This chapter examines the scale, composition and distribution of justice problems in Canada. Drawing on legal needs surveys and crime victimisation data, it provides an overview of the main types of justice problems experienced by the population, covering both criminal victimisation and civil justice issues. The chapter also analyses patterns of exposure across population groups and socio-economic characteristics, providing the basis for understanding how justice problems are distributed throughout society and how they relate to broader justice and well-being outcomes.
Justice Services, Economic Burden and Social Costs in Canada
Estimates to Inform Policy Priorities
Abstract
This section proposes an overview of the incidence1 of justice problems in Canada in recent years.2 The section starts by analysing the incidence of justice problems for the general population, as captured by multiple rounds of legal needs surveys conducted in the country. As explained in Box 2.1, these surveys emphasise problems with a justice dimension arising in everyday life, as well as people’s experience in addressing these problems, be it outside or within formal justice systems.
The section identifies the justice problems that are reported as most frequent and impactful in these surveys. It also complements legal needs surveys with other sources that provide a better coverage of problems such as domestic violence or sexual abuse. The purpose of the approach is to identify and exploit the most comprehensive and reliable data sources available for each type of justice problem. This provides a basis for the estimation of the incidence of most significant justice problems in Canada, which is contrasted with the available evidence on the situation in other countries.
The section concludes by analysing the experiences of specific groups of the population and examining the extent to which factors such as ethnicity, education, income, and geographical location can lead to heightened exposure to justice problems.
A responsive justice system emphasises people’s experience of problems with a legal or justice dimension and their pathways and needs in trying to resolve these problems (OECD, 2019[1]). It seeks to complement and broaden conventional approaches to justice, which have focused on the perspective of the justice system as captured by institutional data and indicators (such as police reports and court statistics). Collecting information that reflects people’s standpoint on, and experiences in, dealing with justice problems is therefore a crucial element of effective justice (OECD/Open Society Foundations, 2019[2]; OECD, 2021[3]).
There is a long tradition within legal studies to try and measure the public’s legal needs through surveys and assess how well the justice system responds to these needs. The “Justice for All” report traces this history back to the United States in the 1930s (Task Force on Justice, 2019[4]). Such surveys became more common during the 1960s and 1970s, by establishing a list of problems for which support from a lawyer might be useful and asking people whether they had experienced such problems in the recent past and, if they had, whether they had indeed contacted a lawyer (add reference).
This approach of legal needs was gradually perceived to be excessively centred on the conditions in which lawyers were actually used rather than the problems experienced by people – including those that were very seldom taken to legal practitioners.
A series of subsequent studies, notably the American Bar Association’s Comprehensive Legal Needs Study (1994[5]), the UK National Consumer Council’s Seeking Civil Justice (1995[6]), and Hazel Genn’s Paths to Justice (1999[7]) gradually reformed this approach by placing the emphasis on a broader set of issues – namely any matter or situation “with legal implications” or “raising legal issues”, regardless of whether individuals identified it as legal or tried to resolve it through formal justice mechanisms – which Genn (1999[7]) proposed to designate as justiciable events. Using a similar framework of analysis, Pleasance et al. (2004[8])’s referred to “everyday life problems” to highlight the focus on the lived experiences of individuals. One of the primary objectives of the approach was to produce evidence on the prevalence of civil justice problems and the way in which people addressed these, because administrative data from the justice sector largely concentrated on criminal justice.
The OECD Recommendation on Access to Justice and People-Centred Justice Systems (OECD, 2024[9]) drew from these precedents in defining justice needs as needs related to a problem with a legal or justice dimension in any sector or any party to the dispute whether or not this is recognised by those involved, and to the subsequent demand to access (public) justice services and other dispute resolution mechanisms in order to obtain recognition of and remedy to such a problem. The Recommendation generally uses the concept of ‘justice problems’.
For an assessment of the costs of justice problems, it is therefore fitting that this study adopts as a basis the experience of people as reported in surveys, primarily legal needs surveys.
One of the key sources of the study is the latest large-scale legal needs survey carried out in Canada. The 2021 Canadian Legal Problems Survey (CLPS). A respondent to the CLPS is considered to experience a justice problem if they reported a problem that was serious and difficult to resolve (hereinafter designated as “a serious problem”) in the three years preceding the survey within one of the following categories: large purchase or service (“consumer issues”); employer or job (“employment issues”); injury or serious health issue at work or in a public space (“injury at work”); house, mortgage or rent (“housing issues”); debt or money; getting government assistance; getting disability assistance; immigration to Canada; being stopped, accused or arrested; breakdown of family; child custody; executing a will or taking care of a disabled person (“will execution”); poor or incorrect medical treatment (“medical treatment issues”); harassment; and discrimination.
