Violence Against Women

How is it possible that five per cent of Canada’s female population makes up 25 per cent of all the killings of women in this country? We still don’t have a satisfactory answer. What we can say is that when these deaths have happened, the experience of their perpetrators in the justice system is markedly different than those accused of killing non-Indigenous women. Our analysis shows they are less likely to get charged with murder. And indigenous women are more likely to have their cases go unsolved.

Indigenous women and girls are killed at rates six times higher than non-Indigenous women — yet the perpetrators are frequently convicted of lesser offences than those guilty in the deaths of non-Indigenous victims.

The IJB spent more than a year examining the deaths of females across Canada. By searching public records, police reports, court documents and missing person websites, reporters mapped the grim details and outcomes of 1,329 suspicious female deaths since 2019.

We spent more than a year tracking the killings and suspicious deaths of women and girls in Canada. Here’s what we found.

Why did it take 1,329 women and girls — 341 of them Indigenous, 122 of them children — being killed in just six years before decision-makers acted? Behind every name in this database is a constellation of devastation: children who will grow up without their mothers, families torn apart by grief, communities struggling to make sense of senseless loss. Why did it take the anguished screams of hundreds of loved ones — people whose mothers, daughters and sisters were ripped away — to finally command national attention?