A bill to outlaw forced marriage,\u00a0prevent polygamist immigrations and tackle \u201chonour killings\u201d is set to become law.<\/p>\n
Bill S-7, the Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act,\u00a0passed its final parliamentary hurdle Tuesday evening, by a vote of 182 to 84. The governing Conservatives and Liberals voted for it, with the New Democrats and Green Party opposed.<\/p>\n
The bill would raise the marriage age to 16 in addition to adding forced marriage to the Criminal Code. It would also toughen the laws around polygamy,\u00a0aiming to prevent immigration by those who engage in the practice and making it easier to deport people who do. It would also toughen the rules around so-called honour killings, so that the defense of provocation can no longer be used in court.<\/p>\n
Critics of the bill say both its name \u2014 the use of the word \u201cbarbaric\u201d \u2014 and its substance are intended to stir fears of certain groups of immigrants as opposed to keeping women safe. Advocates for victims of forced marriage have also called for the bill\u2019s amendment as they feel criminalizing the act will drive vulnerable women\u00a0further underground.<\/p>\n
But Minister of Citizenship and Immigration Chris Alexander says the bill is both necessary and prudent as it would make it possible for perpetrators of forced marriage and subsequent sexual assault eligible for life sentences. He said it\u2019s also about making polygamy a reason an immigrant would be inadmissible to Canada.<\/p>\n
While UNICEF has supported the bill for standardizing the age of marriage, which currently varies across the country, it has also called for the word \u201cbarbaric\u201d to be removed from the title and other changes made. The bill, which has been passed by Parliament, has not been substantively amended.<\/p>\n
In 2013, the South Asian Legal Clinic of Ontario released a report detailing 219 cases of forced marriage between 2010 and its release. Alexander said that\u2019s just a snapshot and there are likely hundreds of more victims in Canada.<\/p>\n
The Bill is expected to be signed into law by the Governor General shortly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A bill to outlaw forced marriage,\u00a0prevent polygamist immigrations and tackle \u201chonour killings\u201d is set to become law. Bill S-7, the Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act,\u00a0passed its final parliamentary hurdle Tuesday evening, by a vote of 182 to 84. The governing Conservatives and Liberals voted for it, with the New Democrats and Green Party…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":498,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","description-off"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/immigration.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/immigration.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/immigration.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/immigration.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/498"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/immigration.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/immigration.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11518\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/immigration.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/immigration.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/immigration.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}