OTTAWA -- Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin says, since the 1970s, Canada has made a great deal of progress in how it deals with sexual assault cases.
McLachlin, who started her career as a lawyer in Alberta and British Columbia in the early 1970s, says judges attitudes toward sexual assault complainants has improved.
"We still see the odd case of inappropriate behaviour and it's dealt with, as appropriate, through the complaints process," McLachlin said during a question and answer session with reporters in Ottawa on Thursday morning.
"But, anecdotally, I can tell you that as a young woman starting to practice in the early 70s, there was a lot more inappropriate conduct with this kind of case, a lot more sexual innuendo and that kind of thing than there is now."
McLachlin said it's a diminishing problem and that's a good news story.
"We've made a great deal of progress in sensitizing all levels of society, prosecutors, judges included, into the inappropriateness, and to recognize sexual biases."
Last month, an Alberta judge tore apart the ruling of a lower court judge who ruled that an assault victim enough. The lower court judge ruled in part that, because the young woman later laughed off the incident by texting a smiley-face emoji to a friend, she hadn't clearly communicated her discomfort with her assailant's advances.
Alberta Court of Queen's Bench Justice J.E. Topolniski said in her ruling that provincial court Judge Michael Savaryn erred in interpreting and applying the law of consent, which she said was "not a difficult concept."
It was reminiscent of the case of , a judge who wondered, in a written ruling, why a sexual assault victim couldn't simply keep her knees together to protect herself from being raped. Camp made the ruling as a provincial court judge in Alberta, but was a Federal Court judge when the ruling surfaced.
Camp faces a Canadian Judicial Council inquiry next month to determine whether he should be removed from his job.
'Sexist, archaic notions'
The high-profile case of former radio host Jian Ghomeshi also raised concerns for women's advocates, who were unsatisfied he was and one count of overcoming resistance by choking. Another charge was . Ghomeshi was charged after the Toronto Star reported more than a dozen women alleged he assaulted them.
McLachlin says there were changes made to the legal system in the 1970s and 1980s to reform how sexual assault cases are handled and said those who are dissatisfied need to discuss the issue with their MP or with Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould.
"The criminal code sets out in great detail how these trials are to be conducted," McLachlin said.
"Judges are obliged to work in the system they have. Concerns about this really lie within the domain of Parliament," she added.
One in three Canadian women will experience some form of sexual violence in their lifetime, according to the .
Julie Lalonde, project manager of Ontario's campaign, says the justice system may have improved since the 1970s, but that's not good enough.
"That doesn't mean [things are] where we want them to be, and the only reason why they've gotten to where they are is because we've held them to account. So I think we need to continue to hold them to account to see an improvement," Lalonde said.
Lalonde pointed to a program in Ontario that focuses on training front-line law investigators in sexual assault cases with the goal of increasing reporting, saying the program is great but only the first step in a long process. The says only three out of every 1,000 sexual assaults in Canada result in a conviction.
"It ends at a trial," Lalonde said. "Nothing's going to change if the judges are the gatekeepers to justice and if judges adhere to these sexist, archaic notions of sexual violence."
"We're setting women up to fail time and time again and we're exerting all this energy to have it die at the top of the hierarchy."
