Ontario Government - Intimate Partner Violence Report

Jess Dixon who was born in Victoria, British Columbia, moved to Cambridge with her parents at age seven. She received her undergraduate degree in Philosophy from the University of Guelph, with an informal minor in Middle Eastern history and philosophy, completing her law degree at the University of Ottawa, graduating in 2013. In late 2014, MPP Dixon began work at the Kitchener Crown Attorney’s office. Since then, she had the privilege to work in several crown offices and courthouses, as well as serve as both a federal and provincial prosecutor. Jess never had any intention of becoming a politician. She loved her job as a crown. However, over the years frustration with “the system” began to grow. MPP Dixon is a big proponent of the concept that “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” Most of the people she met were in fact clearly the product of broken and unsupported families, generational trauma and substance abuse, and gaps in education and access to healthcare. Unfortunately, she felt that successive provincial and federal governments were failing to recognize the value of investment in early intervention while simultaneously spending vast amounts of taxpayer money on incredibly expensive and incredibly ineffective bandaids. We were stuck in a vicious cycle of treating the symptoms, but never the causes. Like many politicians, MPP Dixon arrived not through any desire to be a politician, but rather because she felt driven to advocate on a larger scale than could managed as a single crown attorney. The main role of an MPP is, she believes, to be a messenger and an advocate. We are surrounded by competing voices, some louder than others. Her role is to try and find the voices that have something valuable to say but may not be able to make themselves heard, and to then connect them to the ears that should be listening. MPP Dixon will always do this, to the best of her ability. Jess Dixon has been the MPP for Kitchener South – Hespeler since June 2022. She won her second mandate in 2025 with a lead of 7,533 votes over her second-place opponent. Currently she is the Parliamentary Assistant to the Minister of Education. She is a member of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts and the Standing Committee on Social Policy. She is the government lead for the Intimate Partner Violence Sub-committee with the Standing Committee on the Justice Policy. MPP Dixon authored the IPV report which was tabled in the
2 | P a g e
Ontario Legislature and made public on December 9, 2025. She is now working determinedly to ensure the recommendations she proposed are implemented.