Slavery in Canada includes historical practices of enslavement practised both by the First Nations until the latter half of the 19th century, and by colonists during the period of European colonization.

The practice of slavery in Canada by colonists effectively ended early in the 19th century, through local statutes and court decisions resulting from litigation on behalf of enslaved people seeking manumission. The courts, to varying degrees, rendered slavery unenforceable in both Lower Canada and Nova Scotia. In Lower Canada, for example, after court decisions in the late 1790s, the "slave could not be compelled to serve longer than he would, and ... might leave his master at will." Upper Canada passed the Act Against Slavery in 1793, one of the earliest anti-slavery acts in the world. These developments in Canada preceded Britain's decision to ban slavery through most of the British Empire by passing the Slavery Abolition Act 1833.

As slavery in the United States continued until the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865, black people (free and enslaved) began immigrating to Canada from the United States after the American Revolution and again after the War of 1812, and later many by way of the Underground Railroad.

Because Canada's role in the Atlantic slave trade was comparatively limited, the history of Black slavery in Canada is often overshadowed by the more tumultuous slavery practised elsewhere in the Americas.

Slave-owning people of what became Canada were, for example, the fishing societies such as the Yurok, that lived along the Pacific coast from Alaska to California, on what is sometimes described as the Pacific or Northern Northwest Coast. Some of the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast, such as the Haida and Tlingit, were traditionally known as fierce warriors and slave-traders, raiding as far as California. Slavery was hereditary, the slaves being prisoners of war and their descendants were slaves. In what became British Columbia, slavery was flourishing in the 1830s, gradually declining throughout the century. In the 1870s, the Superintendent of Indian Affairs, Israel Wood Powell, freed slaves on their appeal to him during his trips to the west coast of Vancouver Island. Slavery had virtually ended by the 1880s and 1890s. Some First Nations in British Columbia continued to segregate and ostracize the descendants of slaves as late as the 1970s. Among a few Pacific Northwest nations about a quarter of the population were slaves.

One slave narrative was composed by an Englishman, John R. Jewitt. He had been taken alive when his ship was captured in 1802 by the Nuu-chah-nulth people due to the ship's captain having insulted their chief, Maquinna, and other slights inflicted against their people by other American and European captains. Jewitt's memoir provides a detailed look at life as a slave.

The Maritimes saw 1,200 to 2,000 slaves arrive prior to abolition, with 300 accounted for in Lower Canada, and between 500 and 700 in Upper Canada. A small portion of Black Canadians today are descended from these slaves.

Africans were forcibly captured by local chiefs and kings as chattel slaves and sold to traders bound for southern areas of the Americas. Those in what is now called Canada typically came from the American colonies, as no shiploads of human chattel went to Canada directly from Africa. There were no large plantations in Canada, and therefore no demand for a large slave work force of the sort that existed in most European colonies in the Americas.