39. Collect and publish data on the criminal victimization of Aboriginal people

We call upon the federal government to develop a national plan to collect and publish data on the criminal victimization of Aboriginal people, including data related to homicide and family violence victimization.

In 2016, Statistics Canada released a report titled Victimization of Aboriginal people in Canada based on 2014 data from the General Social Survey.

The report included data on homicide and spousal violence victimization.

Its findings included that the overall rate of violent victimization among Indigenous people was more than double that of non-Indigenous people and that Indigenous females had an overall rate of violent victimization that was double that of Indigenous males and close to triple that of non-Indigenous females.

Statistics Canada collects data on victimization through the General Social Survey (GSS) every five years. In 2014, the GSS on Victimization was also conducted in Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut using a different sampling design.

The 2016 report combined 2014 GSS victimization data from both the provinces and territories in order to report on the victimization of Indigenous people in Canada.

Statistics Canada also collects police-reported homicide data. Statistics Canada’s annual homicide report now includes analysis of homicides of Indigenous women and girls.

Statistics Canada has also developed a new survey that will cover gender-based violence, and will include First Nations people living off reserve and Inuit and Métis populations.

In a December 2020 report, survey data revealed that in the Northwest Territories, Nunavut and Yukon, 52 per cent of women and 54 per cent of men reported having been sexually or physically assaulted at least once since they were 15 years old, and that 7.8 per cent of both men and women had experienced violence in the year leading up to the survey.

These proportions are much higher than those in the provinces, where 39 per cent of women and 35 per cent of men reported at least one assault since the age of 15.