Workplace Harassment & Violence Trends Canada [2026]

Nearly half of Canadian women have experienced workplace harassment at some point in their working lives, according to Statistics Canada 2024. This post covers who is affected, how rates break down by gender, age, and sector, and what the federal reporting trend shows since mandatory disclosure began in 2021. Data draws on Statistics Canada surveys and the Employment and Social Development Canada annual reporting series.

What counts as workplace harassment and violence in Canada

Under Canada Labour Code Part II, s. 122(1), “harassment and violence” means any action, conduct, or comment that can reasonably be expected to cause offence, humiliation, or physical or psychological injury to an employee. That includes conduct of a sexual nature. The definition covers discriminatory behaviours, sexual harassment, sexual violence, and domestic violence that extends into the workplace. This is the statutory foundation for Canada’s federal workplace safety framework.

The Work Place Harassment and Violence Prevention Regulations (SOR/2020-130), which came into force on January 1, 2021 under Bill C-65, extended these obligations to all federally regulated workplaces. Employers must conduct workplace risk assessments, develop prevention policies, provide training, and follow a structured resolution process when an occurrence is reported — covering negotiated resolution, conciliation, and investigation.

Canada’s federal definition groups conduct into four broad categories:

• Inappropriate sexualized behaviours — verbal or non-verbal communication of a sexual nature, and unwanted physical contact. Among workers who experienced any workplace harassment, 44% of women and 29% of men identified this as the primary type, per Statistics Canada 2021.
• Gender-based discrimination — differential treatment or hostile conduct based on sex or gender identity.
• Sexual assault — criminal-code conduct occurring in a workplace or work-related context.
• Physical violence — threatening behaviour, physical attacks, or conduct that creates a risk of bodily harm.

The federal framework covers banking, inter-provincial transportation (air, road, and rail), broadcasting, telecommunications, postal services, and federal Crown corporations. Per Canada’s employment and social development programs, these sectors represent roughly 6% of the Canadian workforce. Provincial workplaces fall under separate occupational health and safety legislation.

How workplace harassment rates break down by gender and age in Canada

Lifetime and past-year rates for women and men by age group

Women experience workplace harassment at substantially higher rates than men across all age groups, with the gap widest among workers in early-to-mid career. The table below draws on Statistics Canada’s February 2024 data release based on the 2020 Survey on Sexual Misconduct at Work (n=12,138).

Workers aged 15–24 show the highest short-term exposure of any age group: 43% of young women and 25% of young men reported an incident in the previous 12 months. Women aged 25–34 carry the highest lifetime rate at 60%, compared with 39% of men the same age.

A 2016 General Social Survey (Cycle 30, n approximately 9,000) found 19% of women and 13% of men experienced workplace harassment in the previous year, per Statistics Canada 2018. The gender gap in non-sexual harassment nearly disappears once occupation is statistically controlled — suggesting occupational concentration, not gender alone, drives much of the raw difference.

One in four women (25%) and one in six men (17%) experienced inappropriate sexualized behaviours at work in the 12 months before the 2020 survey, per Statistics Canada 2021. Women in male-dominated trades and transportation had the highest past-year rate at 47%, versus 32% in natural and applied sciences. Employment verification and pre-hire screening — subjects covered in the resume lie statistics post — occur in the same high-risk hiring contexts where entry-level harassment rates are elevated.

How federal workplace harassment and violence reports have trended since 2021

Mandatory reporting under SOR/2020-130 began January 1, 2021. Three years of EAHVOR (Employer’s Annual Harassment and Violence Occurrence Report) data now provide the clearest picture of federal sector exposure.

Sources: ESDC 2021 Annual Report; ESDC 2022 Annual Report; ESDC 2023 Annual Report.

Total occurrences rose 25.8% from 2021 to 2022, then a further 14.3% from 2022 to 2023. The cumulative increase from the first year of reporting to 2023 is 43.7%. Sexual HV occurrences rose from 722 in 2022 to 1,029 in 2023 — a 42.5% jump in one year.

