CAEFS therefore supports the notion that the rules for self-defence might vary depending on the nature of the relationship between the accused and deceased (stranger vs. intimate), the location of the confrontation leading to the use of self-defensive violence (tavern vs. car or home), the relationship between the accused and the person who was protected by the violence (stranger vs. friend or family member), the role in which the accused purported to invoke self-defensive violence (police or prison guard vs. mother or spouse), and the question of who initiated the violence or abuse (or threatened to do so) that resulted in self-defensive violence by the accused.

2. Duty to Retreat for Aggressors

At the very least, CAEFS supports a different self-defence rule for persons exercising legal authority such as police and guards, as well as a separate rule for those who commence a physical altercation or threaten to do so. With respect to those who initiate violence or abuse or its threat, we should re-institute the legal requirement of retreat before resorting to further violence. This recommendation is based upon the work of Christine Boyle (Boyle, 1981) and Isabel Grant (Grant, 1996), who have expressed concerns about the impact of removing the special rules for those who initiate violence upon violent men who commit femicide.

Justice should respond to the Supreme Court of Canada decision in McIntosh (1995), in which the more stringent requirements for those who "provoked" the deceased (in s. 35) were effectively nullified through judicial interpretation. It should draft a new self-defence law that includes a clear duty to retreat for those who initiated the violence, abuse, or its threat, as opposed to those who “provoke” by “words or gestures” as provocation is currently defined in s. 36 for the purposes of self-defence. This duty should only be imposed where retreat would not pose a threat to the immediate or long-term safety of the accused. It should utilize an equality analysis that takes into account imbalances of power and relations of dominance. Specifically, this would mean that a woman who kills her mate should not be disqualified by a duty to retreat where the man has threatened to hunt her down and kill her should she leave, but the duty should disqualify police who kill in reliance upon stereotypes of racialized men as violent and who fail to retreat from a conflict that poses no apparent danger to others.