Crime rates remained relatively steady across the country between 2018 and 2019, according to new data released by Statistics Canada which also highlighted the consistent overrepresentation of Black and Indigenous people as victims of crime.
According to the agency’s latest report on police statistics on crime, released Thursday, violent crime – as well as crime across the board – was up slightly in 2019 compared with 2018, but still lower than it was a decade earlier.
While even a minor increase in crime might seem alarming, Akwasi Owusu-Bempah, a sociology professor at the University of Toronto, cautions that annual statistics must be considered in that broader context.
“I wouldn’t want Canadians to get alarmed that our country is becoming very dangerous. Indeed the Crime Severity Index has been going up now for five years, but it’s … hovering around where it was in 2010. And it’s well below where it was in 1999,” Dr. Owusu-Bempah said. “It’s not that it’s not on the rise, but crime, just like anything else, like the economy, goes up and down over time.”
The 2019 data show spikes in certain types of crime, but also offer explanations in many areas. For example, Level 1 sexual assault rose by 9 per cent, which, according to Statistics Canada, can be at least partly attributed to the fact that fewer cases are being written off by police as “unfounded,” after a 2017 Globe and Mail investigation exposed that sexual assault cases were disproportionately receiving that designation, which means police do not believe a crime occurred.
A spike of 46 per cent in child pornography cases from 2018 to 2019 is similarly attributed to a change in reporting standards, as well as an increase in the number of cases being forwarded to local police forces by the RCMP’s National Child Exploitation Coordination Centre, which received increased funding in recent years.
Fraud cases also increased by 8 per cent, which some police forces say is because of the increased access for reporting fraud online, and high-profile fraud schemes, such as the Canada Revenue Agency scam (in which victims would receive automated calls telling them that they owe money and must provide personal information or payment).
Gun-related crimes – including everything from shooting to possession charges – were on the rise for the fifth year in a row. Part of the spike, police forces, say, can be attributed to increased reporting, in collaboration with the Canadian Firearms Program as part of a nationwide effort to address unregistered restricted or prohibited firearms.
Because the changes in police statistics on crime can be a reflection of shifting policing priorities or enforcement tools, criminologists tend to look to homicide rates as a more reliable indicator of changing crime levels.
There were 678 homicides across Canada last year (up 2 per cent from 2018), 40 per cent of which involved a firearm. Of all firearm homicides, roughly half were deemed gang-related and 60 per cent involved handguns.
While he said the increase in gang violence is of concern, Simon Fraser University Professor Neil Boyd stressed that we are not seeing “dramatic shifts” in homicide rates. “We’re seeing something of a rise, but we’re not seeing anything like the kinds of figures we saw in the ’70s, or even the late ’80s, early ’90s.”
The increase in homicides was driven by the Prairie provinces (Saskatchewan was up 21, Alberta was up 19, and Manitoba was up 17). Ontario and Quebec, by contrast, saw a decrease in homicide cases from 2018. Thunder Bay, for the fourth consecutive year, recorded the highest homicide rate among census metropolitan areas (5.56 homicides per 100,000 population).
One third of homicide victims in 2019 were identified as visible minorities, 44 per cent of whom were identified as Black. Indigenous people, the report found, were killed at a rate 6½ times higher than non-Indigenous people. While making up just 5 per cent of the national population, Indigenous people accounted for 27 per cent of victims and 38 per cent of accused persons in homicide cases.
The report stresses the role that colonialism and residential schools have played in the “social and institutional marginalization, discrimination, and various forms of trauma” that Indigenous people often experience, which “play a significant role in [their] overrepresentation ... in the criminal justice system and as victims of crime.”
Of the solved homicide cases in 2019, nine in 10 victims knew their accused. While only 21 per cent of men killed were killed by intimate partners or family members, 73 per cent of women were killed by intimate partners or family members.
“While it is true that men are overwhelmingly more likely to be the victims of homicide than women, if you look at the context in which [women] are killed, it’s spousal, family, or intimate relationships,” Dr. Boyd said. “It’s such a striking difference … and we’re looking at a relationship of imbalance of power between men and women that is driving that difference.”
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Molly Hayes