When temperatures climb, the staff at Regina’s SOFIA House are even busier than usual. The organization, whose name stands for Support Of Families In Affliction, provides transition housing for people escaping intimate partner violence. Executive director Christa Baron says there are “noticeable” differences in the calls and requests it receives during heat waves.
There are more calls per day and more frequent calls from those already on the waitlist, expressing renewed urgency. Victims are also more distressed because of how the weather makes them feel — especially those whose homes don’t have a way of keeping them cool.
“Maybe you are in a situation that is volatile and then the presence of, say, smoke in the air for days on end exacerbates that and results in heightened irritability and crisis,” Baron explains. “The impact of heat and hunger and wanting to be safe and secure all contribute to that.”
Extreme heat is a major stressor on the human body. Physically, it can lead to heat exhaustion, which shows up as dizziness, nausea or vomiting, headaches and extreme thirst. Mentally, heat can impair decision-making and the ability to concentrate. Together, these physical and cognitive symptoms can cause frustration and irritability — and aggression.
Studies from around the world have shown that as the temperature goes up, so do rates of all kinds of violence, from assault to gun violence. While in theory that affects everyone, in reality, those who are already vulnerable to the effects of climate change are impacted the most.
Graph: Shawn Parkinson / The Narwhal
Extreme weather such as heat “brings to light systemic inequalities that are in communities in Saskatchewan and across Canada,” Baron says. That means its effects are felt more acutely by residents of dense neighbourhoods with less green space and by people who live in housing without air conditioning.
It also means the risk of heat-related violence threatens women and girls the most.
A brief from the United Nations found every single degree Celsius of increased global temperature is associated with a 4.7 per cent increase in domestic violence. A study from Spain found intimate partner femicide, or murder of a female partner or relative, increases as much as 28 per cent during heat waves.
Across Canada, police statistics suggest a similar link. Saskatchewan has the country’s highest reported rates of intimate partner violence, which its RCMP force defines as assault, harassment, uttering threats, sexual assault and more by a spouse, ex-spouse, boyfriend/girlfriend, ex-partner or other intimate relationship. According to new data from Statistics Canada, Saskatchewan saw 128 instances of intimate partner violence per 100,000 people in July and August 2023 and 126 per 100,000 people in July and August 2024. In the cooler months of January and February, meanwhile, there were 115 cases per 100,000 in 2023 and 112 per 100,000 in 2024.
Source: Statistics Canada. Graphs: Shawn Parkinson / The Narwhal
It’s far from the only place in Canada with this problem. Statistics Canada showed similar seasonal trends in every single province and territory, as did data from local police departments in Victoria, Calgary and Toronto. And globally, it’s a troubling pattern that is predicted to increase. By the end of the 21st century, the United Nations estimates that 10 per cent of intimate partner violence will be linked to climate change — billions of cases that could be prevented if climate change is mitigated.
As Earth warms up, experts say there are steps governments can take now to protect women, girls and everyone in Canada from heat-related violence. But it’s a complex problem that requires wide-ranging solutions, from education on healthy relationships, to more funding for emergency and permanent housing, to simply helping people stay cool on hot days.
The link between heat and violence
The cross-country summertime increase in domestic violence is part of a general spike in violent crime that happens as temperatures rise. The American Psychological Association is another body that’s found violent crimes, including murder and aggravated assault, are more common in the hot summer months. Here at home, Statistics Canada recorded a of 25 per cent increase in overall reports of violent crime nationwide in the summer of 2021, compared to colder months.
That includes gendered violence. In the country’s most populous province, Ontario, there were 22 per cent more intimate partner violence cases reported in July and August 2023 compared to January and February of the same year: 6,635 compared to 5,302. Last summer — when Environment and Climate Change Canada reported record-breaking heat across the country — Ontario had almost 16 per cent more intimate partner violence calls than in the winter, accounting for 985 more cases during hot months.
