Key Takeaways
- Police reported 147,030 family-violence victims and 133,256 intimate partner violence victims in 2025, the highest rates since 2009.
- Overall violent crime fell 0.8% in the same year.
- Family and intimate partner homicide rates fell to their lowest levels since 1974.
The violence closest to home is at its highest level since 2009
Police in Canada recorded 147,030 victims of family violence and 133,256 victims of intimate partner violence in 2025, Statistics Canada reported Tuesday. The rates — 357 victims per 100,000 people for family violence and 366 per 100,000 for partner violence — are the highest since comparable data began in 2009.
The increases were small but real: the family-violence rate rose 1.1% from 2024 and the intimate partner rate rose 1.9%. They moved in the opposite direction from crime overall — total violent crime in Canada fell 0.8% in 2025.
Who is being hurt
Women and girls remain heavily overrepresented. The family-violence rate for women and girls was 482 per 100,000, more than double the 232 recorded for men and boys. For intimate partner violence, the gap was wider still: 566 versus 165. Nearly 8 in 10 intimate partner victims were women and girls, and almost 3 in 10 victims of all violent crime in Canada were hurt by an intimate partner.
Children and seniors were not spared. Police recorded 27,256 child and youth victims of family violence — the highest rate since 2009 — and most were victimized by a parent. Senior victims numbered 8,173, also a record rate, and were most often victimized by their own adult child.
Rates were highest in the northern regions (1,052 per 100,000 for family violence), and among the provinces in Saskatchewan (729) and Manitoba (548). Ontario (247) and British Columbia (273) recorded the lowest family-violence rates.
One number moved the other way
Killings within families fell sharply. There were 132 family-homicide victims and 75 intimate partner homicide victims in 2025, and both rates dropped to their lowest levels since 1974 — down 13% and 19% respectively in a single year.
Statistics Canada is careful about what these numbers mean. Family and partner violence often go unreported — victims may not recognize the behaviour as criminal, may not know how to get help, or may depend on the person hurting them. The police-reported figures, the agency says, likely underestimate the true scope.
The Twikup Take
A record high and a record low in the same report is not a contradiction: more victims may be coming forward and being counted, even as the deadliest outcomes decline. But a rate that has climbed for years — through a change in how police classify founded crime in 2018 and beyond — says the everyday violence inside Canadian homes is not retreating. The counting is getting better. The problem is not getting smaller.
Image: Illustrative image.