In April, the BC Coroners Service released Our Time to Act: A Review of Intimate Partner-Related Deaths in BC 2016–2024. While the report examines tragic deaths, its purpose is not only to understand what happened in these intimate partner violence deaths, but to also explore avenues to prevent future violence and improve support for people experiencing intimate partner violence.

EVA BC’s executive director, Ninu Kang, was part of this 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.” One of the report’s key messages is that intimate partner violence rarely begins with severe physical violence. Instead, it often develops as a pattern of coercive control, including emotional abuse, intimidation, isolation, financial control, stalking, and threats. These behaviours can increase in frequency and severity over time, creating significant safety risks.

The review found that many women and others who lost their lives had interacted with multiple systems before their deaths, including healthcare providers, police, victim services, community organizations, and the courts. This highlights an important opportunity: when professionals recognize risk factors early and work together to share information and coordinate safety planning, lives can be saved. 

The Chief Coroner’s report’s recommendations established five priority areas:

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 healthcare 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.

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

The report also reminds us that leaving an abusive relationship is often the most dangerous time for a survivor. People experiencing abuse are continually weighing their safety, the safety of their children, financial stability, housing, cultural considerations, and many other factors — every decision is made under circumstances that are often incredibly complex.

Our Time to Act calls for a coordinated, trauma-informed, and survivor-centred response across British Columbia. This includes improving risk assessment, increasing access to culturally safe and accessible services, strengthening collaboration between agencies, and expanding public awareness about coercive control and intimate partner violence.

For survivors, this report sends an important message: your experiences matter, and you deserve to be heard, believed, and supported. Preventing intimate partner violence is a shared responsibility, and by working together, communities can create safer pathways. 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.