EDITORIAL: Yes, we have a crime problem
· Toronto Sun
A national poll released last week by Liaison Strategies on the public’s perception of their safety in 15 Canadian cities revealed that crime statistics are not the only thing that forms our perceptions about whether a city is safe.
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Only 12% said crime stats most influence their views compared to 28% who said they were based on news coverage, 23% on personal experience, 14% on the views of friends or family, 10% on the city’s general reputation and 8% on social media.
Toronto, for example, was judged to be one of Canada’s least safe cities in the poll of 1,500 Canadian adults from Aug. 30-31, and yet crime statistics repeatedly show it to be one of the safest cities in North America.
Similarly, a recent report by Statistics Canada said that nationally, Canada’s crime severity index in 2025 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%.
The national homicide rate dropped for the third year in a row – down 16%, the biggest year-over-year decrease in four decades.
Does that mean that Canadians are overreacting to crime based on media reports?
Not if you put those numbers in context.
Dave Snow, associate political science professor and graduate coordinator of the criminal justice and public policy program at the University of Guelph, recently reported on this issue in a paper written for the Macdonald-Laurier Institute titled, “Crime is down, but the crisis isn’t over – Understanding Canada’s new crime statistics.”
Snow noted that “first and foremost, the improvements (in the crime rate) need to be understood in the context of trends over the last decade.
“The main contrast occurs with respect to violent crime.
“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.”
All of which indicates the public is not overreacting to crime.