WINNIPEG - Manitoba's attorney general says the province will be the first in Canada to confiscate someone's gun if they are named in a protection order.

Gord Mackintosh said the change is included in proposed legislation introduced on Monday. The bill will make it easier for the courts to grant protection orders, look at expanding the use of GPS monitoring for offenders and will require a firearms possession ban.

"This is the first of its kind in Canada. We are stepping out from the crowd in Canada," Mackintosh said. "When you have the second-highest rate of spousal homicides, we're required to step out."

The NDP is hoping for all party co-operation to pass the legislation quickly so it can take effect in the spring, Mackintosh said.

The move comes after the killing of two women earlier this year.

Selena Keeper was denied a protection order against her former boyfriend five months before he was charged in her death. Although Keeper alleged she was beaten while pregnant with the couple's child, her application was denied because a justice of the peace found she was in no imminent danger.

Camille Runke was killed in October despite a protection order against her estranged husband who she told the court owned a gun. She contacted police 22 times to report violations of the protection order but was shot in broad daylight on a Winnipeg street. Her estranged husband later committed suicide.

The province has a duty to learn from those tragedies, Mackintosh said.

"I hear those lessons and we are demonstrating that we are listening."

More than half the protection order applications made in the past two years were denied because the legal threshold of "immediate and imminent danger" is too high, Mackintosh said.

Under the proposed legislation, a justice of the peace can grant an application if there is "serious or urgent circumstances" that take into account the respondent's criminal history. Applicants will also be supported in court by an advocate who can speak on their behalf.

Those who work with domestic violence victims say the bill will save lives. Too often, they say, protection orders are denied because the alleged assault occurred a few weeks ago or the woman is staying in a shelter, seen as a place of safety.

Trudy Lavallee, executive director of the women's shelter Ikwe Widdjiitiwin, said the proposed legislation will help protect women and children from falling through the cracks just because they can't articulate well in a court of law.

"I believe these changes will really assist women and children who are escaping violence."

Jane Ursel, sociology professor at the University of Manitoba and director of a family violence research network, said the legislation also addresses a key component of domestic violence by diverting more offenders into intensive intervention programs.

"Women and victims are not the problem," she said. "It is the accused and the perpetrators that are the problem."

News from © The Canadian Press, 2015