Domestic Violence Statistics in Canada 2026 | Cases, Provinces & Key Facts

Domestic Violence in Canada 2026

Domestic violence remains one of Canada’s most persistent public safety challenges, with Statistics Canada’s most recent police-reported data confirming that rates have essentially plateaued at historically elevated levels after years of steady increases. The Canadian Centre for Justice and Community Safety Statistics reported 128,175 victims of intimate partner violence and 142,724 victims of family violence in 2024, the latest full year of confirmed national data available heading into 2026. While year-over-year rates barely moved, the longer five-year trend tells a more troubling story, with intimate partner violence rates up 14% and family violence up 17% since 2018.

This report lays out the most current, verified domestic violence statistics for Canada in 2026, sourced exclusively from Statistics Canada’s Uniform Crime Reporting Survey and Homicide Survey. Readers will find figures on national victim counts, the gender gap in victimization, provincial and territorial breakdowns, homicide data, firearms-related incidents, and how much domestic violence goes unreported to police. Every number reflects the latest published federal data, giving policymakers, service providers, and researchers a single reliable reference point on this critical issue.

It is worth noting upfront that Canada has no single Criminal Code offence formally labelled “domestic violence.” Instead, these incidents are prosecuted under existing provisions covering assault, criminal harassment, and forcible confinement, with a spousal or intimate-partner relationship treated as an aggravating factor at sentencing. This means Statistics Canada must piece together the national picture from multiple survey and administrative data sources rather than a single dedicated offence code, a methodological reality that shapes how every figure in this article should be understood and compared.

Interesting Facts About Domestic Violence in Canada 2026

Before the detailed breakdown, here is a quick-reference table of standout figures defining domestic violence in Canada this year.

Key 2026 Domestic Violence Figures (2024 Data)
Family Violence Victims              ████████████████████████████████████████ 142,724
Intimate Partner Violence Victims    ████████████████████████████████████░░░░ 128,175
IPV Rate Increase Since 2018         ██████████████░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░ +14%
Intimate Partner Homicide Victims    █░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░ 100
Share of Spousal Violence Unreported ████████████████████████████████████████ 80%

Source: Statistics Canada, “Trends in police-reported family violence and intimate partner violence in Canada, 2024,” The Daily, October 28, 2025.

These figures reveal a national picture that has stopped climbing but has not meaningfully improved either. After many years of consecutive gradual increases, both family violence and intimate partner violence rates were “relatively unchanged” in 2024 compared with 2023, according to Statistics Canada’s own characterization. Yet this apparent stability sits on top of a 14% increase in intimate partner violence and a 17% increase in family violence since 2018, when a definitional revision to the Uniform Crime Reporting Survey was implemented, meaning today’s rates remain substantially higher than they were less than a decade ago.

The homicide data adds particular urgency to these numbers: 100 people were killed by a spouse or intimate partner in Canada in 2024, representing 17% of all homicide victims nationally that year, and 81 of those 100 victims (81%) were women, up sharply from 53 women among 72 total intimate partner homicide victims in 2023, a 39% single-year increase. With 80% of spousal violence never reaching police attention at all, according to Statistics Canada’s most recent self-reported victimization survey, these already-elevated police-reported figures likely represent only a fraction of the true scope of domestic violence occurring in Canadian homes.

National Trends in Family and Intimate Partner Violence in Canada 2026

Victim Rates per 100,000 Population (2018 vs 2024)
Family Violence Rate (2024)          ████████████████████████████████████████ 349
Intimate Partner Violence Rate (2024) ██████████████████████████████████████░ 356
2018 Baseline Rate (both categories, indexed) ████████████████████████████░░░ ~85%

Source: Statistics Canada, “Trends in police-reported family violence and intimate partner violence in Canada, 2024,” The Daily, October 28, 2025.

The six-year trend from 2018 to 2024 shows that increases in police-reported violence were not confined to one gender or category, though the pattern of growth differs meaningfully by group. Rates rose faster among men and boys than among women and girls for both family violence (+21% versus +16%) and intimate partner violence (+22% versus +13%), a shift Statistics Canada attributes to some combination of changing reporting behaviour, evolving policing practices, and definitional changes rather than a simple story of rising or falling abuse.

