Missing Children Statistics Canada [2026]

Canada recorded 34,189 missing children under 18 in 2025 — 51% of all missing persons — per the RCMP NCMPUR 2025 Fast Fact Sheet. Of those, 70% were runaways, 59% were female, and 78% were aged 14 to 17. This post covers the age-band, typology, AMBER Alert, luring, and Indigenous cuts not found in the broader missing-persons overview for Canada.

What counts as a missing child in Canada?

Under CPIC (Canadian Police Information Centre), a child is classified as missing when they are under 18 and no longer in the care or control of their legal guardian. The RCMP’s guidance for families states that a missing child is “considered an emergency, requiring immediate contact with the police.” There is no minimum waiting period — families may call police as soon as they have concerns.

RCMP NCMPUR classifies every case using eleven probable-cause categories, confirmed in the RCMP NCMPUR 2022 Fast Fact Sheet methodology. The categories are:

• Runaway
• Parental abduction with custody order
• Parental abduction without custody order
• Abduction by stranger
• Abduction by relative
• Human trafficking
• Accident
• Wandered off/lost
• Presumed dead
• Unknown
• Other

Between 25% and 75% of police reports for persons found within hours of the initial call are never entered into CPIC, per RCMP NCMPUR 2025. Actual incident counts substantially exceed the 34,189 figure recorded for 2025.

How many children go missing in Canada each year?

Canada recorded 34,189 missing children in 2025, down from 32,680 in 2024 and 34,437 in 2023, per RCMP NCMPUR annual Fast Fact Sheets. Of the 2025 total, 20,221 were female (59%) and 14,001 were male (41%). Children accounted for 51% of the total 68,349 missing persons reported nationwide, per RCMP NCMPUR 2025.

Despite the headline figure, most missing children are found quickly. Per the same report, 57% of missing children cases were removed from CPIC within 24 hours and 91% within one week. The equivalent figures for 2024 were 55% within 24 hours and 90% within one week, per the RCMP NCMPUR 2024 Fast Fact Sheet.

For adults, the 2025 resolution rates were slower: 33% within 24 hours and 73% within one week. The gap reflects the higher proportion of “unknown cause” cases among adults, where the circumstances of disappearance are never confirmed before the person is located.

Missing children in Canada by age band (2025)

Teenagers dominate Canada’s missing-child data. In 2025, 78% of all missing children (approximately 26,667 of the 34,189 reported) were aged 14 to 17, per RCMP NCMPUR 2025. The equivalent figure in 2024 was 77%, per the RCMP NCMPUR 2024 Fast Fact Sheet.

Source: RCMP NCMPUR 2025 Fast Fact Sheet. Age-share figures are approximate; RCMP NCMPUR publishes the 14–17 concentration directly; sub-bands derived from methodology notes.

The 14–17 concentration reflects teen runaway dominance. Only 381 of 34,189 missing children in 2025 were classified as “wandered off/lost,” and only 119 were parental abductions (with or without a custody order), per RCMP NCMPUR 2025. Children under 12 make up a disproportionately small share of reports, and most of those cases involve a non-voluntary cause.

RCMP research published November 2024 found teens comprised 69% of habitual and chronic missing cases despite being only 32% of the overall missing-persons sample. Female youth are overrepresented among chronic runaways; adult runaways skew predominantly male.

Abduction typology: how missing children are classified in Canada

The 34,189 missing-child reports in 2025 break down across eleven probable-cause categories, per RCMP NCMPUR 2025:

• Runaway: 24,050 cases (70%)
• Unknown probable cause: 9,492 cases (28%)
• Wandered off/lost: 381 cases (1%)
• Human trafficking: 104 cases — 100 of those victims were female
• Parental abduction without custody order: 67 cases
• Parental abduction with custody order: 52 cases
• Stranger abduction: 13 cases
• Accident: 12 cases
• Presumed dead: 6 cases

Stranger abductions of children are rare. At 13 cases in 2025 and 24 in 2024, each year’s count represents under 0.1% of annual missing-child reports, per RCMP NCMPUR Fast Fact Sheets. By contrast, human trafficking was the recorded probable cause in 104 missing-child cases in 2025 — eight times more common than stranger abduction.

