Crime Rate in Canada at 40 Year Low, Still Above 1962 Levels

Canada's crime rate is now at a 40 year low, after eight consecutive years of declines in the incidence of police-reported crime (UNODC)

Statistics Canada reported this week that the incidence of police reported crime declined 6 percent in 2011 from the previous year, and is now at the lowest level it has been since 1972.

The Crime Severity Index, which measures the severity of crime, also fell 6 percent, while the Violent Crime Severity Index, which measures the severity of only violent crimes, dropped 4 percent, continuing a two decade long downward trend in crime rate metrics.

Canada’s crime rate was 3,000 incidents per 100,000 residents in 1962, but then rapidly increased through the 1960s and 70s. The increase in the crime rate slowed in the 1980s and finally reached its peak in 1991, before beginning its 20 year decline to the present.

The current rate of 6,000 incidences of crime per 100,000 residents is 40 percent lower than the 1991 peak, but still double the rate in 1962, a fact that the federal Public Safety Minister, Vic Toews, stressed on his Twitter account after announcing the milestone.

“Rate is still 208% above 1962 levels, more work for our gov’t to do,” Toews tweeted.

The Statistics Canada report showed Manitoba and Saskatchewan with the highest Crime Severity Index among the provinces, and Ontario the lowest.

Much of the violent crime in Manitoba and Saskatchewan is concentrated in the provinces’ sizable native communities which have been racked by high rates of alcoholism and violence for decades.

Immigration’s Crime-Reducing Effect Gets Media Attention

Chinatown in Toronto. A growing visible minority proportion has coincided with a decline in the crime rate in Toronto. (chensiyuan)

Study findings suggesting that immigration reduces crime have been picked up today by the online version of MacLean’s magazine, one of Canada’s largest weekly news magazines, in an article, Does immigration reduce crime?

One study referenced, conducted by researchers Ronit Dinovitzer and Ron Levi at the University of Toronto, compared the rate of youth delinquency in a group of 900 teenagers, 66 percent of whom were non-European immigrants, in a Toronto community in 1999, to the rate found in a group of 835 teenagers in the same community, but twenty three years earlier, when only 10 percent of respondents came from an immigrant background.

The findings show a significantly lower rate of youth delinquency, which includes activities like smoking marijuana, getting into fights and stealing cars, in the newer cohort of teenagers over the older, less ethnically diverse cohort.

Another finding by Statistics Canada shows a strong negative correlation between the rate of violent crime in Montréal neighbourhoods, and the proportion of the neighborhood’s population that is made up of recent immigrants.

The more general correlation that advocates of the ‘immigration reducing crime’ theory point to is the nation-wide decline in the crime rate since the 1970s, when immigration levels were significantly increased by the Trudeau government and maintained by governments since. Major Canadian cities like Toronto have seen their crime rates decline by up to 50 percent since 1991, as their proportion of foreign born residents, now at 50 percent in Toronto, has increased.

Canadian Monthly Economic Growth Accelerates to 0.3% on Oil Output Increase

Canadian economic growth accelerated in April on the back of an increase in oil and gas extraction

Canadian economic growth rose to 0.3 percent in April, from 0.1 percent in March, due mostly to an increase in oil and gas output and support activities for the industry, according to a report released by Statistics Canada today.

The gross value of mining, oil and gas extraction increased 2.7 percent in April after maintenance-linked slowdowns in production in February and March.

The Canadian dollar rose 1.3 percent against the US dollar on the economic growth data and news of an agreement reached by EU leaders to provide more bailout money to the troubled banks and governments of Spain and Italy and to create a euro-wide supervisory body for European banks.

Commodity-export reliant countries in particular, like Australia and Canada, are expected to benefit in the short term from the easing of concerns of an EU meltdown.