Police-reported family and intimate partner violence hit record rates in Canada as family homicides fall to 50-year low

Police-reported family violence and intimate partner violence in Canada hit record rates in 2025, even as overall violent crime dipped and killings within families fell to their lowest level in half a century, according to new Statistics Canada data.

Police recorded 147,030 victims of family violence and 133,256 victims of intimate partner violence last year. That works out to 357 family violence victims per 100,000 people and 366 intimate partner violence victims per 100,000, the highest rates since comparable data began in 2009.

Both rates rose modestly from 2024: up 1.1 per cent for family violence and 1.9 per cent for intimate partner violence. Overall police-reported violent crime fell 0.8 per cent over the same period.

Statistics Canada cautions that these figures likely understate the problem. Many victims never go to police, because they may not see what happened to them as a crime, may not know where to turn, or may depend on the person harming them.

Women and girls still most at risk

Since 2018, when police changed how they classify "founded" crimes, rates have climbed about 19 per cent for family violence and 18 per cent for intimate partner violence. The agency notes the definition change may have contributed to the rise in reported violent crime generally.

Rates have grown faster for men and boys than for women and girls over that period. But women and girls remain far more likely to be victims. In 2025, the family violence rate for women and girls was 482 per 100,000, more than twice the rate of 232 for men and boys. For intimate partner violence, the rate among women and girls aged 12 and older was 566 per 100,000, more than three times the rate of 165 for men and boys.

Nearly eight in 10 intimate partner violence victims were women and girls. Rates peaked at age 30 for women and age 39 for men.

Almost two-thirds of victims were harmed by a current partner and just over a third by a former partner. Where living arrangements were known, nearly half lived with the accused.

Intimate partner violence was less likely than violent crime overall to involve a weapon: 16 per cent of victims, compared with 23 per cent. But in more than eight in 10 of the remaining cases, physical force was used. A firearm was present for 1.1 per cent of victims.

Homicides at record low

The picture for the most serious violence moved in the opposite direction. There were 132 victims of family homicide and 75 victims of intimate partner homicide in 2025. Rates fell 33 per cent and 29 per cent respectively from 2024, reaching their lowest levels since comparable homicide data began in 1974.

Over the past decade, women and girls made up 58 per cent of the 1,757 family homicide victims and 78 per cent of the 958 intimate partner homicide victims.

Children and seniors

Police reported 27,256 child and youth victims of family violence in 2025, a rate of 362 per 100,000 people aged 17 and under. That is the highest on record and up 2.8 per cent from 2024. Just under a third of all young victims of violence were harmed by a family member, most often a parent. Girls accounted for 60 per cent of child and youth victims.

Family violence against seniors also hit a record rate: 8,173 victims, or 102 per 100,000 people aged 65 and older, up 3 per cent. About a third of senior victims of violence were harmed by a relative, most often their own child. Women made up nearly six in 10 senior victims of family violence, even though men account for most senior victims of violence overall.

Where it's highest

Rates were highest in the North, where there were 1,052 family violence victims and 1,096 intimate partner violence victims per 100,000 people. The rural south followed, and the urban south had the lowest rates. In every region, rates were higher in 2025 than in 2015 or 2018.

Among the provinces, Saskatchewan had the highest rates (729 family violence and 706 intimate partner violence victims per 100,000), followed by Manitoba. Ontario and British Columbia had the lowest family violence rates, at 247 and 273 per 100,000. B.C. also had the lowest intimate partner violence rate among the provinces, at 280, just ahead of Prince Edward Island at 286.

The biggest one-year jumps were in Nunavut, Nova Scotia and P.E.I. Family violence rose 16 per cent in Nunavut, 13 per cent in Nova Scotia and 11 per cent in P.E.I., while intimate partner violence rose 13 per cent in both Nunavut and Nova Scotia. Manitoba saw the largest drop in family violence, at 5 per cent, and Yukon the largest drop in intimate partner violence, at 12 per cent.

Statistics Canada says it will release a series of profiles on self-reported intimate partner violence in the coming months, looking at groups including young women, Indigenous women, racialized women and women with disabilities.

Source: Statistics Canada, "Trends in police-reported family violence and intimate partner violence in Canada, 2025," The Daily, Nov. 10, 2026.