Intimate partner violence: Supreme Court of Canada recognizes a new tort to better protect victims

I — The marriage

Sixteen years of surviving in her own home

The marriage of Kuldeep Kaur Ahluwalia and Amrit Pal Singh Ahluwalia lasted sixteen years. From the very first years, her husband undertook what the courts ultimately called by its proper name: he coerced and controlled his wife in order to break her will and condition her to obey him.

The evidence presented at trial, as described by the Supreme Court, is overwhelming and terribly ordinary: physical assaults. Humiliation. Intimidation. Conduct deliberately designed to inflict emotional distress. Isolation from her family. Abuse used as leverage for sexual purposes. Financial control — even her ability to earn money, keep it, decide what to do with it.

For sixteen years, this woman lived through that. For sixteen years, she could not freely decide what she would do with her career, her family life, her friendships, her happiness. The trial judge would later emphasize that the husband had exploited an additional vulnerability: Ms. Ahluwalia was a racialized woman, newly arrived in the country. And when the marriage finally ended — it was he who filed for divorce — she did something few victims still dare to do in the Canadian legal system: she claimed damages for the abuse she had suffered. In addition to the divorce. In addition to spousal support. In addition to the division of property. Compensation, in civil court, for what he had done to her over sixteen years.

And she won.

The trial judge awarded her $150,000 — $50,000 in compensatory damages, $50,000 in aggravated damages, $50,000 in punitive damages — for what she herself called, by creating the concept, a "new tort of family violence".

II — The detour through the Court of Appeal

Part of the victory erased

The husband appealed. Before the Court of Appeal for Ontario, he made an important concession: he admitted that his conduct triggered his liability under the existing torts (assault, battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress). But he challenged the new tort created by the trial judge. And the Court of Appeal agreed with him on that point.

For the appellate judges, the existing torts were sufficient. There was no need to create a new category. The $50,000 in punitive damages — awarded precisely for the new tort — were removed. The victim lost a third of her compensation.

Ms. Ahluwalia brought the case to the Supreme Court of Canada. The question: should this new tort be created, or are the existing tools really sufficient?

III — The Supreme Court rules

Six judges to three: a new tort exists

The Supreme Court split into three groups. The majority — Chief Justice Wagner and Justices Kasirer, Martin, O'Bonsawin and Moreau, with reasons written by Justice Kasirer — recognized a new tort focused on coercive control. Justice Karakatsanis concurred in creating the tort but would have wanted it to be even broader, also covering isolated acts of violence within an intimate relationship. And three dissenting judges — Côté, Rowe and Jamal — would have left the law as it was.

The result: by six votes to three, the tort now exists. Its formulation, in three elements, is precise.

Justice Kasirer provides a list — non-exhaustive — of conduct that may constitute coercive control: physical and sexual violence, emotional and psychological abuse, harassment, humiliation, denigration, financial control, stalking and surveillance, isolation, denial of access to employment or recreation, judicial violence, threats to harm children or threats of suicide.

It is, for the first time in the history of Canadian law, a complete legal mapping of what many victims have lived through without being able to put a word to it.

As for Ms. Ahluwalia's damages, the Supreme Court allowed the appeal in part. The $100,000 awarded by the trial judge ($50,000 compensatory + $50,000 aggravated) are maintained — but reclassified entirely as general compensatory damages under the new tort of intimate partner violence. The $50,000 in punitive damages removed by the Court of Appeal are not reinstated, as the record did not contain sufficient evidence to recalculate them. In the end, compensation remains at $100,000 — but it now rests on a legal foundation designed specifically for what Ms. Ahluwalia lived through.

IV — Why the old tools were not enough

The harm was greater than the sum of the blows

To understand why this decision matters so much, you have to understand what the existing torts could not capture.

The classic torts — assault, battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress — are designed for specific events. A slap, a blow, an imminent threat, an outrageous act that causes a provable psychological illness. They operate episode by episode.

But coercive control does not boil down to events. It is a system. A pattern that takes root, thickens, becomes the air the victim breathes for years. The harm done to dignity, autonomy and equality far exceeds each individual aggression taken separately. As the majority writes, the recurring conduct is "greater than the sum of its parts."

It is this difference that makes coercive control a qualitatively distinct legal wrong. Not aggravated violence. Not repeated assault. Something else. And something that deserves its own name in law.

V — Impact on Quebec

Quebec civil law was already on the path

The Ahluwalia decision rests on common law. Quebec, by contrast, operates under the Civil Code. The ruling therefore does not formally create a new tort in Quebec. But the Supreme Court takes care, in its reasons, to emphasize that Quebec civil law is already well-equipped to respond to this type of legal wrong — and that Canadian common law is partly inspired by that tradition.

Article 1457 of the Civil Code of Québec requires everyone to refrain from causing harm to others through their fault. And the Supreme Court observes that Quebec courts have long recognized that civil liability in a couple can flow not only from isolated acts, but also from "patterns of coercion and control." Justice Kasirer cites several recent rulings from Quebec courts — notably Droit de la famille — 251674 (Superior Court, 2025), where a partner was held liable for coercive conduct, as well as K.M. v. Laplante (Court of Quebec, 2025) and Droit de la famille — 24530 (Superior Court, 2024).

The Quebec Civil Code also expressly frames the obligations of couples. Articles 392 and 521.6 provide that married spouses and partners in a civil union "owe each other respect, fidelity, succour and assistance." These obligations have more than just symbolic weight: they establish a standard of conduct. A spouse who, in defiance of these obligations, adopts conduct that no reasonable spouse would adopt may be held civilly liable for the damages caused under article 1457.

In practice, this means that in Quebec, a victim of intimate partner violence can already — within a divorce proceeding, or in parallel — seek damages for the harm suffered. And the Ahluwalia decision, while not directly binding in Quebec, will very likely give Quebec judges a stronger conceptual framework to quantify and explain the harm associated with coercive control.

VI — Why it matters to you

What this decision concretely changes

Three things are worth remembering, beyond the legal debate.

First. The law now has a vocabulary to name what victims live through. Coercive control is no longer a sociological notion or an activist term — it is a legal category recognized by the highest court in the country. Women (and men, to a lesser statistical extent) who have lived through years of domination without a spectacular blow are no longer forced to reduce their experience to a list of isolated incidents to obtain redress.

Second. Compensation can now reflect the full extent of the harm. When a victim obtains damages for isolated assaults, compensation covers only the proven episodes. With the new tort, the harm to dignity, autonomy and equality — that cumulative harm that persists long after separation — becomes itself compensable, as a distinct loss.

Third. The Supreme Court expressly recognizes that intimate partner violence is a strongly gendered phenomenon. The numbers speak: according to recent Statistics Canada data cited in the ruling, victims of this violence are disproportionately women. A study published in the Canadian Bar Review, recalled by the Court, points to an underreporting rate of nearly 80% — meaning that for every reported case, several others are never reported. And a Quebec study (Gonzalez-Sicilia, Zoom santé, December 2025) underlines that psychological abuse is the most common form in Quebec, but that it is often unrecognized by authorities. The legal system long behaved as though these realities did not exist. This decision clearly says the opposite.