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Canadian Spousal Abuse Statistics

  Updated January 7, 2009

The primary difficulty in attempting to obtain an accurate picture of spousal abuse in Canada is the reality that a great number of cases of abuse are never reported to police.

Below are statistics which help to provide a glimpse of the scope and nature of spousal abuse in Canada.

• An estimated 7% of women and 6% of men in a current or previous spousal relationship experienced spousal violence during the five years up to and including 2004.[i]

• In 2006, over 38,000 incidents of spousal violence were reported to police across Canada, indicating that spousal violence makes up approximately 15% of all violent incidents.[ii]

• Most female and male victims of spousal-perpetrated criminal harassment were  victimized by an ex-spouse rather than a current spouse (89% and 97%, respectively).[iii]

• While there are roughly three times as many female victims of reported spousal violence as there are males, one major difference between female and male victims of police-reported spousal violence was that male victims were nearly twice as likely to report incidents of major assault (23%) compared to female victims (13%)[iv]

• Current spouses were more than twice as likely as ex-spouses to have sustained minor injuries resulting from the violence (57% compared to 27%). This difference may be related to the fact that current spouses were about twice as likely as ex-spouses to report incidents of assault; offences which are more likely to result in injury.[v]

• The rate of spousal homicide against females has been between 3 and 5 times higher than the rate for males during the 30-year period from 1977 to 2006 (7 female victims and 3 male victims per million spouses in 2006)[vi]