Despite these relative growth-rate differences, women and girls remain dramatically overrepresented in absolute victimization terms. In 2024, the family violence rate was 2.1 times higher among women and girls than men and boys, and the intimate partner violence rate was 3.5 times higher, meaning that even as reporting patterns shift, the underlying gender disparity in who experiences this violence has not narrowed in any meaningful way. This consistency across a six-year period, even amid broader increases in reported rates for both genders, points to a structural pattern in domestic violence victimization that has proven resistant to change, a trend also visible in the Canada Violent Crime Statistics coverage of broader police-reported crime trends nationally.

Statistics Canada also notes that children and youth experience family violence in ways that differ markedly by gender. Among child and youth victims of family violence in 2024, the majority (57%) were victims of physical assault, while a full one-third (33%) were victims of a sexual offence, a substantially higher share than seen among child and youth victims of non-family violence (27%) or violent crime overall (10%). This pattern also diverges sharply by gender: girl victims experienced physical assault (47%) and sexual offences (44%) at similar rates, while boy victims far more often experienced physical assault (72%) than sexual offences (15%), a distinction that underscores how family violence manifests differently depending on both the victim’s age and gender.

The Gender Gap in Domestic Violence Victimization in Canada 2026

Victimization Rate by Gender, 2024 (per 100,000 population)
Women/Girls - IPV        ███████████████████████████████████████ 553
Women/Girls - Family     ██████████████████████████████░░░░░░░░░ 474
Men/Boys - IPV           ███████████░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░ 158
Men/Boys - Family        ████████████████░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░ 224

Source: Statistics Canada, “Trends in police-reported family violence and intimate partner violence in Canada, 2024,” The Daily, October 28, 2025.

Of the 128,175 victims of police-reported intimate partner violence in 2024, nearly eight in ten victims (78%) were women and girls, a proportion that has remained remarkably stable across the entire time series Statistics Canada tracks. This gender disparity becomes even starker at the most severe end of the violence spectrum: since 2014, among 963 total intimate partner homicide victims, nearly 8 in 10 (79%) were women, while among 1,755 family homicide victims over the same period, 59% were women and girls.

This consistent overrepresentation across both non-lethal and lethal forms of domestic violence underscores why Canadian policy responses, including recent firearms legislation changes, have specifically targeted intimate partner and family violence as a distinct risk category. Bill C-21 provisions that came into force in April 2025 now make anyone convicted of a violent offence against a family member or intimate partner ineligible for a firearms licence, and require licence revocation where a Chief Firearms Officer has reasonable grounds to suspect domestic violence or stalking, a direct legislative response to the persistent and severe gender gap documented in this data.

Provincial and Territorial Domestic Violence Rates in Canada 2026

Intimate Partner Violence Rate by Province, 2024 (per 100,000)
Saskatchewan         ███████████████████████████████████████ 714
Manitoba             ██████████████████████████████████░░░░░ 607
Quebec               ███████████████████████░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░ 401
British Columbia     ███████████████░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░ 269
Ontario              ███████████████░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░ 278

Source: Statistics Canada, “Victims of police-reported intimate partner violence, by year and province or territory, 2018 to 2024,” October 28, 2025.

Domestic violence rates vary enormously across Canada’s provinces and territories, with Saskatchewan recording the highest provincial rate in 2024 at 714 victims per 100,000 population, more than double the Canadian national average, followed closely by Manitoba at 607 per 100,000. Quebec saw the largest proportional increase among large provinces, its rate climbing from 314 per 100,000 in 2018 to 401 in 2024, a 28% increase, while British Columbia remained the only large province with a rate below the national average, essentially flat at 269 per 100,000 compared to 270 six years earlier.

The three northern territories post rates that dwarf every province by an extraordinary margin. Nunavut’s rate of 5,786 per 100,000 is more than 16 times the national provincial average, a disparity Statistics Canada and researchers attribute to a combination of geographic isolation, limited social service infrastructure, and the disproportionate presence of Indigenous populations facing compounded socioeconomic risk factors. Ontario, meanwhile, recorded the lowest rate among large provinces at 278 per 100,000, a full 22% below the national rate, illustrating just how differently this issue plays out depending on region, a geographic variation that parallels broader patterns explored in our Mental Health Statistics in Canada coverage of regional health and social service disparities nationwide.

