Technology-Facilitated Violence Statistics Canada

Technology-facilitated violence statistics in Canada come from two different denominators. In Women’s Shelters Canada’s 2024 report, 95% of frontline anti-violence workers had supported a survivor disclosing technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV). Statistics Canada’s newest survey found 11% of Canadians experienced unwanted behaviour online in the past year, per Statistics Canada 2026. This page compiles Canada’s TFGBV data on prevalence, coercive control, and the legislative gap.

What is technology-facilitated violence in Canada

Technology-facilitated violence, also called technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV) or cyberviolence, is behaviour where technology is used to cause virtual or in-person harm. It includes using a phone, an app, a tracking device, or a social platform to threaten, harass, bully, embarrass, assault, extort, coerce, torment, or socially exclude another person. The technology is the tool of harm, not a separate category of crime.

Women and Gender Equality Canada frames TFGBV this way in its own WAGE 2024 fact sheet, the federal government’s primary definitional source for the term. Women’s Shelters Canada’s Tech Safety Canada project reaches a similar conclusion: TFGBV sits inside a wider continuum of violence spanning online and in-person harm, per Women’s Shelters Canada 2024.

That continuum covers domestic violence, harassment, stalking, sexual assault, impersonation, extortion, and the non-consensual sharing of intimate images, carried out through devices, apps, and digital spaces. The underlying survey ran from December 2022 to March 2023 across 204 frontline shelter and transition-house workers, with results published in 2024.

That framing sets this page apart from a narrower cybercrime lens. TFGBV is defined by its gendered pattern and its frequent tie to an existing or former relationship, not by the device used.

Those 204 surveyed workers also identified which forms of TFGBV were most common among the survivors they support:

How common is technology-facilitated violence in Canada: national prevalence data

Two Canadian data sources anchor this section, and they measure different things. Women’s Shelters Canada 2024 found 95% of the frontline workers it surveyed had supported a survivor disclosing TFGBV, a worker-reported measure, not a population-wide rate. Statistics Canada 2026 took the opposite approach, surveying the general population directly. It found 11% of Canadians experienced unwanted behaviour online in the 12 months before the 2025 survey, including unconsented sharing of intimate images and threatening messages. Within that 11% figure, women reported a higher rate (12%) than men (9%), a split explored further in the next section.

For the broader, non-relationship population prevalence of cyberbullying and online harassment in Canada, see the online harassment statistics page.

The gap between these figures is about scope, not disagreement. Women’s Shelters Canada’s numbers describe what workers see in a caseload already flagged for support. Statistics Canada’s number describes unwanted online behaviour across the whole population, most of which never reaches a shelter door.

Technology as a tool of coercive control in intimate relationships

Technology gives coercive control a longer reach, but the underlying tactics predate smartphones. Statistics Canada’s 2018 Survey of Safety in Public and Private Spaces measured a distinct set of controlling behaviours. Those items are separate from the physical and sexual violence figures already published elsewhere on this site, and they map directly onto today’s app-based monitoring and account control.

• Isolating a partner from other people: Statistics Canada 2021 found 29% of women and 27% of men said an abusive partner had stopped them from talking to others.
• Demanding to know a partner’s location: the same analysis found 19% of women and 15% of men reported this, per Statistics Canada 2021. Their partner demanded to know where they were and who they were with, a behaviour that predates but maps directly onto GPS-based tracking today.
• Monitoring and surveillance via technology: Women’s Shelters Canada 2024 found 76% of anti-violence workers had supported survivors experiencing monitoring or surveillance via technology. Stalkerware apps specifically came up for 27% of workers, and GPS-enabled tracking devices such as AirTags, Tile, or vehicle trackers came up for 53%.
• Limiting access to technology or accounts: 77% of workers reported supporting survivors whose abuser limited or prevented access to devices or online accounts, per Women’s Shelters Canada 2024. That included destroying phones or withholding shared passwords.

Who is most affected: gender, age, and relationship to the perpetrator

Age and gender patterns in Canada’s TFGBV data echo the coercive-control numbers above: women, and younger people especially, carry a disproportionate share of the risk.

Young women reported a notably higher rate than all women combined, and young men reported above the all-men rate too, per Statistics Canada 2026. Age, not just gender, drives exposure to unwanted online behaviour in Canada.

Frontline workers surveyed by Women’s Shelters Canada 2024 also flagged which populations face the most extreme forms of TFGBV among the survivors they support:

Each group faces distinct barriers, per Women’s Shelters Canada 2024. Tech-literacy gaps affect older survivors, reliance on assistive technology affects survivors with disabilities, and a lack of culturally appropriate supports affects racialized and 2SLGBTQQIA+ survivors. That intimate-partner concentration is why the next section treats technology-facilitated violence as a legislative gap, not only a policing gap.

