Ford Government Votes Down Lydia's Law

Bill 112 asked for something narrow and hard to argue against on the merits: annual public reporting on whether Ontario is actually implementing the sexual assault case-handling reforms its own Auditor General recommended back in 2019, plus better information for survivors about legal advice and compensation programs. The bill's text did not create new offences, new spending programs, or new bureaucracy — it created accountability mechanisms and a review.

Doug Ford's PC caucus voted it down anyway, 58 to 41, at Second Reading on May 28, 2026 — while roughly 100 sexual assault survivors and advocates were in the gallery at Queen's Park to watch the debate. Sponsor Catherine Fife, MPP for Waterloo, framed the defeat starkly: "Survivors didn't get their day in court — now they lost their day in legislature."

This was not the government's first chance to pass the bill. An earlier version of Lydia's Law was introduced in 2024, referred to committee, and died on the order paper when Ford called the snap February 2025 election. Reintroducing and defeating the bill a second time means the specific accountability gaps it targeted — whether the province is following through on its own auditor's 2019 recommendations, and whether survivors are being told about legal advice and compensation programs available to them — remain unaddressed by design, not oversight.

With Bill 112 defeated, the Ford government remains under no legislative obligation to publish annual progress reports on the 2019 Auditor General recommendations on sexual assault case handling — meaning the public has no reliable, recurring mechanism to check whether those reforms are actually being implemented seven years after they were made.

Police services are also not legally required to inform sexual assault complainants aged 16 and up about the Independent Legal Advice Program, and the Victim Quick Response Program — which replaced the defunct Criminal Injuries Compensation Board — will not undergo the effectiveness review the bill would have mandated, leaving its adequacy as a support system for survivors unexamined by the legislature.

Advocates and opposition MPPs have signalled this will not be the last attempt: this is the second time in two years Lydia's Law has failed to pass, and Fife and the NDP caucus have indicated the fight will continue. For now, survivors who organized and turned out at Queen's Park in numbers to support the bill saw the governing PC caucus vote it down without passing an amended or alternative accountability measure in its place.