Five industries accounted for 5,811 of the 7,114 occurrences in 2023 (81.7% of the total): Federal Public Services, Air Transportation, Banking, Postal Services, and Road Transportation. Federal Public Services alone logged 2,129 occurrences — 29.9% of the national federal total. One workplace fatality linked to harassment and violence was recorded in 2023. In 2023, 1,453 occurrences were linked to grounds of discrimination under the Canadian Human Rights Act.

Which workers face the highest risk of workplace harassment in Canada

Occupational sector, union status, and employer size all predict harassment exposure. The following groups face above-average risk, based on primary survey data:

• Health-care workers face the highest harassment rates of any occupational group: 23% reported workplace harassment in the past year (27% of women, 21% of men), versus 9% in natural and applied sciences, per Statistics Canada’s 2018 analysis of the 2016 General Social Survey.
• Unionized workers reported higher harassment rates (20%) than non-unionized workers (14%) in the same survey — a counterintuitive gap that researchers attribute to greater job security enabling disclosure rather than higher underlying incidence.
• Rail transportation workers were the most likely to report an unsafe workplace in the federal sector: 12.3% disagreed that their workplace was free from harassment, compared with 10.6% across all federal sectors, per ESDC’s 2022 Survey of Employees under Federal Jurisdiction (n=19,060).
• Workers in trades and transportation showed the highest past-year sexualized-behaviour rate among women at 47%, more than twice the rate in clerical occupations.
• Women (6.5%) were more likely than men (5.1%) to report experiencing harassment or violence in the previous two years under the 2022 federal survey. Of those harassed, non-sexual harassment was most common (73.6%), followed by sexual harassment (20.1%) and workplace violence (18.4%).
• Courier services, pipelines, and rail transportation had the highest share of harassed workers who subsequently took leave — 29.5%, 26.5%, and 24.5% respectively. Each of those sectors saw more than one in four harassed employees go on leave.

How workplace harassment affects vulnerable groups: disability, Indigenous identity, sexual orientation

Workers with disabilities, LGB workers, and Indigenous workers face materially higher harassment rates than the general workforce. The table below draws on two Statistics Canada sources. The 2024 data comes from the 2020 Survey on Sexual Misconduct at Work; the 2021 release covers the 2019 Postsecondary Faculty and Researchers survey (n approximately 27,000).

Disability: Women with disabilities report lifetime workplace harassment at 58%, compared with 41% of women without disabilities. The gap is nearly as large for men — 41% of men with disabilities versus 28% without.

Sexual orientation: LGB women face a 76% lifetime rate, compared with 46% of heterosexual women. In the past 12 months, 60% of LGB women and 37% of LGB men reported an incident, versus 27% and 18% of heterosexual women and men respectively.

Postsecondary institutions: In Canada’s universities and colleges, persons with disabilities (46%), Indigenous persons (40%), and bisexual or pansexual individuals (42%) report harassment at rates far exceeding the average (28%). Faculty and researchers overall report higher rates than the general workforce: 34% of women and 22% of men, versus the 2016 general-workforce benchmark of 19% and 13%.

Racialized and immigrant workers: Racialized women (35%) and immigrant women (34%) report lower lifetime rates than non-racialized women (51%) and Canadian-born women (52%). Researchers note that structural barriers, concerns about immigration status, and language factors may contribute to lower reporting rather than lower actual incidence.

Why workplace harassment is underreported in Canada

Survey data consistently shows that most workers who experience harassment do not formally report it. The barriers to reporting are well-documented and differ by gender.

Among women who experienced inappropriate workplace communication in the year before the 2020 survey, only about half (51%) discussed the incident with anyone at work. Fewer than half of those disclosures (46%) were made to a supervisor or manager. Men were far less likely to tell anyone: only 20% spoke about their experience with a colleague or supervisor, per Statistics Canada’s August 2021 Daily release.