Canada’s policy response: the National Action Plan to End Gender-Based Violence and where TFGBV fits

Canada’s National Action Plan to End Gender-Based Violence names TFGBV as a recognized form of gender-based violence, alongside physical, sexual, psychological, emotional, and financial abuse, per WAGE 2024. The plan directs prevention work across private, public, community, workplace, educational, and online settings.

The primary Canadian data source behind this page, Women’s Shelters Canada’s 2024 report, was itself funded by Women and Gender Equality Canada, per Women’s Shelters Canada 2024. That funding link ties the National Action Plan’s own commitments directly to frontline-level TFGBV research. Policy recognition alone does not create a matching criminal offence, a mismatch the next section examines.

Where the Criminal Code falls short: the coercive-control legislative gap

A 2020 research paper for the federal Office of the Federal Ombudsperson for Victims of Crime reached a stark conclusion. Coercive control was not an offence in the Criminal Code of Canada, per Department of Justice Canada 2020. The authors said that gap limited the justice system’s ability to address the harm caused to intimate-partner-violence victims.

Bill C-16, the Protecting Victims Act, received Royal Assent on June 18, 2026, per Parliament of Canada 2026. It creates a new Criminal Code offence, section 264.01, for a pattern of coercive or controlling conduct toward an intimate partner, punishable by up to 10 years in prison. That provision is enacted law, but it is not yet in force.

The Department of Justice Canada’s backgrounder explains why: the coercive-control provisions will come into force no later than two years after Royal Assent, per Department of Justice Canada 2026. That delay allows time to train police, prosecutors, and judges before the offence takes effect. The earliest possible in-force date is June 2028, though most of the bill’s other reforms take effect July 18, 2026.

Until section 264.01 takes effect, technology-facilitated monitoring or control usually has to be prosecuted under existing law. Criminal harassment under section 264 of the Criminal Code is the most common route; see the stalking statistics page for the full analysis. Non-consensual sharing of an intimate image captured or weaponized through technology can fall under section 162.1, covered in depth on the NCDII statistics page. Financially coercive tactics, such as draining a partner’s account through compromised device access, can meet the threshold for extortion under section 346, the subject of the sextortion statistics page.

Reporting, disclosure, and why technology-facilitated violence goes undercounted

Technology-facilitated violence is undercounted for reasons that compound each other, according to Women’s Shelters Canada’s 2024 report. Domestic-abuse survivors already underreport at high rates overall; see the domestic abuse statistics page for that broader self-report-versus-police-report picture.

• Financial and connectivity barriers: Women’s Shelters Canada 2024 found 78% of workers surveyed named financial barriers, and 68% named poor internet connectivity, as obstacles preventing survivors from addressing TFGBV. National broadband access sits at 91%, versus 62% in rural communities, a gap that compounds device-replacement costs after an abuser destroys a phone.
• Weak institutional response: 69% of workers said a lack of police and justice-system response is a barrier survivors face, per Women’s Shelters Canada 2024. Another 56% pointed to low survivor confidence in reporting.
• A digital-literacy gap on both sides: only 12% of workers felt very confident helping survivors navigate being monitored or surveilled online, per Women’s Shelters Canada 2024. Another 73% said survivors’ own lack of digital literacy makes it harder for them to seek help safely.
• TFGBV rarely stands alone: 96% of workers said emotional abuse commonly co-occurs with TFGBV, 87% cited co-occurring stalking, and 78% cited co-occurring financial abuse, per Women’s Shelters Canada 2024. The report treats that overlap as evidence against the idea that tech-facilitated abuse is a lesser or harmless category of violence.

What this means for survivors, families, and investigators

Women’s Shelters Canada’s own recommendations single out survivor-centred training and improved access to legal remedies as the most urgent gaps, per Women’s Shelters Canada 2024. Police and prosecutors who are unfamiliar with stalkerware, GPS trackers, and account-monitoring tactics can struggle to recognize TFGBV when a survivor discloses it.

As licensed PIs, we treat a TFGBV disclosure as an evidence-preservation problem. That means documenting a stalkerware install, a tracked device, or a monitoring pattern before an abuser can delete it. That documentation supports the safety planning and legal remedies survivors need. Domestic violence investigation work covers the family-law and safety-planning side; a dedicated social media and internet investigation can trace how an account or device was compromised.

Families weighing whether a partner’s monitoring or account restrictions amount to coercive control can review the abuse research hub for the full range of Canadian abuse data.