"Thus, I do not see what use there is in those mills of the gods said to grind so late as to render punishment hard to be recognized, and to make wickedness fearless."
— Plutarch (c.50-c.120 AD)
Same Plutarch. Same.
Having arrived at the same conclusion as Plutarch, albeit much later than he did, I often shake my head (and sometimes my fist) at the slow grind of justice. Last month, to try to capture that impatience in the title of my article, I wrote: Changes in the Canadian Criminal Code: About time, I didn't know that wasn’t illegal before and Thank goodness, finally.
One of the big changes in the criminal code was making coercive control a specific criminal offense in Canada. Bill C-16 (the Protecting Victims Act) received Royal Assent on June 18, 2026, but the specific criminal code provisions outlawing coercive control will legally come into effect no later than June 2028.
So after cheering the criminal code changes, one is left with questions about what happens between now and June 2028? Enter the Supreme Court of Canada and its May, 2026 tort decision in the case of Ahluwalia v. Ahluwalia.
A tort is a civil wrong, allowing the person harmed to sue the wrongdoer for monetary damages, separate and apart from any criminal charge.
In 2022, a trial judge first recognized a tort of “family violence” in Ahluwalia v. Ahluwalia and awarded damages of $150,000 in keeping with the damages of domestic violence cases ranging from $100,000 to $200,000 in Ontario. The Supreme Court overturned that ruling, recognizing a new tort:
"The distinguishing feature of the new tort is coercive control, which is a pattern of domination that causes distinct harm by stripping an intimate partner of their dignity, autonomy and equality within the relationship. Hallmarks include financial control, isolation, intimidation and threats. While assault and battery focus on discrete incidents, the new tort is designed to capture the entirety of an abusive relationship and the pattern of behaviour, and its impact, over the course of the relationship."
The new damages awarded?
A whopping $400,000.
One form of coercive control abusers use is to withhold money from their victims and there is a uniquely satisfying justice for abusers to pay larger sums of money, giving their victims the autonomy that their abusers tried to strip from them.
While we wait for criminal charges to take effect, we can look forward to larger damages paid to victims in the future.
Back to what our old friend Plutarch said, there's no point in rendering punishment too late to be useful and making wickedness fearless because, truly, abusers of women have had a long run of fearlessness. They obviously see money as power so, taking their money seems fitting.
If this sounds a tad vindictive, you betcha. Words can hide harm and just saying "coercive control" in this case does just that.
The actual harms:
"the husband repeatedly punched, slapped and choked his wife over the course of the marriage, struck her with a hatchet or hammer on two occasions and broke her front teeth with a glass ketchup bottle. He kept a house full of over 500 firearms ranging from handguns to machine guns. In addition to taking out a gun when he was enraged with the wife, he told her he had the “25 cent or ten cent solution for her” — a statement the wife understood to refer to the cost of making a bullet and as a threat to kill her...(She) was trapped in the marriage, always trying to behave in a manner that would not trigger one of (the husband’s) bouts of rage and the ensuing violence.”
