Canada’s most dangerous cities
By macleans.ca - Friday, December 7, 2012 - 0 Comments
Plus, find out who takes the safest title away from Caledon, Ont.
For the third year in a row, Prince George, B.C., leads Maclean’s annual crime ranking. Still, the news is not all bad for that city–its crime score was down from last year, when it was 114 per cent above the national average. As well, Canada’s national crime score is more than 25 per cent lower than it was a decade ago. On the flip side, Caledon, Ont., lost its crown as the safest city, a title held since the rankings began in 2008. Two murders within the area patrolled by its police force put its homicide rate 73 per cent above the national average. Nearby Wellington County took the safest title.
The rankings are based on analysis of Statistics Canada’s Crime Severity Index for the nation’s 100 largest cities and regions, along with municipal crime data for six offences: homicide, sexual assault, aggravated assault, robbery, breaking and entering, and auto theft. (The data, from 2011, is the most current comparable data on a cross-country scale. (Have a look at the full crime rankings, methodology and interactive tools here.)
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Safety in numbers?
By Nicholas Köhler with Patricia Treble - Thursday, October 14, 2010 at 3:30 PM - 54 Comments
Why do Canada’s most populous provinces—Quebec and Ontario—boast so many of its safest cities?
A woman outside a crime scene; Ontario’s low rates may in part be because crime reporting levels are dropping; Tara Walton/Toronto Star
Of the largest 100 cities or regions in Canada, the 10 safest are in Quebec and Ontario, Canada’s two most populous provinces. The Ontario city with the highest crime score is Belleville, population 51,000 and ranked 15th worst (cities in B.C., Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba flesh out all the positions above it). The first Quebec city to show up is Montreal, ranked 24th, despite the fact it’s the third biggest city in Canada. Toronto is a sleepy 57th, while Peel, York and Halton regions—Toronto’s populous, sprawling suburban ring—have among the lowest crime scores in the country. So what gives?
Criminologists are divided on the question of why Central Canada sees the least amount of crime—and in particular violent crime—and why police-reported crime rates climb as you head west. One popular theory focuses on where crimes are more likely to be reported—for example, that western Canadians “have a tendency to be more law-and-order, and so therefore report more crimes,” as Mount Royal University criminologist Doug King puts it.
