Chart 1
Police-reported online child sexual exploitation incidents, by year, Canada, 2014 to 2024

Includes online sexual offences against children and online child sexual abuse and exploitation material.

An incident is considered in-scope if it was flagged as a cybercrime. An incident is flagged as a cybercrime when the crime targets information and communication technology (ICT) or when the crime used ICT to commit the offence. ICT includes, but is not limited to, the Internet, computers, servers, digital technology, digital telecommunications devices, phones and networks. Crimes committed over text and through messages using social media platforms are also considered cybercrime activity. Prior to 2020, the number of cybercrimes is an undercount as some police services were unable to report the cybercrime indicator for all years. The data exclude the Quebec City Police in 2014 and 2015, the municipal police service of Calgary from 2014 to 2016, the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) from 2014 to 2017, both the Saint John Police Force and the Canadian Forces Military Police from 2014 to 2019, and Dryden, a detachment of the OPP in 2022. For 2023 and 2024, the data exclude the Saint John Police Force. Counts are based on the cyber violation which may not be the most serious violation in the incident. From 2014 to 2024, the cyber violation was the most serious violation in 98% of online child sexual exploitation incidents. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police's National Child Exploitation Crime Centre (NCECC) serves as the primary point of contact in Canada for investigations related to the sexual exploitation of children on the Internet. Working in partnership with specialized provincial Internet child exploitation policing units, police services across Canada and internationally, the NCECC forwards suspected cases of online child sexual exploitation (OCSE) to the appropriate police of jurisdiction for investigation. Due to a substantial increase in the volume and complexity of these cases (many of which involve generative artificial intelligence), many police services do not have the resources to investigate all cases forwarded by the NCECC. As a result, these data reflect the number of police-reported investigations for the year, accounting for only a subset of suspected OCSE cases within Canada. Includes a small proportion of incidents where victim age was recoded. For some incidents, the victim was aged 17 years or younger at the time of the offence, but was aged 18 years or older when the incident was reported by police. As such, victim age was recoded to the age of the victim on the first recorded date of the incident. Rates are calculated per 100,000 population. Populations are based on July 1 estimates from Statistics Canada's Centre for Demography.

Uniform Crime Reporting Survey (3302).