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For many refugee women in Canada, migration is not a choice made in search of opportunity, but a response to gender-based violence (GBV). Decisions to migrate often emerge from women’s negotiations of risk within specific relational contexts, including family-mediated coercion, forced marriage, economic dependency, and gendered surveillance, rather than from abstract or uniform “cultural” pressures. These constraints are neither static nor culturally inevitable, but rather enforced by actors and institutions, and experienced differently depending on women’s socio-economic positions, marital status, and age. Research by Mia Sisic et al., conducted at the University of Windsor, conceptualizes gender-based violence in migration as a continuum1, demonstrating that violence does not simply end upon arrival in Canada but frequently shifts into financial, psychological, and institutional forms of harm tied to legal precarity and dependency.
Evangelia Tastoglou and Jane Freedman extend this analysis by locating GBV not only in interpersonal relationships but within the structures of migration governance itself. Rather than treating violence as an individual or cultural issue, they show how immigration law and state policies actively shape vulnerability by determining whose experiences are recognizably harmful and whose are rendered invisible. Canada’s protection system relies on a narrow understanding of credibility and persecution, reinforcing this logic. When clear, verifiable evidence is prioritized, instances of non-physical violence and delayed disclosure are easily overlooked, leaving some women excluded – not because they lack agency, but because their experiences fall outside what the system is built to recognize.
What does Bill C-12 Change?
Bill C-12 introduces a series of reforms intended to streamline Canada’s asylum system and strengthen what the government describes as “integrity.” Among its most consequential changes, the legislation introduces new eligibility barriers by imposing a one-year deadline2 to make a refugee claim after arrival, resulting in the termination of claims3 before they reach the Immigration and Refugee Board and expanding ministerial control4 over which claims can move forward. In practice, these changes increase the likelihood that certain applicants are redirected away from full adjudication and assessed through more limited risk-review processes.
While these changes are framed as neutral tools for efficiency, their effects are unequal. Claims involving gender-based violence often rely on narrative testimony rather than documentation, and disclosure may be delayed due to trauma, fear, or dependence on partners or family members for legal status. Under Bill C-12’s tightened timelines and early screening, these features become liabilities rather than expected features of trauma-related claims. This results in a structural disconnect between how gender-based violence is experienced and how refugee claims are assessed. Bill C-12 does not explicitly target women, however, its framing increases gender vulnerability by transforming survivor patterns of silence and dependency into procedural failure. In doing so, the bill risks filtering out precisely those claims most shaped by gendered harm.
The Illusion of Gender Protection
A common response to critiques of Canada’s asylum system is that gender-based violence is already addressed through institutional safeguards. The Immigration and Refugee Board, for instance, has made a visible commitment to gender sensitivity through its Gender-based Analysis (GBA) Plus framework, including Chairperson’s Guidelines 4 and 95, gender-related task forces, and trauma-informed training for decision-makers. These guidelines explicitly caution against penalizing delayed or fragmented testimony, as well as a lack of corroborating evidence — features widely recognized as common in claims shaped by trauma and fear of authority. The Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada’s 2024-2025 Departmental Results Report emphasizes the integration of GBA Plus internal policies and member training across its refugee protection and appeal functions.
This response, however, overlooks a critical limitation: these safeguards operate only after a claim reaches the adjudicative stage. As Susie Jolly’s research on the masculinization of international development cautions, gender-sensitive or rights-based frameworks cannot compensate for restrictive institutional architectures that determine access to protection in the first place. When governance systems regulate who is permitted to enter before recognition can occur, protection becomes conditional. Under Bill C-12, claims will be terminated or redirected through preliminary eligibility mechanisms before a full hearing in which GBA Plus principles can meaningfully shape outcomes. In this context, gender sensitivity functions conditionally rather than comprehensively. The result is a system in which institutional recognition of gendered harm coexists with procedural reforms that prevent many survivors from being heard at all.
Procedural Gatekeeping
In an interview conducted for this article, Jean-Marc Pham, an Associate Legal Officer at UNHCR, describes how recent shifts in Canada’s asylum framework interact with the realities of gender-based violence claims.6 Drawing on his work in youth protection, regional asylum coordination, and policy engagement, he noted that the delayed disclosure is not exceptional but common in cases shaped by trauma and fear of authority. As he explained, “survivors often require time before they can articulate harm, particularly where violence has been normalized or tied to dependency on partners or family members.” When strict deadlines and early screening determine access to hearing, it is possible that those who have faced experiences of gender based violence may not disclose this type of persecution up front. Under these conditions, it is important that the decision-maker be flexible if a survivor raises these issues later in the claim process. Mr. Pham noted that these concerns reflect issues that UNHCR has raised publicly in its November 2025 intervention on Bill C-12, particularly regarding the exceptions for vulnerable groups, so a specialized decision-maker with sensitivity training will adjudicate the case.
Bill C-12 illustrates how efficiency-driven reforms may produce exclusionary effects while operating under claims of procedural neutrality. By relocating decisive judgments to early procedural stages, the asylum system increasingly rewards speed and clarity over the realities of trauma and dependency. Gender-based violence is not denied as a basis for protection, but is unevenly accommodated through thresholds many survivors cannot meet. The issue, then, is not a lack of recognition but a framework that converts vulnerability into procedural risk. As long as adjudication remains conditional, gendered protections will operate selectively, constrained by rules that determine which harms are permitted to enter the system.
Edited by Catvy Tran
The argument defended in this article is solely that of the author and does not reflect the position of the McGill Journal of Political Science, the Political Science Students’ Association, or the McGill Department of Political Science.
Featured image by Mika Baumeister
- The term “continuum” in this context refers to the ways gender based violence unfolds across pre-migration, migration itself, and settlement, shifting form rather than disappearing as a peripheral issue. For more context, see The Continuum of Gender-Based Violence Experienced by Migrant and Refugee Women in Canada. ↩︎
- Bill C-12’s Amendments to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, s.101(1)(b.1). ↩︎
- Bill C-12’s Amendments to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, s.101(1.2). ↩︎
- Bill C-12’s Amendments to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, ss.87.301-87.305. ↩︎
- The Immigration and Refugee Board Chairperson’s Guideline 4 requires members to avoid gender-based stereotypes and to apply trauma-informed, intersectional reasoning when assessing credibility and evidence in cases involving GBV. Guideline 9 applies parallel principles in cases involving sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, and sex characteristics (SOGIESC), cautioning against stereotyping and emphasizing sensitive questioning assessments and protection of confidential information. ↩︎
- Jean-Marc Pham, Associate Legal Officier at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), interview by Arianne Fouse, January 13, 2026. ↩︎
