Missing Persons Statistics Canada [2025]

Canada recorded 68,349 missing persons in 2025, a 1% decrease from 69,152 in 2024, according to the RCMP NCMPUR 2025 Fast Fact Sheet. Children under 18 account for 51% of all reports. This post draws on RCMP NCMPUR, Statistics Canada, and MissingKids.ca data, and is part of the Canadian crime research series.

What is a missing person in Canada?

The RCMP defines a missing person as anyone whose whereabouts are unknown, regardless of the circumstances of their disappearance. This status holds until the person is located or confirmed deceased. All reports are entered on CPIC (Canadian Police Information Centre), the national law-enforcement database accessible to every police service in Canada. Missing persons investigations are classified as humanitarian, not inherently criminal, because disappearing is not illegal for adults.

Ontario adds a provincial layer through the Missing Persons Act, 2018, S.O. 2018, c. 3, Sched. 7, which came into force July 1, 2019. That statute defines a missing person as someone whose whereabouts are unknown. The person must also either have lost contact with people who would likely know their location, or face reasonable fear for their safety given the circumstances.

The RCMP’s MC/PUR (Missing Children/Persons and Unidentified Remains) database classifies every case using nine CPIC probable-cause categories. These are: abduction by a stranger; accident; wandered off/lost; parental abduction with custody order; parental abduction without custody order; runaway; unknown; other; and presumed dead. Cases are counted per disappearance event, not per individual. RCMP NCMPUR 2025 estimates that 25%–75% of police reports are never entered in CPIC. Most involve persons found within hours of the initial call. Actual incident counts substantially exceed what the database captures.

How many people go missing in Canada each year?

Canada recorded 68,349 missing persons in 2025: 33,584 adults and 34,189 children. The RCMP NCMPUR 2024 Fast Fact Sheet recorded 67,611 occurrences, down 4% from 70,168 in 2023. The five-year trend shows a gradual decline from a pre-COVID peak of roughly 74,000.

Of all 2025 reports, only 540 (1%) remained open as of the February 2, 2026 data-extraction date. That figure reflects current-year cases only; the cumulative backlog of open cases from all prior years stands at 8,329.

The 68,000–70,000 figure understates the true number of missing-person events. RCMP NCMPUR’s own methodology notes that anywhere from 25% to 75% of reports made to police are never entered into CPIC. Most are persons found within a few hours of the initial call. Real incident volume is substantially higher than what the national database captures.

Missing persons in Canada by province (2025)

British Columbia recorded the highest number of missing adult reports in 2025 at 14,074, with the highest adult per-capita rate at 249 per 100,000 population. Quebec led for missing children with 7,398 reports; Ontario followed with 6,947 children and 7,532 adults.

Source: RCMP NCMPUR 2025 Fast Fact Sheet, Tables 1 and 2, data extraction February 2, 2026.

Saskatchewan had the highest per-capita rate for missing children at 413 per 100,000, the highest of any province. Prince Edward Island had the lowest rates for both adults and children. For broader provincial crime context, the Oakville crime statistics post tracks property and violent crime trends in one of Ontario’s most closely monitored communities.

Missing children in Canada: age and sex breakdown (2025)

Of the 34,189 children reported missing in Canada in 2025, 59% were female and 41% were male, per RCMP NCMPUR 2025. Female children accounted for 20,221 reports; male children for 14,001. Children represented 51% of all missing persons reported nationally.

Source: RCMP NCMPUR 2025 Fast Fact Sheet. The 78% concentration in the 14–17 cohort reflects the dominance of teen runaways in the data.

Resolution is faster for children than for adults. MissingKids.ca (Canadian Centre for Child Protection) reports 62% of missing children were removed from CPIC within 24 hours and 92% within one week. Both figures are consistent with the RCMP NCMPUR 2025 data of 57% within 24 hours and 91% within seven days.

What are the most common reasons people go missing in Canada?

• Runaway (adults): 15% of missing adult cases in 2025 were classified as runaways (4,995 cases). A further 65% fell under “unknown” probable cause, which often reflects cases where police received the report but circumstances were never established before the person was located.
• Runaway (children): 70% of missing children cases in 2025 were classified as runaways (24,050 cases). Teen runaways skew female; adult runaways skew male, per RCMP research published November 2024.
• Wandered off/lost: 8% of missing adult cases (2,778) and 1% of missing child cases (381).
• Accident: 6% of missing adult cases (1,901). Accidents account for the largest share of long-term unresolved cases because many involve deaths unconfirmed by physical evidence.
• Parental abduction: 0.2% of missing child cases (67 cases in 2025 with no custody order). This category includes a separate sub-category for abductions with a custody order in place.
• All causes, 2015–2021 trend: The RCMP’s 2024 research found that 88% of all missing persons cases reported over the seven-year period 2015–2021 were runaways, representing approximately 52,000 incidents per year. Teens comprised 69% of habitual/chronic missing cases despite being only 32% of the sample.