Looking at police data from a few big cities, the trend holds. In Victoria, Calgary and Toronto, reports of intimate partner violence were higher in summer than winter in both 2023 and 2024, with the biggest difference being a 23 per cent spike in calls in Toronto two years ago.
Reduced mobility is one cause of climate-related violence. When wildfires or floods cut off roads and communication lines, it “prevents any kind of escape or intervention,” Angela Marie MacDougall, the executive director of Vancouver-based Battered Women’s Support Services, says. Illustration: Shawn Parkinson / The Narwhal
Heat makes us irritable, impairs our cognitive function and makes us more impulsive. Those debilitating impacts compound with factors like sleep deprivation — whether because of a too-hot sleep environment or socializing into the night — that increase the risk of violence as well. So do drinking and recreational drugs, whether used to address insomnia or mental health challenges or simply because there are more opportunities to hang out and indulge on sweaty summer nights, including at parties and festivals.
Patricia Kostouros points to the Calgary Stampede as an example. A professor in the faculty of health, community and education at the city’s Mount Royal University, she has studied how emergency services support victims of intimate partner violence. At the summertime Stampede, she says, people often drink excess alcohol and police reports of domestic violence spike.
It’s not easy to pin down a single cause. It could be alcohol: in 2017, University of Calgary researchers found that domestic violence calls increased during the Stampede, but noted similar increases after big sports games and on New Years Eve, other occasions known for excessive drinking. But it could also be temperature, since Calgary’s police force reported an almost 25 per cent increase in domestic violence and domestic assaults in the hottest months of 2024.
Both together certainly aren’t good. Kostouros says there are ways the Stampede’s organizers could limit temperature-related risks, such as keeping water accessible for easy hydration and cool-down. In an email, a spokesperson for the Stampede told The Narwhal the organization does do that: following public health authority guidance, it adds extra water fountains and misting stations when temperatures exceed 28 C.
“At the Calgary Stampede, we believe that putting on a cowboy hat should elevate your behaviour and sense of class — not diminish it,” the email said.
Things that alleviate heat, like access to air conditioning, can diminish related risks — but not everyone has access to it. Take outdoor workers, for example. Shamminaz Polen, the manager of international programs at Oxfam Canada, says they might be especially vulnerable to the type of physical and mental heat stresses that increase the risk of violence, since there’s no relief from the heat at all.
“If you are working under the sun when it’s 40 C outside, you are definitely not in the same mental health space as you would be if you were in an air-conditioned office,” Polen says.
Yet if heat prevents a family member from working, that loss of vital income can also turn the tension up in a home, too.
Because hot environments contribute to irritation, impaired decision-making and aggression, there are regional risks. While 61 per cent of Canadian households have air conditioning nationally, it varies widely across the country. B.C. is the lowest, with just 32 per cent of homes having it — a number that drops to 17 per cent for low-income households.
But even when a way to cool homes is available, paying for it could present a different problem. Angela Marie MacDougall, the executive director of Vancouver-based Battered Women’s Support Services, says more costly utility bills during heat waves can “exacerbate financial stresses and economic abuse” — she says it’s common for an abusive partner to withhold money and cite rising bills as the reason.
Illustration: Shawn Parkinson / The Narwhal
Similar factors were at play during the early COVID-19 pandemic, which saw people trapped at home, many suddenly without an income. The resulting increased rates of gender-based violence globally, including in Canada, were a clear example of how disasters layer on top of societal vulnerability to make risk spike — some experts refer to intimate partner violence during lockdown as the “shadow pandemic.”
The COVID-19 pandemic also showed how ineffective Canadian governments can be at supporting victims. Kostouros says the federal government gave provinces money to work with shelters to do “whatever they needed to do to make sure everybody was safe.” But each province had different approaches to how the money could be used, rules that in some cases made the funds useless.
She says that some shelters wanted to build extra bathrooms, to reduce spaces in which clients would be gathered together, but some provinces considered that a long-term capital expense, not a pandemic-specific accommodation. A 2024 report from Women’s Shelters Canada breaking down 2020 emergency funding found that money for renovations was the biggest gap.
