Victim Services in Canada: National, Provincial and Territorial Fact Sheets, 2002/03

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While victims' concerns have received attention over the last three decades and governments have implemented measures to address these concerns, little is known about the services available to victims and the people who use them. To date, the only source of national data on services for victims of crime has been Statistics Canada's Transition Home Survey that collects information on residential services for abused women and their children. To address the lack of information in this area, the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics (CCJS), through funding from Justice Canada 's Policy Centre for Victim Issues, conducted for the first time a national voluntary survey of various types of victim services in 2003. The objective of the Victim Services Survey is to provide a profile of service agencies, including the services offered, and some insight into the clients who use them.

The 2002/03 Victim Services Survey collected the following types of information from all services with the exception of financial benefit programs: descriptive information to provide a profile of agencies (e.g. types of services offered and accessibility of services); annual counts for the preceding 12-month fiscal period (e.g. number of clients served, number of agency personnel and volunteers, and revenues and expenditures); a description of clients served on a “snapshot day” to provide a profile of clients who use the services. Criminal injuries compensation programs and other financial benefit programs were asked to complete a separate section that collected annual information on applications for compensation and other financial benefits and awards.

The questionnaire was sent to 715 service agencies ¹ in Canada understood to provide services or programs to victims of crime and 606 of these were deemed eligible to respond. Of these 606, responses were received for 484 victim service agencies and 8 criminal injuries compensation programs (81%). Of the 109 deemed ineligible to respond, 59 (54%) had closed and 45 (41%) were outside the scope of the survey.

This publication is based on data collected through the 2002/03 Victim Services Survey and presents highlights of victim services at the national, provincial and territorial levels. ²

Footnotes

Agency is the unit of count for the Victim Services Survey and refers to the organization or office through which victim services are provided. It should be noted that in cases where victim service programs are offered by the provincial government through a number of locations or offices, each office is counted as one agency. This approach was taken in order to avoid under estimating the extent of victim services in some jurisdictions.

For a more detailed analysis of the results of this survey at the national level, consult: Kong, Rebecca. 2004. “Victim Services in Canada , 2002/03.” Juristat. Catalogue no. 85-002-XPE, Vol.24, no.11. Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics. Ottawa : Statistics Canada .