When it comes to gender-based violence (GBV) Canada has made legal and policy strides over the past decades, and indeed the past few years. Once viewed as a domestic matter, GBV is increasingly recognized as a public safety, public health and human rights issue.

In 2022, for example, the National Action Plan to End Gender-Based Violence provided a shared framework to guide a co-ordinated national response with provinces and territories.

Coercive control is now receiving greater legal recognition through the introduction of a new tort on intimate partner violence by the Supreme Court of Canada. And Bill C-16, the Protecting Victims Act, which was passed into law on June 18, creates a new offence of controlling conduct toward an intimate partner.

Despite these legal and policy gains, and the momentum they have generated, support for frontline workers in this sector remains a missing link.

Over the past two years — through a collaboration between the Vancouver Aboriginal Friendship Centre Society, the community stewardship of its director of operations Robyn Vermette and Simon Fraser University’s faculty of health sciences — we have conducted research into the experiences and work conditions of frontline workers in the anti-violence sector in British Columbia.

We spoke to 66 frontline workers and 21 anti-violence sector leaders and government staff. What we found is a discrepancy between government commitments and realities on the front lines.

Inadequate pay and burnout

Long-standing leaders in the anti-violence sector recalled the grassroots beginnings of the sector where GBV survivors were........

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