Which women are most vulnerable to heat-related violence?
Data provided by police simply lists reported crimes, not the sex or gender of perpetrators and victims. But it’s impossible not to read an uptick of cases of intimate partner violence as an increase in violence against women.
That’s not to say that men don’t experience violence from people they know and even love, but it’s indisputable that women experience domestic violence more commonly. Statistics Canada reports women and girls are “significantly” more likely than men and boys to have reported any form of intimate violence, including physical abuse (23 per cent of all women and girls compared to 17 per cent of all men and boys), sexual abuse (12 per cent compared to 2) and psychological abuse (43 per cent versus 35).
Violence experienced by women is also considerably worse, according to Statistics Canada: they’re much more likely to experience severe forms of intimate partner violence such as performing sex acts they didn’t want to, being confined or locked in a room, being forced to have sex and being choked.
Reduced mobility is one reason women bear the brunt of climate-related violence, Polen says. Around the world, when the environment is hostile, people stay at home “as a survival strategy,” she explains.
Heat, wildfires and floods often leave women trapped at home, taking care of children and isolated from friends and family. Shelters or police can also be out of reach when it’s too hot to leave the house, especially given underfunding of rural public transit.
“Heat is a threat multiplier,” Sean Kidd, senior scientist and co-director of the Institute for Mental Health Policy Research at Toronto’s Centre of Addiction and Mental Health, says.
Source: Statistics Canada. Graph: Shawn Parkinson / The Narwhal
Certain mental health diagnoses, like schizophrenia, are strongly associated with heat-related mortality, he says. Older adults are at greater risk, as are those who are pregnant. Unhoused individuals are more exposed to extreme heat and thus, see more grave health impacts.
“Exposure to extreme heat, and climate change more broadly, are embedded in factors such as environmental racism and colonial violence,” Kidd, who is also an associate professor in the University of Toronto’s department of psychiatry, explains.
This means that some women are more at risk than others. In early June, the Winnipeg Free Press reported Manitoba had already seen more than 17,000 wildfire evacuees this year, with at least 10,000 finding emergency lodging in the city. As columnist Niigaan Sinclair pointed out, the majority were from northern First Nations — creating an intersecting emergency for those attuned to the issue of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls and Two-Spirit People.
Research shows that heat makes us irritable, impairs our cognitive function and makes us more impulsive. Illustration: Shawn Parkinson / The Narwhal
“This city has had an influx of thousands of Indigenous women, girls and Two-Spirit peoples — individuals preyed upon by many forces here,” he wrote.
MacDougall, of Battered Women’s Support Services in Vancouver, points out rural Indigenous communities face challenges accessing services during ordinary times. In times of disaster, victims’ entrapment is “so much more profound,” she says. When wildfires — like those that have raged across northern and western Canada for months now — cut off roads and communication lines, it “prevents any kind of escape or intervention.”
All types of extreme weather increase gender-based violence risk in Canada
The effects of climate change have already led to increased risk of intimate partner violence in Canada. As wildfire forced thousands to flee Fort McMurray, Alta. in 2016, for example, support programs became almost impossible to access when the only emergency shelter in the area closed.
Then came coping with the aftermath. “When the fires happened in Fort McMurray, there was an increase in domestic violence afterwards because of the stress response from being out of a job or not having a home or having to live with limited income,” Kostouros of Mount Royal University says.
Kostouros and her research partner, D. Gaye Warthe, have studied how emergency services help shelters maintain the safety of their residents. “Of course, we found that they didn’t help,” Kostouros says.
She and Warthe looked at the aftermath of the 2013 floods in southern Alberta, which displaced approximately 100,000 people. They saw clear evidence emergency responders didn’t know how to support victims of intimate partner violence.