Source: (OECD, 2024[9]).
2.2.1. Incidence as captured by legal needs surveys
There is a substantial literature on the justice problems faced by Canadians, drawing on multiple legal needs surveys (LNS) conducted in the past two decades (Currie, 2005[10]; Currie, 2009[11]; Currie, 2009[12]; CFCJ, 2016[13]; Savage and McDonald, 2022[14]; Justice Canada, 2025[15]). This research reveals that a large proportion of Canadian adults regularly encounter justice problems that they find difficult to resolve.
The first large-scale LNS conducted in 2004 found that 48% of Canadians with low to moderate incomes experienced one or more legal problems during the three years preceding the survey. Because the survey targeted a specific income group, its results are not directly comparable to those of subsequent surveys. Yet another LNS carried out in 2006 found a similar rate of incidence 45% over a three-year reference period in a sample representing all Canadians aged 18 and older. In 2008, a new survey reported a slightly higher incidence, with 55% of adults encountering serious and difficult-to-resolve legal issues over the same time frame (including the newly introduced problem area of neighbourhood issues). The 2014 Canadian Forum on Civil Justice national survey similarly found that 49% of adult Canadians experienced one or more every day legal problems they considered serious and difficult to resolve within a three-year period.
The findings of these surveys were also highly consistent when it comes to the areas of problems that Canadians most commonly faced, with consumer problems, debt and money issues, and employment disputes as the three leading causes, each roughly affecting between one in five and one in four adult persons.3 Beyond these, a gradual rise in neighbourhood disputes, discrimination cases, and family-related legal issues was discernible across the survey rounds.
However, the 2021 Canadian Legal Problems Survey (CLPS) depicted a very different reality. Only 18% of Canadians living in the provinces reported at least one serious legal problem in the preceding three years – a 60% drop compared to the average incidence rate reported by previous surveys. The areas of justice problems most frequently reported in the CLPS were also different from previous surveys: vandalism and property damage came first with an incidence rate of 4%, followed by harassment (3%), poor or incorrect medical treatment (3%), and discrimination (3%), consumer problems (3%), debt and money issues (3%) and employment disputes (2%) came only after.
The CLPS and the previous LNS mentioned above are all surveys that have been conducted according to rigorous protocols within very substantial samples of the population (21 170 respondents for the CLPS). The differences within their results cannot be interpreted as the sign that some surveys are more reliable than others, but rather that, due to differences in methodology and timing, the surveys have captured different realities and are not directly comparable.
The methodology of the CLPS differed from that of previous LNS rounds in multiple ways, including the interview method (online and by telephone for the CLPS vs face to face in previous LNS). The CLPS questionnaire included 19 broad problem areas (see Annex C), whereas previous surveys asked respondents about more specific types of problems (84 types in the 2014 LNS), which they subsequently aggregated into the same 19 areas. It is possible that respondents tend to identify more problems when provided with detailed and concrete problem types rather than general problem areas.
Another key difference concerns the way in which problems that were difficult to resolve were separated from other problems. Problem identification proceeded in two steps in the CLPS, by first asking respondents if they had experienced one or more of a list of problems and then asking if any of the reported problems had proved difficult to resolve and focusing on those. In the previous rounds of LNS, respondents were told at the start that “the survey would inquire only about problems they felt were serious and difficult to resolve” (Currie, 2009, p. 6[11]). The consequence might be that fewer problems were deemed serious in the CLPS. This, however, would only explain a limited share of the discrepancy, as even the total incidence of problems reported in the CLPS (34% of respondents) remains very low compared to previous rounds of LNS (45% to 55%).
Another notable source of difference is timing: the CLPS was conducted between February to August 2021, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, and a large part of its reference period coincided with lockdowns and periods of reduced social and economic activity in Canada.
The societal consequences of the pandemic included an increase in the prevalence of certain types of disputes and conflicts while others receded.4 More than 42% of respondents to the CLPS who reported at least one serious problem considered that the pandemic had worsened it (Savage and McDonald, 2022[14]). What the survey could not capture, was the number of serious problems that were avoided (or delayed) because of the pandemic.
