More Facts

• 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. (1)

• 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. (2)

• Each year, over 40,000 arrests result from domestic violence - that’s about 12% of all violent crime in Canada. (3)  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. (4)

•  Both Amnesty International and the United Nations have called upon the Canadian government to take action on this issue, without success. (5.6)

• In just one year in Canada, 427,000 women over the age of 15 reported they had been sexually assaulted. (7) Since only about 10% of all sexual assaults are reported to the police, the actual number is much higher. (8)

• Half of all women in Canada have experienced at least one incident of physical or sexual violence since the age of 16. (9)

• About 80% of sex trafficking victims in Canada are women and girls. (10)

• 61% of all Canadians say they personally know at least one woman who has been sexually or physically assaulted. (11)

• More than one in ten Canadian women say they have been stalked by someone in a way that made them fear for their life. (12)

• 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. (13)

Compiled by the Canadian Women’s Foundation from the following sources:
http://www.cwf.ca
1. “Homicide in Canada, 2009,” Sara Beattie and Adam Cotter, Juristat, Volume 30, Number 3, Statistics Canada, page 14
2. Family Violence in Canada: A Statistical Profile 2009, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, Statistics Canada, page 12.
3. Ibid, page 5.
4. What Their Stories Tell Us: Research findings from the Sisters In Spirit initiative, Native Women’s Association of Canada, 2010, p. 18.
5. Canada: Missing and murdered Aboriginal women and girls: Families deserve answers – and justice, Amnesty International, Media Release March 8, 2011
6. “Canada must probe cases of slain, missing aboriginal women: UN,” The Canadian Press, CBC News (website), November 24, 2008
7. Sexual Assault in Canada 2004 and 2007, Shannon Brennan and Andrea Taylor-Butts, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, Statistics Canada, 2008, p. 12. . This figure is for 2004.
8. Ibid, p. 6.
9. The Violence Against Women Survey, Statistics Canada, 1993. Although more up-to-date data would be preferable, no future Statistics Canada survey asked women about their life-time experience of violence.
10. Scope of CWF Trafficking Task Force, Canadian Women’s Foundation, November 2010.
11. Decima Survey, Canadian Women’s Foundation, 2007.
12. Family Violence in Canada: A Statistical Profile 2005, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, Statistics Canada, page 34.
13.Measuring Violence Against Women: Statistical Trends 2006, Statistics Canada, p. 34.