Two types of violent crime are increasing alarmingly in Canadian cities

According to a new study, violent crime rates are increasing in two types of crime in most major Canadian cities.

The MacDonald-Laurier Institute has just released its Urban Violent Crime Report and the results are disturbing.

“In recent years there has been an increase in violent crime across Canada.
However, little is known about short- and long-term trends in violent crime in specific urban areas,” write authors Dave Snow and Richard Audas.

“Because most Canadians face crime in their communities, there needs to be more focus on violent crime at the local level.”

The report analyzes 10 years of police-reported data on violent crimes (from 2014 to 2023) such as murder, serious assault, sexual assault and robbery.

They examined trends in violent crime in nine major cities that account for one-third of Canada's population: Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Peel Region, Toronto, York Region, Ottawa and Montreal.

One of the authors' three main conclusions is that crime rates for certain crimes, such as sexual offenses and robbery, are rising almost everywhere.

“Between 2022 and 2023, the three-year average sexual assault rate increased in all nine cities included in this study, while the robbery rate increased in eight of the nine cities during the same period,” the report said.

The report added that sexual assault is the only violent crime that has shown a steady upward trend over the past decade, with crime rates increasing in all cities except Ottawa.

“The increase in sexual assault in York is perhaps the most dramatic; since 2016 the rate has almost doubled, from 28.0 to 55.2 per 100,000,” the report said.

Although Peel now has the lowest sexual assault rate of the nine cities, the rate has nevertheless increased by nearly 30 percent, from 38 per 100,000 people in 2016 to 52 per 100,000 in 2023.

“In Montreal, the increase has been similar since 2020, with the moving average moving from 71 to 92 per 100,000 residents,” the report said.

MacDonald-Laurier Institute

It is noted that the Major Cities Chiefs Association (MCCA) report on violent crime states that the “Canadian definition of sexual assault [is] is used to determine rape rates by Canadian authorities with the exception of the Vancouver Police Department.”

“Our correspondence with Vancouver Police has confirmed that Vancouver data reported by the MCCA counts a crime as a sexual assault if it meets the definition of rape used in many American cities, rather than the Canadian definition of sexual assault,” the authors wrote.

Because the Canadian definition includes sexual assault at levels one, two and three in the Criminal Code (and other police services use this definition for their data), Vancouver's sexual assault data reported by the MCCA are not compatible with data from other Canadian cities. For this reason, Vancouver was not included in the numbers above.

Regarding robberies, the report found that the number of robberies has increased in recent years, particularly in the short term.

MacDonald-Laurier Institute

In Winnipeg, the rate in 2023 is 305 per 100,000 inhabitants, almost three times higher than in all major cities and has been rising steadily.

“At the other end of the spectrum, York's robbery rate is consistently the lowest, although it has increased over the past decade,” the report said.

“While Edmonton had the second highest robbery rate for the duration of the dataset (2016 to 2023), there has been a significant long-term decline since 2016, as has Toronto.”

According to the authors, Vancouver is the only city where the number of robberies decreased in all three periods.

MacDonald-Laurier Institute

You can read the full results here.