Parental abductions totalled 119 in 2025 (67 without a custody order, 52 with one), compared to 116 in 2024 (61 without, 55 with), per RCMP NCMPUR annual Fast Fact Sheets. An RCMP Gazette analysis covering 2019 found 122 parental abduction reports and 16 stranger abduction reports that year — a 7-to-1 ratio of family-perpetrated to stranger-perpetrated abductions. The RCMP notes that parental abductions can be “just as serious as those by a stranger,” particularly when custody orders are violated or borders are crossed.

RCMP research covering 2015–2021 found teens comprised 69% of habitual and chronic missing cases despite representing only 32% of the overall sample. The research estimated approximately 52,000 runaway incidents per year — 88% of all missing persons cases reported to Canadian police over that seven-year period, per RCMP November 2024.

Missing children in Canada by province (2025)

Saskatchewan recorded the highest per-capita rate at 413 per 100,000 children in 2025, while Prince Edward Island had the lowest at 5 per 100,000, per RCMP NCMPUR 2025.

Source: RCMP NCMPUR 2025 Fast Fact Sheet, Table 2, data extraction February 2, 2026. Rate per 100,000 published by RCMP for Saskatchewan and PEI; others not published at the sub-national level in the Fast Fact Sheet.

Saskatchewan’s rate of 413 per 100,000 was the highest of any province in 2025. In 2024, Saskatchewan’s rate was even higher at 440 per 100,000, per the RCMP NCMPUR 2024 Fast Fact Sheet. The three provinces with the largest absolute counts (Quebec, Ontario, and British Columbia) reflect population size rather than disproportionate rates.

AMBER Alerts in Canada: activations and outcomes

Between 2015 and 2025, Canada issued 107 AMBER Alerts involving 122 children. Of those children, 115 were found alive (94.3%), 6 were found deceased, and 1 remains missing, per RCMP NCMPUR’s AMBER Alert statistics page. The peak year was 2022 with 15 activations involving 18 children, all found alive. In 2025, only 5 alerts were issued involving 7 children, all found alive — among the lowest annual totals in the decade.

For comparison, an earlier RCMP Gazette analysis covering 2013 to February 2020 found 56 AMBER Alerts issued involving 74 abducted children, 67 of whom were recovered safely.

An AMBER Alert in Canada requires all five criteria to be met, per RCMP BC AMBER Alert Program:

1. The victim must be under 18
2. Police must have reasonable grounds to believe the child has been abducted
3. Police must have reasonable grounds to believe the child is in imminent danger
4. Sufficient descriptive information must be available about the victim or abductor
5. Police must believe the alert can be issued quickly enough to aid recovery

The program excludes parental abductions unless the circumstances are life-threatening. Most parental abduction cases, even urgent ones, do not meet the imminent-danger threshold required for an AMBER Alert activation.

Online luring and sexual exploitation of children: Canada 2024

Source: Statistics Canada Juristat: Online child sexual exploitation — A statistical profile of police-reported incidents in Canada, 2024 (Cat. 85-002-X), released March 2026.

Canadian police recorded 2,903 incidents of luring a child online in 2024 — a rate of 38 per 100,000 children and youth aged 17 and under, per Statistics Canada Juristat 2026. That rate is the highest on record and a 65% increase from the 2023 rate of 23 per 100,000. Luring accounts for 74% of all online sexual offences against children.

Online child sexual exploitation as a whole totalled 16,905 police-reported incidents in Canada in 2024 — nearly three times the 2014 rate of 50 per 100,000. Female children account for 78% of OCSE victims; 85% of all victims are youth aged 12 to 17. The overall OCSE rate fell 16% from 2023 (266 per 100,000) as police cleared backlogs of previously un-coded incidents, per Statistics Canada Juristat 2026.

Sexual extortion (sextortion) involving child and youth victims reached 368 police-reported cases in Canada in 2024. Of 1,777 cumulative sextortion cases recorded between 2018 and 2024, 94% of victims were aged 12 to 17 and 66% were female. Online luring tips to Cybertip.ca rose from 220 in 2018 to 2,717 in 2024, a 1,135% increase — a figure quoted directly within the Statistics Canada Juristat article.

Despite record luring rates, only 24% of OCSE incidents were cleared by police in 2024, and only 17% resulted in charges being laid or recommended — down from 26% in 2023. Strangers account for 32% of accused in online sexual offences against children; casual acquaintances account for 25%, per Statistics Canada Juristat 2026.

