More Canadian citizens were reported arrested or imprisoned abroad last year than at any other point in the past decade.

Global Affairs Canada (GAC) said it was aware of 2,047 cases of Canadians being arrested or jailed overseas in 2025, the most on record since at least 2015. That’s according to data provided by GAC and information published in the IJF’s Open by Default database.

Together, they indicate the number of Canadians facing prosecution in foreign countries had been steadily rising for years.

In 2015, GAC said consular officials received reports of 1,706 Canadians who were either arrested or imprisoned overseas, according to documents obtained via an access to information request.

That number fluctuated modestly for years before a 31 per cent drop between 2019 and 2020 when restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic curtailed international travel.

Since then, the numbers have steadily climbed — and eventually exceeded their pre-COVID peak.

As of mid-September this year, GAC spokesperson Thida Ith said the agency had opened consular files for 1,370 Canadians, on track for a decrease from 2025.

Ith said there are caveats to the data. She said GAC could only report on cases where Canadians have sought out consular assistance, and that individuals may have been released since the information was extracted.

She also said a small number of cases in GAC’s data system are not linked to real people, but are “tests” for their IT system.

The access to information request obtained by the IJF also contained another, separate table indicating where Canadians had been detained and what crimes they were accused of as of December 2025.

That dataset — which contains redactions, including one of the categories for the reasons for arrest — suggests the most common jurisdiction by far was the United States, where 143 Canadian nationals were incarcerated for alleged homicide. A further 87 were imprisoned for drug-related offences, 79 were accused of fraud and financial crime and 154 were in jail for sexual crimes committed against children and adults.

There were also 25 Canadians detained in the U.S. for immigration offences — possibly due in part to a U.S. crackdown on undocumented immigrants that has resulted in some Canadian nationals being held in detention centres, sometimes for months at a time.

The most common offences across the board appear to have been drug-related. A total of 301 Canadians were imprisoned abroad for drug charges in December 2025. The leading countries of detention were the United States, Japan, Australia, China and the Dominican Republic.

A guide for GAC employees — released via the same access to information request — said that Canadians are subject to the laws of the country but that consular staff “will seek to take reasonable steps so that detainees are neither discriminated against nor denied justice.”

The handbook said “The Government of Canada will not interfere in the judicial affairs of another country. However, where international human rights are known to have been violated, the Government of Canada may take steps to pressure the foreign authorities to abide by their international human rights obligations and provide basic minimum standards of protection.”

More Briefs

Tariff-free KD? Kraft Heinz seeks exemption from Canada’s U.S. counter-tariffs

Tariffs ruled the lobbying registry in August

Woodland Cree First Nation wants federal recognition of forced relocation

Hockey organizations ask B.C. to fix ‘aging and inadequate’ facilities