In addition to the CLPS, the Department of Justice Canada has in recent years commissioned a smaller-scale annual public opinion survey conducted in the Canadian provinces and territories and titled the National Justice Survey (NJS). Although the 2025 edition of the NJS does not provide the same level of statistical precision and richness as the CLPS, due in particular to the smaller size of its sample (about 4 200 respondents), its results nevertheless provide an interesting point of comparison – in particular as it includes a legal problems module replicating key questions from the CLPS and covers a reference period during which the impact of the COVID-19 crisis has been much more limited.5
Thirty-nine per cent of the respondents to the NJS report having experienced a serious justice problem in the previous three years, a rate that is closer to the incidence rate reported by the 2014 LNS than the 2021 CLPS. In terms of hierarchy of problems, however, the NJS confirms the key trends findings from the CLPS, with only slight differences: the most common justice problems reported by respondents is poor or incorrect medical treatment (11%), followed by discrimination (8%), neighbourhood and vandalism issues (8%), harassment (6%), employment (4%), consumer issues (4%), and money and debt (4%).
Additionally, the two surveys depict similar patterns of individual experience in addressing legal problems. For instance, 34% of NJS respondents reporting a serious problem declared that they understood its legal implications, against 37% in the CLPS; 47% knew where to find information and advice about resolving their problem according to the NJS, against 51% in the CLPS.
In summary, the 2025 NJS can be considered as a better reflection of the incidence of justice problems in Canada in recent years than the 2021 CLPS, particularly if one considers the COVID-19 crisis as an exceptional period in this regard. At the same time, the results of the NJS are consistent with those of the CLPS when it comes to the relative importance of different types of justice problems and the experiences of people in trying to resolve their problems. On these aspects, the CLPS provides a better resource for statistical analysis than the NJS due to the large size of its sample and its detailed exploration of individual experiences.
This study therefore used the results of the 2025 NJS to estimate the incidence of civil legal problems within the overall Canadian population, while it exploited the rich data from the 2021 CLPS to analyse the types of impact and justice pathways experienced by people when facing a legal problem.6
2.2.2. Level of impact reported by survey respondents
The burden that different types of justice problems place on society is determined not only by their frequency, but also by the severity of their impacts on individuals and communities.
In the CLPS, respondents are asked about the financial costs, social impacts (such as the loss of employment or housing), and health impacts (physical and mental) that they have incurred due to their most serious justice problem. Although the reported impacts do not provide a full measure of the overall society-wide costs of justice problems, they do provide a first indication of their severity. By combining the various impacts reported in the CLPS, it is possible to get a joint representation of the frequency and severity of the types of problems included in the survey (see Figure 2.1), in which different clusters of problems emerge.
A first group of problems dominates the picture as both quite common and impactful. These are of employment issues, injuries and illnesses experienced at work or in public places, medical treatment issues, debt and money issues, family breakdowns, and harassment. A second group follows with slightly lower levels of frequency and/or severity consisting of the execution of wills, discrimination, housing issues, and being victim of or witness to a crime. Five problem areas have positions that are high in one dimension and low in the other: vandalism and consumer problems (high frequency, low severity) and child custody, civil court proceedings or threat of legal action, and other problems (low frequency, high severity). Finally, a group of problems is characterised by low scores on both dimensions: being arrested, getting disability assistance, getting government assistance, and issues related to immigration.
Source: Data from CLPS 2021.
Combining both low frequency and low impact, problems in the fourth group are likely to contribute only marginally to the overall social costs of justice problems. Furthermore, this study’s statistical analysis of factors influencing people’s experience of justice problems and pathways, which are presented in subsequent sections of the report, do not yield significant results for problems reported by only a small number of respondents. Finally, the CLPS problem area “Civil court proceedings or a letter threatening legal action over a civil matter” provides information on judicial procedures rather than the problem being at the root of the procedure, while the problem area “Other problem” does not lend itself to an assessment of specific impacts and costs.
For these reasons, the sequel of the study omits the following problem areas: being arrested, getting disability assistance, getting government assistance, issues related to immigration, civil court proceedings or threat of legal action, and other problems. Furthermore, child custody issues are grouped with family breakdown issues into an overall area on family law problems to enable statistical analysis of contributing factors.
