equity, Indigenous health, and the anti-violence sector.  

“The most important thing going forward is to work collaboratively and take action on these recommendations,” Kang said. “And we need to include ways to measure accountability.” 

Here are the five priority areas of the Chief Coroner’s report’s recommendations: 

1. Establish a coordinated provincial response to align ministries, standardize policy, and ensure accountability for IPV-related work.  
2. Create a standing IPV death review committee to provide continuous oversight, identify systemic gaps, and support timely intervention.  
3. Enhance training for law enforcement, first responders, and health care providers to improve identification of IPV and strengthen survivor-centred responses. 
4. Develop and resource community-led, evidence-supported models that reflect local needs and support culturally safe, trauma-informed prevention and intervention.  
5. Implement a province-wide public awareness campaign to dispel myths, identify risk factors, and promote pathways to support survivors, perpetrators, and communities. 

As EVA BC has been advocating for funding of the anti-violence sector’s crucial work on local coordination, and the need for an ongoing IPV death review committee, we are pleased to see both issues prioritized in the report’s recommendations. 

Dr. Kim Stanton’s June 2025 independent systemic review: The British Columbia Legal System’s Treatment of Intimate Partner Violence and Sexual Violence final report, also highlighted these two needs.

One of that report’s recommendations highlights the need to deepen cross-sector collaboration (page 76): “Reports have repeatedly recommended cross-sector collaboration and communication because it works. Respectful and intentional relationships between institutional actors make communities safer.” Recommendation 6A expressly asks “that the BC government provide ongoing support for collaborative mechanisms between entities that address gender-based violence,” and lists the coordination initiatives supported by EVA BC members and EVA BC’s Community Coordination for Survivor Safety (CCSS) program. 

Stanton’s report also recommended the creation of a standing gender-based violence death review committee (page 85): “a broad consensus exists for the creation of a Standing GBV-DRC in British Columbia.” 

As we move to action the recommendations from the Our Time To Act report, the work needs to be grounded in greater cross-sector engagement with a commitment to ensure greater accountability from all systems to the survivors and victims of intimate partner violence.