The barriers to disclosure are structural as well as individual. Statistics Canada’s 2021 Juristat analysis found that among women who did not speak up, 62% considered the experience “not serious enough” to report. One in five (20%) feared negative career consequences — more than double the rate for men (8%). A further 26% of women believed no action would be taken, and 12% feared they would not be believed.

Information gaps compound the problem. Approximately one in three women (32%) and one in four men (26%) received no information from their employer on how to report sexual harassment or sexual assault at work. Among federally regulated workers, only 29.4% believed their employer would “very strongly support” them if they took leave after experiencing harassment, per ESDC’s 2022 Survey of Employees under Federal Jurisdiction.

The cumulative effect: the 7,114 federal occurrences reported in 2023 almost certainly represent a fraction of actual incidence. The population-survey data — showing 47% lifetime rates for women — points to a scale of experience orders of magnitude larger than the formal reporting stream captures.

What workplace harassment costs employers and workers

The costs fall on both sides of the employment relationship and compound the longer harassment goes unaddressed. The data below draws on Statistics Canada’s 2018 analysis and ESDC’s 2022 SEFJ survey:

• Job dissatisfaction: Harassed workers reported job dissatisfaction at more than three times the rate of non-harassed peers — 14% of harassed women and 13.7% of harassed men, versus fewer than 4% in each non-harassed group. Low workplace motivation was reported by 19.5% of harassed women and 24% of harassed men, versus roughly 8–9% of non-harassed colleagues.
• Mental health: Poor mental health affects 18.2% of harassed men and 16.4% of harassed women, versus 6.2% and 7.5% of non-harassed counterparts. High stress was reported by 30.1% of harassed men and 33.5% of harassed women, roughly double the rates for non-harassed workers.
• Supervisor harassment amplifies costs: Among employees harassed by a manager, 47% of men and 34% of women reported weak organizational belonging, versus roughly 16% for non-harassed groups. More than one in five reported job dissatisfaction, versus fewer than 5% of non-harassed peers.
• Leave of absence: Among federally regulated employees, 17.2% took leave directly because of harassment or violence. Leave-taking was highest in courier services and pipelines (29.5%), rail transportation (26.5%), and telecommunications and broadcasting (24.5%).

What these trends mean for Canadian workers and employers

The consistent rise in reported federal occurrences — from 4,950 in 2021 to 7,114 in 2023 — does not mean harassment is necessarily becoming more frequent. ESDC’s annual reports note that EAHVOR submission volume also grew (from 4,503 in 2021 to 5,393 in 2023). More employers filing reports contributes to the higher occurrence count.

What the data does show clearly is that the gap between population-survey prevalence and formal reporting remains enormous. Survey rates of 47% lifetime exposure for women coexist with a formal reporting system that logged 7,114 occurrences across the entire federal sector. Road transportation was the only major federal sector to show a year-over-year decline (from 1,403 in 2022 to 1,242 in 2023). Sexual harassment’s share of total occurrences grew from 11.6% in 2022 to 14.5% in 2023 — a sign that stigma around the most serious category may be easing.

For employers, the practical implication is that the EAHVOR number understates actual exposure. Workers who do not report are still experiencing harassment, still suffering the mental-health and job-satisfaction consequences documented above, and still generating the turnover costs that flow from weak organizational belonging.

As licensed PIs working on corporate misconduct files in Canada, we see the downstream of underreporting directly. Internal investigations are often triggered only after harassment has escalated over months or years without a formal record. By then, witness memories fade, electronic evidence is gone, and the employer’s legal exposure is larger than it would have been with earlier intervention. The corporate investigations work that accompanies these files typically reconstructs a timeline a functioning reporting system would have captured in real time. Broader organizational-integrity context is covered by the workplace research pillar.

Data in this post reflects primary sources available as of June 2026. Federal annual report data (ESDC) covers only workplaces under federal jurisdiction — approximately 6% of the Canadian workforce. Provincial workplaces are governed by separate occupational health and safety legislation.