2.2.3. Incidence according to crime victimisation sources
Some of the problems that are most reported in the CLPS and the NJS are or may be related to criminal acts. These include vandalism, property damage threats or excessive noise; harassment; and being victim of or witness to a crime.
However, legal needs surveys such as the CLPS and the NJS are not the most appropriate instruments for assessing the impacts of criminal acts (nor are they designed to such aim), due to the following limitations:
The problem areas included in legal needs surveys are usually too broad to lend themselves to an assessment of impacts – for instance the area “being victim of or witness to a crime” amalgamates experiences as different as witnessing a minor theft and being victim of a serious assault. In addition, problem areas often do not coincide with those of official crime statistics, making it impossible to use the latter as complementary sources in the impact assessment.
The NJS and the CLPS do not include questions about domestic violence or its narrower forms (spousal or intimate partner violence), sexual assaults, or victimisation experienced during childhood.
Other instruments offer better alternatives for assessing exposure to crime, domestic violence or sexual violence, the impacts incurred by victims and their experiences in seeking to respond to such events:
Statistics Canada conducts on a regular basis a crime victimisation survey aimed at measuring people’s perceptions of safety and experiences of being victim of a range of criminal acts, including sexual assault and spousal violence. The most recent round of the Canadian crime victimisation survey was conducted in 2019 as part of the General Social Survey (GSS), a large-sample survey (over 20 000 respondents) on societal outcomes carried out annually (Cotter, 2021[16]).
The 2018 Survey of Safety in Public and Private Spaces (SSPPS, close to 46 000 respondents), collected information about respondents’ experiences of physical and sexual abuse during their childhood (Heidinger, 2022[17]).7
This study therefore uses the following surveys as sources for the estimation of the incidence of justice problems:
the 2025 NJS for civil justice problems
the 2019 GSS - Canadians’ Safety (Victimisation) for criminal justice problems, with the exception of child victimisation
the 2018 SSPPS for child victimisation events.
For consistency, incidence rates are estimated within the population aged 15 and more and for a reference period of 12 months.8
Further, the crime types are grouped in three areas commonly used in the literature: domestic violence (including spousal violence and child victimisation), violent crime (including homicide, assault, sexual assault, criminal harassment, and robbery), and property crimes (including theft and fraud, and vandalism).
The study avoids comparing or correlating results across surveys, as these are based on different methodologies. Rather, each source is exploited in isolation to provide the most detailed, comprehensive and reliable data available for the analysis of each area of problems.
2.2.4. Overview of incidence rates
Table 2.1 presents the incidence of each selected problem area as the percentage of the population aged 15 or more who experienced it and found it difficult to solve over a 12-month period. The highest rates of incidence are those of property crime (vandalism theft and fraud) violent crime (assault sexual assault robbery and harassment) and domestic violence (spousal violence child victimisation). Nine civil problem areas follow from employment issues to the execution of wills.
Note: Domestic violence, which includes spousal violence and child victimisation, is expressed in % of the total population. Other incidence rates are expressed in % of the population aged 15 and more.
Source: NJS 2025; GSS 2019; SSPPS 2018.
Reporting incidence rates of justice problems across surveys poses two key methodological challenges.
The key challenge is related to the difference in the surveys’ reference populations. The survey sample for the NJS is selected within the population aged 18 or more (18+), while the target group for the GSS and the SSPPS is the population aged 15 or more (15+). To harmonise the reference populations, the NJS results were extended to the 15+ population by assuming that the 15-18 group reports the same incidence rates as the 18-34 group, the youngest group for which detailed results are provided in the NJS.
The second challenge is due to differences in the reference periods of the surveys. The NJS refers to problems experienced in the previous three years; the SSPPS collects information on abuse endured throughout childhood; the GSS focus on the experience of incidents during the past twelve months.
These discrepancies were addressed in the following manner:
1. Concerning child victimisation in the 2018 SSPPS, the study estimated annual rates of incidence that are consistent with the overall childhood prevalence rates and the frequency of repeated victimisation reported in the survey.
2. To be able to calculate the 12-month equivalent of the experience of civil justice problems reported in the NJS, one would need to know the duration and number of separate events related to each reported problem. A chronic problem of discrimination, for instance, would be reported as a justice problem for each of the three years covered by the survey, while a single burglary would be reported only in one. As this information is not available for the NJS (or the CLPS), the study made the assumption that 25% of problems were repeated every year while 75% were related to single events. This leads to estimating 12-month incidence rates as half of the 3-year reported incidence rates. Considering that numerous justice problems tend to be chronic or extend over multiple years,1 the assumption is likely to be quite conservative (in the sense of minimising the estimated 12-month incidence rates).
