Statistics

Since crime rates in Canada are falling, is violence against women still a serious problem? *

• On average, every six days a woman in Canada is killed by her intimate partner. In 2009, 67 women were murdered by a current or former spouse or boyfriend.
• On any given day in Canada, more than 3,000 women (along with their 2,500 children) are living in an emergency shelter to escape domestic violence.
• Each year, over 40,000 arrests result from domestic violence—that’s about 12% of all violent crime in Canada. Since only 22% of all incidents are reported to the police, the real number is much higher.
• As of 2010, there were 582 known cases of missing or murdered Aboriginal women in Canada. Both Amnesty International and the United Nations have called upon the Canadian government to take action on this issue, without success.
• In just one year in Canada, 427,000 women over the age of 15 reported they had been sexually assaulted. Since only about 10% of all sexual assaults are reported to the police, the actual number is much higher.
• Half of all women in Canada have experienced at least one incident of physical or sexual violence since the age of 16.
• About 80% of sex trafficking victims in Canada are women and girls.
• 61% of all Canadians say they personally know at least one woman who has been sexually or physically assaulted.
• More than one in ten Canadian women say they have been stalked by someone in a way that made them fear for their life.
• The cost of violence against women in Canada for health care, criminal justice, social services, and lost wages and productivity has been calculated at $4.2 billion per year.

*Canadian Women's Foundation - The Facts about Violence Against Women