Department of Justice Canada

The United Nations’ Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) asserts Indigenous peoples’ “right to access to and prompt decision through just and fair procedures for the resolution of conflicts and disputes” with “due consideration to the customs, traditions, rules and legal...

Child-to-parent violence and aggression (CPVA) is described as a form of family violence characterized by a pattern (as opposed to a single incident) of violent and aggressive behaviours in children and youth towards their parents or primary caregivers. These behaviours may have several...

This report summarizes five thought papers written by subject-matter experts to assist family law legal advisers in identifying and responding to family violence in diverse communities. The thought papers focused on the following population groups: racialized groups; 2SLGBTQI+ individuals; Muslim...

This paper is a revision of the 2005 Justice Canada publication entitled Making Appropriate Parenting Arrangements in Family Violence Cases: Applying the Literature to Identify Promising Practices (Jaffe et al., 2005). The original paper was written to assist lawyers, judges and other...

The Department of Justice Canada has been leading efforts to modernize the federal Privacy Act, which is a key piece of Canada’s legal framework for protecting privacy interests. As part of this work, Justice Canada undertook an initial engagement with Indigenous governments and organizations...

Crime in Canada is a costly social phenomenon that affects everyone. The effects of crime are far-reaching and can include: -direct financial costs to the institutions that make up the criminal justice system; -ndirect costs to other social institutions and to the Canadian economy more broadly;...

This fact sheet presents information on criminal court cases where the most serious offence in the case is an impaired driving-related offence subject to a mandatory minimum penalty (MMP).1 Data were obtained through a request to the Canadian Centre for Justice and Community Safety Statistics...

While policy development related to criminal legal aid is a shared federal/provincial/territorial responsibility, each province and territory is responsible for the delivery of legal aid services based on their own policies and procedures. This report provides national level statistics4 on...

The annual legal aid report presents data on legal aid delivery in Canada. This infographic presents trend data over five years from 2017-18 to 2021-22

This fact sheet is based on publicly available data from Statistics Canada. It examines data from 2020–2021 ─ the first year following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. At that time, public health measures were put into place, which temporarily closed, postponed and/or restricted Canadian...

Data in this fact sheet are from the Uniform Crime Reporting Survey (UCR) and the 2019 General Social Survey on Canadians’ Safety (also known as the GSS on Victimization). The UCR Survey collects data on police-reported crime and the GSS on Victimization collects self-reported data on...

An infographic that summarizes the rise and impact of hate crimes in 2021

This fact sheet presents information on criminal court cases where the most serious offence in the case is a drug-related offence subject to a mandatory minimum penalty (MMP). Data were obtained through a request to the Canadian Centre for Justice and Community Safety Statistics (CCJCSS) and...

The Government of Canada is reviewing the criminal law on HIV non-disclosure and sought feedback from the Canadian public through an online consultation. Participants were invited to share their views on possible criminal law reforms related to HIV non-disclosure. This consultation is one of the...

This report presents research findings on the delivery of legal aid and associated legal services to persons living in rural and remote areas of all provinces and territories. It is based on a review of the literature and interviews with 17 key respondents (with one or more from each...

Given the legal and practical constraints of the role of the prosecutor in CACs across jurisdictions in Canada, the aim of the current project was to explore how these relationships are currently being navigated and to document the variety of approaches to the Crown/CAC relationship. There is a...

This document provides an overview of the significant number of priorities and proposed measures shared by Indigenous peoples, to date and summarized by Justice Canada, in the context of developing a federal Action Plan to achieve the objectives of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of...

Proposed legislative amendments to the Criminal Code to address repeat violent offending, crime involving firearms, dangerous weapons, intimate partner violence, and community safety. On May 16, 2023, the Government of Canada introduced proposed reforms to the Criminal Code to strengthen Canada’s...

In Canada, there are many ways to include children’s voices in family law matters such as through non-court child inclusive methods (e.g., children talking with their parents, children sharing their views with professionals) and court-based child inclusive methods (e.g., child legal...

This document presents findings from a study that was conducted to understand how children’s views are included in family law disputes in Canada, including through the use of Voice of the Child Reports (VCRs). VCRs, also called Views of the Child Reports or Hear the Child Reports, are...