SaskatchewanThe Saskatchewan government says it will introduce The Cyberstalking and Coercive Control Act, amending the definition of interpersonal violence to include coercive or controlling behaviour and online stalking and harassment. Survivor says acknowledgement is small but necessary step on long roadAishwarya Dudha · CBC News · Posted: Oct 23, 2025 12:41 PM EDT | Last Updated: 4 hours agoListen to this articleEstimated 4 minutesBrenda Ottenbreit, survivor of intimate partner violence and founding member of Safe Child Saskatchewan, says coercive control can continue long after a relationship ends. She says new legislation is a first step in the right direction. (Cory Herperger/Radio-Canada)The Saskatchewan government plans to introduce legislation that will amend the definition of interpersonal violence to include coercive or controlling behaviour and online stalking and harassment.It will also amend laws to enforce support orders when a parent moves out of Saskatchewan and to prevent people convicted of serious crimes from changing their names. The upcoming Cyberstalking and Coercive Control Act and other planned changes were announced in the throne speech delivered at the opening of the fall legislative session on Wednesday. “What you’re going to see now is some enabling legislations to ensure that the government of Saskatchewan can go further in supporting individuals that may be in a situation where they’re exposed to domestic violence,” Premier Scott Moe told reporters. Brenda Ottenbreit knows the pain of coercive or controlling behaviour far too well. “It is dehumanizing. It is traumatizing. It is frustrating,” she said in an interview. Ottenbreit is a survivor of intimate partner violence and the founding member of Safe Child Saskatchewan, a not-for-profit focused on the safety and rights of children. Ottenbreit said coercive or controlling behaviour has gone unrecognized by the justice system but she’s grateful that the province is taking a step in the right direction. “When you are abused, you lose every sense of worth, of thinking that you matter. When you’re going through a system that is like this, it reinforces the unworthiness and that we don’t matter,” she said. “You can’t change anything that you don’t acknowledge.… Bringing things out into the sunlight, bringing it to the surface, it’s never a bad thing,” she said. Ottenbreit has spent years navigating a system that she said asks victims of intimate partner violence to co-operate with their perpetrators because it doesn’t consider coercive and controlling behaviour. She said stonewalling, non-communication related to children and financial control in the form of unpaid settlements and child support are all examples of coercive and controlling behaviour. Online stalking and harassment are also usually part of the pattern, she said. “I have one friend who, in a 48-hour period, there were 250 emails and when you have children, you’re supposed to read them and then you’re supposed to reply by a certain amount of time and three-quarters of them were not about the children.” she said. Crystal Giesbrecht, research director at the Provincial Association of Transition Houses and Services of Saskatchewan, says recognizing coercive control and online harassment is a vital step toward protecting victims of non-physical abuse. (Cory Herperger/Radio-Canada)Crystal Giesbrecht, research director at the Provincial Association of Transition Houses and Services of Saskatchewan (PATHS), has been calling for the recognition of coercive control, and she said that the announcement to introduce the law provincially is “fantastic news.”“This will allow victims and survivors who experience this form of abuse to access provisions within the Victims of Interpersonal Violence Act, such as emergency intervention orders,” she said.Giesbrecht said she has been seeing more and more victims and survivors facing online stalking and harassment as part of that pattern of intimate partner violence — without any mechanism to deal with it or access support. “The pace at which the forms of online abuse and the things perpetrators are able to employ to further target victims is really increasing,” she said. She still hopes for a Criminal Code offence for coercive control at the federal level after a previous private member’s bill died when Parliament was prorogued in January.Details of the province’s new act haven’t been released yet. Both Ottenbreit and Giesbrecht are watching closely to see how it will work. Ottenbreit wants more training — survivor-focused and trauma-informed — for police, lawyers, judges, assessors and evaluators. She cites models like Safe & Together and research by Canadian scholars, alongside frontline training offered by PATHS and others.And there needs to be more attention paid to the children, Ottenbreit said.”They are survivors and people forget to say that they’re survivors,” she said. The province said it will amend the Interjurisdictional Support Orders Act to ensure support orders are enforced when a parent moves out of Saskatchewan. “When you do not pay child support, when you do not pay court orders, that is called financial abuse,” Ottenbreit said. “There are moms that worry about how they’re going to put a roof over their head because they’re doing it on their own. And I don’t know, in the economy that we are in right now, how many one-income households can do it.”ABOUT THE AUTHORAishwarya Dudha is a reporter for CBC Saskatchewan based in Saskatoon. She specializes in immigration, justice and cultural issues and elevating voices of vulnerable people. She has previously worked for CBC News Network and Global News. You can email her at aishwarya.dudha@cbc.ca
Sask. to table law recognizing coercive control, cyberstalking in interpersonal violence