City-level data adds a further layer of nuance to these provincial figures. In Ontario’s largest city, Toronto Police recorded 18,122 intimate partner violence incidents in 2024, representing 89% of all family violence occurrences citywide, a total that has remained essentially flat, within a narrow band of roughly 17,200 to 19,300 incidents annually, across the full eleven-year period from 2014 to 2024. This decade of stability, even amid rising provincial and national rates elsewhere, suggests that large urban centres with more established community and social support infrastructure may experience domestic violence trends that diverge meaningfully from smaller or more remote jurisdictions, though Statistics Canada cautions that reporting patterns rather than underlying prevalence may also explain part of this urban-rural divergence.

Domestic Violence Homicides in Canada 2026

Intimate Partner Homicide Victims by Year
2023    ████████████████████████████████████████████████ 72
2024    ████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████ 100

Source: Statistics Canada, Homicide Survey, cited in “Trends in police-reported family violence and intimate partner violence in Canada, 2024,” October 28, 2025.

Homicide data from Statistics Canada’s Homicide Survey reveals the most severe and irreversible consequences of domestic violence in Canada. Intimate partner homicides jumped from 72 victims in 2023 to 100 victims in 2024, a 39% single-year increase, with 81 of those 100 victims being women, up from 53 women among the 72 victims recorded the year before. This single-year spike stands out sharply against the more gradual, multi-year trends seen in non-lethal police-reported violence categories.

Zooming out to the decade-long picture provides useful context: since 2014, Canada has recorded 963 total intimate partner homicide victims, of whom 79% were women, alongside 1,755 family homicide victims, 59% of whom were women and girls. With intimate partner homicides accounting for 17% of all 788 homicide victims recorded nationally in 2024, this data confirms that domestic violence remains one of the most significant and persistent contributors to lethal violence in Canada, a pattern separate from but related to broader youth-involved violence trends tracked in Canada Youth Crime Statistics.

Underreporting and Firearms in Domestic Violence Cases in Canada 2026

Spousal Violence Reporting to Police (Self-Reported Data)
Reported to Police       ██████░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░ 19-20%
Never Reported           ██████████████████████████████████░░░░ 80-81%

Source: Statistics Canada, General Social Survey on Victimization, 2019, cited October 2021; Statistics Canada, “Firearms and intimate partner violence in Canada, 2009 to 2024,” 2026.

Perhaps the most important context for interpreting all police-reported domestic violence figures is the scale of underreporting that Statistics Canada’s own self-reported victimization surveys reveal. As of the most recent General Social Survey on Victimization, a full 80% of spousal violence was never reported to police, with only 19% of victims formally reporting, a figure that has actually declined from 28% in 1999. Women reported at a rate of 22% and men at just 14%, both notably lower than two decades prior, creating what researchers describe as a genuine paradox: self-reported spousal violence prevalence fell 54% between 1999 and 2019, even as police-reported rates climbed over the more recent 2018-2024 period.

Statistics Canada’s newest research also highlights the specific role firearms play in intimate partner violence cases, noting that policy changes under Bill C-21 now deny firearms licences to anyone convicted of a violent offence against a family member or partner, with revocation required if a Chief Firearms Officer has reasonable grounds to suspect domestic violence or stalking. At the same time, researchers flag a growing complication: the rise of unlawfully manufactured “ghost guns,” which are unmarked and untraceable, meaning licensing-based interventions may not fully address every pathway through which firearms enter domestic violence situations, an evolving concern that will likely shape how this data is interpreted in future annual releases.

Taken together, the underreporting data and the firearms-policy context help explain why Statistics Canada consistently cautions against reading police-reported figures as a complete picture of domestic violence in Canada. Emergency prohibition orders, sometimes referred to as “red flag” laws, can also now be issued when an individual is considered a threat to themselves or others, requiring surrender of firearms and related documentation for up to 30 days. As part of the Homicide Survey, police are asked whether a documented history of family or intimate partner violence existed between victim and accused, though Statistics Canada notes this information should be treated cautiously, since a considerable proportion of prior abuse may never have been reported or may not have met the threshold for criminal charges, meaning the true scope of prior warning signs in fatal cases likely exceeds what official records capture.

Disclaimer: This research report is compiled from publicly available sources. While reasonable efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, no representation or warranty, express or implied, is given as to the completeness or reliability of the information. We accept no liability for any errors, omissions, losses, or damages of any kind arising from the use of this report.

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