From Victoria to St. John’s, Canadians are worried about violent crime. The data back up their concerns: Violent crime in our cities is rising. This week, the Macdonald-Laurier Institute published the second volume of its Urban Violent Crime Report, written by myself and Richard Audas. We use Statistics Canada data from 20 of Canada’s largest census metropolitan areas (CMAs)—representing nearly two-thirds of Canada’s population—to explore changes in homicide, sexual assault, aggravated assault, and robbery, as well as the overall violent crime rate and violent crime severity index over the last decade. The results are bleak. Using three-year rolling averages, we show that urban violent crime has increased in nearly every major urban area, and that the problem is no longer confined to the country’s largest centres. Over the last decade, the violent crime rate and the sexual assault rate have increased in all 20 CMAs we studied. For violent crime severity—an index that tracks more seriou...
A discussion on political, economic and social issues in British Columbia, and Canada