Further estimation details are provided in Annex A.
1. Using data from the 2006 LNS, Currie (2009[11]) analyses legal problems that act as triggers for other legal problems, including within the same problem area. He finds that numerous such instances are reported for employment, relationship breakdown, and debt and money issues and, to a lesser extent, for consumer, wills and powers of attorney, police action, and personal injury issues. The British Columbia Dispute Resolution Longitudinal Study (2004-2008) followed a panel of people engaged in a dispute resolution process to resolve a family justice issue and found that 40-50% still reported family issues after four years (Focus Consultants, 2008[18]).
2.2.5. Incidence in Canada compared to other countries
It is interesting to compare the emerging picture on the incidence of justice problems in Canada with the experience of other countries – keeping in mind that such comparisons can only be indicative due to numerous methodological differences.
Six justice problem areas are considered to account for the vast majority of problems experienced in different parts of the world:9
Problems with money and debt or consumer problems (30%)
Disputes over housing, land or neighbours (22%)
Problems related to violence and crime (21%)10
Problems of access to public services, including as a result of discriminatory practices (19%)
Family disputes including divorce, child custody, and inheritance (9%)
Problems at work whether as an employee or business owner (8%).
The most common types of problems under each of these areas might vary in accordance with the country context and range from individual to structural and institutional problems (Task Force on Justice, 2019[4]).
These areas match with the types of justice problems that were identified as most significant in Canada, with only a few differences within civil problems (see Figure 2.2). Noting that discrimination problems reported by Canadians are mostly concentrated in the labour market or in private services,11 access to public services seems to be a lesser concern in Canada than in other countries. On the contrary, medical treatment issues and will execution seem to be relatively more significant problem areas in Canada than in other countries.
% of all problems experienced
Source: Data from CLPS 2021
Analyses of LNS results have consistently shown that specific subgroups of population – including people-with low income or lower education, as well as Indigenous people,12 visible minorities,13 and women – are particularly exposed to justice problems such as discrimination, certain types of crime, and issues of access to services.
One of the challenges of this area of analysis, however, is that factors such as ethnicity, level of education or location tend to be correlated, so that by simply measuring the effect of one factor (say rural vs urban location) on the experience of justice problems, one inevitably captures also the effect of other factors (say education level). The appropriate approach is therefore to measure the marginal effect of each factor within an overall estimation of the joint effect of all factors on the experience of justice problems.
By applying such an approach, Currie (2009[11]) found that members of visible minorities were 3.6 times more likely than the rest of the population to report problems related to discrimination and 3.4 times as likely to report problem related to police action. Within visible minorities, Black people in Canada were most likely to report having experienced problems related to police action, discrimination, immigration, debt, employment, and consumer purchases. Black people in Canada were second to Indigenous people in the frequency of reporting problems related to relationship breakdown. Currie (2009[11]) also found that people with a self-reported disability had a greater likelihood of experiencing problems in all fifteen areas of problems covered by the survey.
Savage and McDonald (2022[14]) find that the share of people reporting at least one serious problem within visible minority groups is only slightly higher than within the rest of the population (20% against 18%). However, after controlling for other variables of interest (such as for example, age and immigrant status), the odds of experiencing a serious problem appeared substantially higher for visible minorities (+24%).
This study follows a similar path to analyse the probability of experiencing a justice problem within each of the twelve selected problem areas, based on a range of individual characteristics (see Box 2.3). This specification allows us to identify the effect of being part of a specific group on the likelihood of encountering justice problems. Table 2.2 presents the results of the analysis.
Note: All reported effects are significant at 95% level of confidence. Domestic violence is limited to spousal violence. Results for rural dwellers are not available for crime categories as the 2019 GSS does not include data about respondents’ geographical location. For calculation details, see Box 2.3 and Annex A.
Source: Data from CLPS 2021 and GSS 2019.
Five groups of population appear particularly exposed to justice problems across the analysed civil and criminal justice areas: Indigenous people, low-income people, people living in urban centres and, to a lesser extent, visible minorities and people with lower education:
1. Indigenous people have substantially higher odds of experiencing a serious justice problem in virtually every scrutinised area. For work injuries and family and child custody issues, their likelihood of experiencing a serious problem is more than twice that of the rest of the population. For discrimination, it is more than three times as high.
