Intimate partner violence up 15% over 8 years in Canada, StatCan says

The average rate of intimate partner violence (IPV) across the country has risen for the eighth straight year, according to Statistics Canada, following a surge of what some experts are calling “anti-feminist backlash.”

Data released by the agency on Tuesday shows the average rate of police-reported intimate partner violence was two per cent higher in 2025 compared to 2024. The most recent numbers were up 15 per cent from 2018.

“We know things like IPV are chronically under-reported, so I’m not surprised that the numbers are rising,” said Kaitlynn Mendes, interim director of the Centre for Research and Education on Violence Against Women and Children at Western University.

She said movements like #MeToo and an increase in community support have sparked an increase in the number of victims coming forward. A greater understanding of what constitutes intimate partner violence, which Mendes said can include anything between physical, psychological, emotional or financial violence, could also be sparking this rise.

While it is hard to pinpoint whether the increases come from a rise in instances of violence or if the increased numbers represent more people coming forward to file police reports, Mendes said she wouldn’t be surprised if the increase reflects more cases, not just better reporting.

“We’re in this anti-feminist backlash, I would say. We have these influencers who are really promoting things like aggressiveness: ‘if you want to show that you’re like a real man, you do that by being really aggressive, being dominant,’” she said.

“I think that the numbers that we see from Statistics Canada, we should regard as the floor, not the ceiling,” she added. “It’s an underestimation.”

A rise in reports of intimate partner violence could also be linked to the ongoing socioeconomic climate, said Alexa Yakubovich, an associate professor in the department of community health and epidemiology at Dalhousie University.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the economic turmoil that followed created a “collision of factors” including inadequate housing, food insecurity, economic insecurity and unemployment, she said.

“All of that together increases the risk for intimate partner violence,” she added.

Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, Quebec and Saskatchewan saw the rate drop between 2024 and 2025, but all saw a sizable increase over the eight-year period.

Records of intimate partner violence in 2025 were highest in the territories with rates three to 19 times higher than the national average. Rates in Manitoba and Saskatchewan were nearly two times the national average.

Mendes said one reason for these higher rates could be the number of communities that operate in isolation. Many remote communities do not have the same access to social supports, she said.

“There is also the issue of privacy in terms of it can be easier to commit because there aren’t potentially as many witnesses,” she added.

According to Statistics Canada, one in six Indigenous women have experienced at least one form of intimate partner violence. While Indigenous women account for just five percent of all women in Canada, federal data shows they made up approximately 26 per cent of all women killed by an intimate partner in 2022.

Yakubovich said while rural and remote communities have higher risk factors for bearing the brunt of violence, indicators for a wide range of gender-based violence are evident all across the country.

2:27
N.S. intimate partner violence survivor says system failed her

Nova Scotia was the first province to declare intimate partner violence an epidemic in 2024. New Brunswick followed suit in 2025 and Newfoundland and Labrador labelled it an epidemic in May.

There have been repeated calls in Ontario to make the same declaration.

But Yakubovich said a declaration alone will do nothing to stop epidemic levels of violence.

She said a declaration of an epidemic needs to come with funding “elevated to epidemic proportions” for community support services as well as the healthcare system.

“The most common formal service that is accessed by victims before they are killed is healthcare, whether we’re looking at mental health, hospitals, primary care, et cetera. So the health system plays a really important identification point that we might not ever have the opportunity to utilize otherwise,” she said. “So we need healthcare providers to be aware of the red flags for intimate partner violence.”

Mendes said there also needs to be greater awareness and education at the community level so people are not afraid to access help.

“Taking it seriously, I think that is the first step,” she said. “And then really trying to resist these narratives that are really prominent on social media about how women lie.”

“Because again, we know that there’s often shame, there’s stigma, there are real barriers to reaching out for help. And educating the community to help spot some signs and to be an upstander and to call it out, to break past those things.”