For instance: at one evacuation centre, the names of people who had been evacuated were put up on a board for loved ones to locate them. Those who evacuated from shelters were given the same treatment, even though these victims often need to stay anonymous or not have their locations compromised, especially if they’re escaping a stalker or other violent partner. Luckily, a shelter worker who was at the evacuation centre intervened in time.
“There’s no protocol in place for protecting people who are fleeing violence, and that’s true across Canada,” Kostouros says.
Governments not addressing disaster impacts on gendered violence in a ‘meaningful way:’ advocate
Temporary housing for those fleeing natural disasters has also been problematic for victims of intimate partner violence. Kostouros says that often, victims are housed in the same location as their abuser — such as a hotel that’s been converted into an evacuation centre.
The federal government does acknowledge survivors of gender-based violence, including domestic violence, are often at great risk during emergencies. In a statement to The Narwhal, Public Safety Canada said emergency management falls under provincial and territorial jurisdiction and those governments can access federal funding “to support survivors during emergencies” as long as the money is used in a way that aligns with the National Action Plan to End Gender-Based Violence.
Housing access is key to addressing the problem of intimate partner violence: making sure survivors have places to go when needed, and building affordable housing that can keep people cool enough to reduce the risk of aggression between partners. lllustration: Shawn Parkinson / The Narwhal
The department points to Prince Edward Island, which integrated emergency planning with federally funded gender-based violence efforts following Hurricane Fiona. Public Safety said Women and Gender Equality Canada can provide guidance to other provinces that want to do the same.
For its part, the Public Health Agency of Canada recognizes that “during an emergency, any existing health inequities are often exacerbated,” a spokesperson said in an emailed statement to The Narwhal. Its wildfire toolkit for public health authorities was recently updated with information on how evacuations can lead to increased risk of family violence, and the agency is developing a toolkit on evacuations which will include plans “to protect people who have experienced or are experiencing interpersonal violence, sexual violence and human trafficking.”
Even if some governments are trying to address how emergencies affect gendered violence, “that’s not happening in a meaningful way,” MacDougall says, as the leader of a frontline organization responsible for providing real-time services for victims.
“We want to be monitoring and reporting on [intimate partner violence] indicators during the climate crisis: things like [emergency room] visits and shelter access as well as deaths related to femicide,” she says. “But we’re just not seeing a climate policy right now that addresses risks for women generally.”
Housing, education are crucial solutions to reduce climate-related risk of gendered violence
At Regina’s SOFIA House, hot weather also brings schedule changes. There are a lot of kids on site when school is out, Baron says, so programming is adjusted. During times of extreme heat, her team moves events indoors, asks for seasonal donations of sunscreen, bug spray and water bottles and provides access to transit or rides so residents don’t have to walk.
This is the type of programming Baron needs governments to support. She also wants more funding to support survivors as they transition out of the long-term shelter and return to independent living.
Researchers and service providers all say addressing Canada’s housing affordability crisis is key. “The chances of somebody going back to a partner is quite high because they don’t have money, don’t have housing, their kids are unhoused. All these pressures make it easier to just return,” Kostouros says.
MacDougall would like to see programs that automatically house victims or take abusers out of the home. Instead, she says, nation-wide waitlists for safe housing or other services stretch into months and even years.
Kidd, from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, says housing access includes reducing environmental stressors and ensuring people are safe and cool. This means designing communities to have adequate water and building affordable, climate-resilient housing with cooling mechanisms so that families trapped indoors are cool enough to reduce the risk of aggression between partners.
He’d also like service providers and everyone else to learn about the impacts of heat on the body and mind, as well as strategies for cooling down to reduce heat-induced impacts like violence.
“Early education is one of the best things we can do to change an issue,” Kotsouros says. For her, that means teaching people to watch out for the signs of intimate partner violence, including mandatory programs in schools.
Ultimately, the most important way to decrease climate change-related intimate partner violence is to fight climate change itself.
“The first step is to acknowledge that heat and warming is a problem,” Polen says. “Canada should emphasize that climate justice is gender justice. Any meaningful response to climate change must also account for how it increases violence against women and girls.”