2. Low-income persons are also subject to higher risks of facing justice problems in multiple areas, particularly debt and money and family and child custody issues. They also have a slightly lower probability of experiencing property crimes.
3. Being in an urban rather than rural area increases the likelihood of encountering family and child custody, discrimination, employment, money and debt, and housing problems.
4. Visible minorities have heightened chances of facing discrimination, housing, and money and debt issues, but lower-than-average exposure to family and child custody issues.
5. Having secondary education or less enhances the risk of family and child custody, debt and money, and medical treatment issues, as well as exposure to violent crime.
Finally, women have the same overall rate of incidence of serious justice problems in the CLPS as men (Savage and McDonald, 2022[14]). After controlling for other relevant factors, it appears that they report more family and child custody, medical treatment and will execution issues and fewer debt and money issues than men do. More importantly, the inclusion of more detailed and comprehensive crime victimisation data through the GSS shows that women are disproportionately at risk of experiencing violent crimes, especially sexual assault (Cotter, 2021[16]).
To isolate the effect of specific demographic factors (for example visible minority status, Indigenous identity, place of residence, education level and income level) on the experience of justice problems, the study uses the exact matching method. Respondents to the CLPS (for civil issues) or the GSS (for criminal issues) are distributed in two groups for each factor, e.g. women and men, people with secondary education or less and people with higher education, etc.
The method then identifies groups of respondents who are identical across all factors except one. For example, the group visible minority, high education, urban, women is matched against the group non-visible minority, high education, urban, women to estimate the effect of being a member of a visible minority within high education, urban, women demographics. The effect is calculated as the ratio between the shares of respondents who reported a justice problem in the treatment group (visible minority) and in the control group (non-visible minority) – in other words the relative risk ratio of reporting a justice problem for the treatment group.
The excess probabilities presented in Table 2.2 are the weighted averages of the relative risk ratios across demographics. Only effects that are significant at 95% level of confidence or more are reported.
References
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← 1. Incidence is defined as the number of new cases of a particular phenomenon over a given period of time – justice problems experienced over a year in this study. By contrast, prevalence designates the total number of cases observed at a certain point in time.
← 2. The study draws mostly on primary data from 2021, which it complements, when necessary, with sources spanning 2018 to 2025. The cost estimates are expressed in 2021 values.
← 3. (Currie, 2005[10]): debt and money issues (27%), consumer problems (19%), employment disputes (17%); (Currie, 2009[11]): consumer problems (22%), employment disputes (18%), debt and money issues (20%); (Currie, 2009[12]): consumer problems (29%), employment disputes (17%), debt and money issues (20%); (CFCJ, 2016[13]): consumer problems (23%), debt and money issues (21%), employment disputes (16%).
← 4. See for instance (Nivette, A.E., Zahnow, R., Aguilar, R. et al., 2021[23]) on the impact of lockdowns on crime and (Kourti et al., 2023[19]) on the increase in domestic violence across the world.
← 5. January 2022 to January 2025; see (Justice Canada, 2025[15]).
← 6. Annex A provides data sources and explanations at every step of the analysis.
← 7. A new cycle of the survey was conducted in 2024-2025, but the survey results were not yet available at the time of the writing of the report.
← 8. Except for child victimisation, which is expressed as a % of the population aged 0-15. See Box 2.2 for a summary explanation and Annex A for further details.
← 9. The data covers 101 countries included in WJP (2019[21]). See the empirical analysis in WJP (2019[20]) Appendix III.
← 10. Including when relevant transitional justice problems, as well as domestic violence.
← 11. Among people who report having experienced a serious discrimination problem in the CLPS, 44% specify that it occurred in the workplace or when applying for a job and 31% in a store bank or restaurant. Much fewer respondents mention schools (16%), relations with the police (16%), or courts (7%).
← 12. Indigenous peoples are defined as persons who identify with the Indigenous peoples of Canada as recognised in section 35(2) of the Constitution Act, 1982 (Indian, Inuit and Métis peoples). Source: (Statistics Canada, 2021[22]).
← 13. Visible minorities are defined by reference to the federal Employment Equity Act – Section 3 as “persons, other than Aboriginal peoples, who are non‑Caucasian in race or non‑white in colour.” Source: (Statistics Canada, 2021[22]).