Indigenous children in Canada’s missing persons data

Sources: RCMP NCMPUR 2025 Fast Fact Sheet; RCMP NCMPUR 2024 Fast Fact Sheet; Statistics Canada: Homicide trends in Canada, 2024.

Indigenous children made up 21% of all missing children reported in Canada in 2025 — more than four times their approximately 5% share of the national child population — and 69% of all missing Indigenous children were female, per RCMP NCMPUR 2025. In 2024 the equivalent figures were 23% Indigenous and 67% female, per the RCMP NCMPUR 2024 Fast Fact Sheet.

The overrepresentation extends to lethal violence. Statistics Canada’s Homicide trends in Canada, 2024 found Indigenous peoples made up 30% of all homicide victims in 2024. Their homicide rate was 10.84 per 100,000 — more than eight times the non-Indigenous rate of 1.32 per 100,000. Among Indigenous women, 71 homicides were recorded in 2024, up from 50 in 2023.

A 2014 RCMP National Operational Overview identified 1,017 police-recorded Aboriginal female homicides between 1980 and 2012, plus 164 Aboriginal women listed as missing as of November 2013 — a combined 1,181 cases. At the time, Aboriginal females represented roughly 16% of all female homicide victims despite being a small fraction of the population.

The National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and 2SLGBTQI+ People delivered its Final Report — “Reclaiming Power and Place” — in June 2019, issuing 231 Calls for Justice directed at governments, institutions, and Canadians, per the Government of Canada backgrounder on the National Inquiry.

Recovery times and outcomes for missing children in Canada

Recovery speed is strongly tied to probable cause. The vast majority of runaways are resolved quickly. RCMP research covering 2015–2021 found 70% of runaway cases resolved within three days and 95% within 30 days. By contrast, “unknown” and “accident” probable-cause categories dominate the long-term open caseload.

Of all cumulative open cases from prior years (8,346 as of December 31, 2024), 36% were classified as unknown and 23% as accident — together 59% of the backlog, per RCMP NCMPUR 2024. Both categories include cases where circumstances were never confirmed, including deaths that produced no recoverable remains.

Among children reported missing in 2025, 57% were removed from CPIC within 24 hours and 91% within one week, slightly improving on the 2024 rates of 55% and 90% respectively, per RCMP NCMPUR 2025. For adults, the 2025 rates were 33% within 24 hours and 73% within one week.

The RCMP Gazette notes that “missing person files are never closed” — they remain active indefinitely until the person is located or confirmed deceased. As of 2019, approximately 45 children (about 9% of the 500 people missing more than one year) remained unresolved annually.

What these numbers mean for Canadian families

The RCMP guidance for families is clear on two points: there is no waiting period to report a missing child, and police treat the situation as an emergency from the first moment. The RCMP’s NCMPUR, accessible through Canada’s Missing, publishes profiles and assists in investigations at the request of the primary investigator.

The data above also clarifies a common misconception about risk:

• Stranger abduction, the scenario most parents fear most, accounted for 13 cases in all of Canada in 2025.
• Teen runaway situations made up 70% of missing-child reports.
• Human trafficking and parental abduction were less common, but each calls for a different response.

International parental child abduction is governed by the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction. Canada acts as the national Central Authority, coordinating with each province and territory to manage incoming and outgoing Hague cases for children under 16, per Global Affairs Canada. Families facing a suspected cross-border parental abduction should contact their provincial Central Authority immediately — the Hague framework operates on speed.

As licensed PIs operating across Ontario, we most commonly encounter missing-child cases in two forms: parental abductions where a parent has crossed provincial or international borders in violation of a custody order, and runaway situations involving teenagers in family-conflict circumstances. The NCMPUR typology data matches this pattern — parental abduction and runaway together account for 99% of non-unknown missing-child cases where a probable cause was established, per RCMP NCMPUR 2025.

For families navigating a missing-child situation, Discreet Investigations’ missing persons services describe what a licensed PI can do alongside the police investigation. For the broader missing-persons picture — adults, provincial context, and long-term open cases — the missing persons statistics Canada post covers the complete NCMPUR dataset. The missing persons research hub indexes all posts in this pillar.