GOLDSTEIN: Claims Canada's crime rate is down aren’t reporting the real story

Дата публикации: 15-08-2026 19:23:18

Only in the non-violent crime severity index has there been a sustained decrease over time

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Critics of the police and tougher bail and sentencing laws to combat violent crime have two approaches to the release of annual statistics on crime.

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But they both end up in the same place.

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If crime is up, they argue the criminal justice system isn’t working and we need to divert money earmarked for law enforcement into social programs.

If crime is down, they argue there is no need for making the criminal justice system tougher and we need to divert money earmarked for law enforcement into social programs.

So it’s no surprise what the reaction from the usual suspects was when Statistics Canada recently released its 2025 report on Canada’s crime rate.

It showed Canada’s crime severity index dropped for the second year in a row – down 4.9% in 2025 and 4% in 2024 – while the violent crime severity index decreased by 4.2%, police-reported crime by 2.4% and a 16% drop in the homicide rate, the third consecutive year of decline and the biggest year-over-year decrease in four decades.

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Good news but not the whole story

Certainly that’s all good news but it’s far from the whole story.

Predictably, the chattering classes, citing the headline data, responded it proved Canadians – particularly in Toronto – are hysterical about crime, fuelled by sensational media reports, that tougher laws and enforcement aren’t needed because the system is working and that more money should be diverted from law enforcement into social programs.

Except the headline numbers don’t tell Canadians the full story, as noted by Dave Snow, associate political science professor and graduate coordinator of the criminal justice and public policy program at the University of Guelph.

Reporting on the data in a paper written for the Macdonald-Laurier Institute titled, “Crime is down, but the crisis isn’t over – Understand Canada’s new crime statistics” – “first and foremost, the improvements need to be understood in the context of trends over the last decade.”

“In particular, both the violent crime rate and violent crime severity remain close to their highest levels this century, with the violent crime severity index still higher than it was for every year between 2008 and 2021. Likewise, the police-reported hate crime rate declined by 4% in 2025, but it is still nearly triple what it was as recently as 2016.”

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Snow than went through the major crime indicators, comparing the rate in 2025 to the 10-year change from 2015 to 2025.

That showed that while the overall crime rate dropped by 2.4% in 2025 compared to 2024, it was up by 6.7% from 2015 to 2025.

The overall crime severity index, while it dropped by 4.9% in 2025 compared to 2024, it was up 6.6% from 2015 to 2025.

The changes are even more dramatic in the violent crime rate – down 0.3% in 2025 compared to 2024 but up 34.9% from 2015 to 2025 – and the violent crime severity index – down 4.2% in 2025 compared to 2024 but up by 29% from 2015 to 2025.

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Only in the non-violent crime severity index has there been a sustained decrease over time – 5.3% last year compared to 2.4% from 2015 to 2025.

“The main contrast occurs with respect to violent crime,” Snow wrote.

“Between 2015 and 2025, the violent crime rate increased by 35% and the violent crime severity index by 29%. This shows that while non-violent crime has improved over the last decade, violent crime is still much more frequent and severe in 2025 than it has been for most of this century, despite the slight dip in 2025. It will take a far larger decrease in violent crime to make up for the increases of the previous decade.”

As an Aug. 9 Globe and Mail editorial that did a similar deep dive into last year’s crime statistics noted with the headline, “The case of the misleading fall in crime rates”, “The overall rate of crime may be declining but a closer examination shows that Canadians’ concerns are anything but overblown.

“Yes, it is indisputably true that, overall, police-reported crime rates declined in 2025. But a more detailed look at those statistics quickly dispels any notion that Canadians’ worries about crime are misplaced or irrational.”

lgoldstein@postmedia.com

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