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But declaring that men make up half of domestic violence victims oversimplifies a complex set of statistics, as one women’s advocate noted.

“If service providers were finding that there was such a need for men’s shelters, there would be men’s shelters,” said Penny Krowitz, executive director of Act to End Violence Against Women. “If we had enough men coming forward saying, ‘I need shelter from this abusive woman’ or ‘I need shelter from this situation,’ do you not think that we would have provided those services to men?”

In backing up its claim, CAFE cites a 2009 Statistics Canada survey that found an estimated 601,000 Canadian women and 585,000 men experienced spousal violence.

That study, however, also notes that women are twice as likely to be physically injured during spousal abuse than men; and almost seven times as likely to fear for their lives.

The latest data from the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics found that the majority of police-reported spousal and family violence was against women. Women were the victims of nearly 80% of cases of intimate partner violence reported to police in 2013, the study found. And women between 20 and 24 were six times more likely to be victims of intimate partner violence than men the same age.

But those figures are based on police reports, CAFE spokesman Justin Trottier said, noting the Centre for Justice Statistics report itself finds female victims are “three times more likely than males to state that they had reported the incident to police.”