Southern Alberta Council on Public Affairs (SACPA)

According to Stats Canada - Family Violence in Canada - a statistical profile in 2019, there were 107,810 victims of police-reported intimate partner violence in 2019, up from 99,000 in 2018.  Alberta has the 4th highest rate of police-reported intimate partner violence amongst the provinces. The overall rate of police-reported family violence increased for the third consecutive year, rising 13% over this period.   Those alarming numbers do not take into account unreported cases, which often happens for various reasons.  Reasons may include, but are certainly not limited to: fear, shame and embarrassment of being judged, blamed or not believed. In many of those cases, individuals may also not be accessing any sort of supports.   While shelters are, and will always be, a critical service, most times when a person gets to a shelter, the abuse has increased significantly not just in number of incidents, but also in severity/risk.  In order to turn this around, we need to shift our thinking and perspectives to ex