Indigenous overrepresentation in Canada’s missing persons data

Indigenous people made up 13% of missing adults and 21% of missing children in Canada in 2025, despite representing approximately 5% of Canada’s total population, per RCMP NCMPUR 2025. Among missing Indigenous adults, 58% were female. Among missing Indigenous children, 69% were female.

Sources: RCMP NCMPUR 2025 Fast Fact Sheet; Statistics Canada, Homicide trends in Canada, 2024. Indigenous population share from 2021 Census.

Statistics Canada’s Homicide in Canada, 2024 report (released December 2, 2025) found Indigenous peoples made up 30% of all homicide victims in 2024. Their homicide rate was 10.84 per 100,000, compared to 1.32 per 100,000 for non-Indigenous Canadians.

The National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and 2SLGBTQI+ People delivered its Final Report — “Reclaiming Power and Place” — on June 3, 2019. Over two years of cross-country hearings, the Inquiry gathered testimony from 2,386 participants, including 1,484 family members and survivors. It issued 231 Calls for Justice directed at governments, institutions, and Canadians. The Inquiry’s findings are documented in the Government of Canada backgrounder on the National Inquiry. A 2014 RCMP National Operational Overview had earlier identified 1,181 police-recorded cases of Indigenous female homicides between 1980 and 2012, plus 164 missing Indigenous women and girls.

Families seeking resources or support can access the Government of Canada’s MMIWG resources page for information on Federal Pathway commitments and community support programs.

How are missing persons cases resolved in Canada?

• Within 24 hours: 57% of missing children and 33% of missing adults were removed from CPIC within one day, per RCMP NCMPUR 2025.
• Within one week: 91% of missing children and 73% of missing adults were resolved within seven days.
• Within 30 days: RCMP research covering 2015–2021 found that 95% of all missing persons cases (adults and children combined) were resolved within 30 days.
• Cases remaining open: Only 540 of the 68,349 people reported missing in 2025 (1%) remained open as of the February 2, 2026 data extraction date.
• How cases close: The most common resolution is the person being located alive. Cases are removed from CPIC when the person is found, when remains are identified, or when the subject is presumed deceased by police. RCMP guidance confirms that missing person files are “never closed”; they remain active indefinitely until the person is accounted for.

The auto-theft statistics for Ontario post shows a parallel pattern: most reported incidents resolve quickly, but a persistent tail of unresolved cases accumulates year over year.

Long-term and unresolved cases: what the data shows

As of December 31, 2025, 8,329 total open missing persons cases from all previous years remained active in the MC/PUR database, per RCMP NCMPUR 2025. The prior year’s report recorded 8,346 open cases as of December 31, 2024. The oldest open occurrence in the MC/PUR database dates to 1919.

The probable-cause profile of long-term open cases differs from that of newly reported cases. In the 2024 NCMPUR data, the open-case breakdown was: Unknown 36% (2,996 cases); Accident 23% (1,884 cases); Runaway 11% (912 cases); Other 9% (785 cases); and Presumed dead 9% (750 cases).

“Unknown” and “Accident” together account for 59% of unresolved cases. Both categories include cases where circumstances were never confirmed, including deaths that produced no recoverable remains.

The RCMP’s National Missing Persons DNA Program maintains over 650 unresolved cases of unidentified human remains in CPIC, with approximately 40 to 100 new unidentified-remains cases added each year. The program links NCMPUR with the National DNA Data Bank to help identify remains and provide closure to families.

What this means for families and investigators

Three rules from RCMP guidance for families apply regardless of the circumstances:

• No waiting period: Families can report to police immediately. There is no statutory waiting period for adults or children in Canada.
• Files stay open: Missing person files are never closed. They remain active indefinitely until the person is located or confirmed deceased.
• Humanitarian classification: Police treat missing persons cases as humanitarian investigations. Disappearing is not illegal for adults; authority to access private records expands only when police have reasonable grounds to suspect criminal activity.

Ontario’s Missing Persons Act, 2018 (S.O. 2018, c. 3, Sched. 7) granted police new powers to apply for a court order to access financial, medical, or telecommunications records when locating a missing person, without needing evidence of a crime. That power applies to Ontario policing only; other provinces operate under their own frameworks.

Private investigators play a defined but limited role. In Canada, any person who undertakes searching for a missing person on a for-hire basis must hold a valid provincial PI licence. Licensed investigators can gather information from open sources, conduct surveillance in public spaces, and coordinate with families — but cannot compel records access or exercise police powers. For active missing persons situations, Discreet Investigations’ missing persons services describe what a licensed PI can do alongside the police investigation.

As licensed PIs operating across the GTA, we see missing persons cases most often in the context of family breakdown: a parent who has crossed provincial lines with a child, a vulnerable adult who has wandered from care, or an adult who has cut contact during a mental health crisis. The NCMPUR data matches. Runaways and unknown-cause departures far outnumber stranger abductions, and the unknown-cause cases require the deepest investigation work.