Get to work, women’s advocates urge after partner violence bill passes 2nd reading [Video]

As the Ontario government promised earlier in the day, an NDP private member’s bill to declare intimate partner violence an epidemic passed second reading at the legislature Wednesday evening without a fight.

Some might ask why the bill is important, given nearly 100 municipalities have declared this form of violence to be an epidemic on their own in the past 10 months.

There are some days when even Erin Lee, the executive director of a rural eastern Ontario shelter for abused women and children, wonders about it.

Then Lee remembers that it was the first of 86 recommendations in a recent inquest into this form of violence, made by a jury of regular citizens who heard weeks of evidence. The Progressive Conservatives and their majority at Queen’s Park had resisted the declaration until this week.

For people still dealing with abuse, the message that the government is seeing, hearing and validating them is meaningful, Lee said.

“If we don’t see it and we don’t name it, …