The Sûreté du Québec is significantly increasing the number of officers assigned to its cold case squad.

The force intends to add up to 25 more employees to the five-person unit in the coming months, with a focus on unsolved cases involving women and children.

The unit solves a few crimes a year on average, but is hoping to dramatically increase the ratio.

It will have plenty of work as there are about 750 cases dating back to the 1960s.

When the squad was founded in 2004, it wanted to take advantage of relatively new investigative techniques like DNA profiling.

Lt. Martine Asselin says investigators have found that witnesses or tipsters are more willing to talk as time passes.

She says social media could be a new tool to help them solve cases.