Does Canada have higher crime rates than the U.S.?

(Source: THE CANADIAN PRESS/Spencer Colby) (Spencer Colby/The Canadian Press)

A new study by the Fraser Institute compared recent crime trends in Canada and the U.S., examining crime rates in large urban areas with 100,000 people or more.

The study revealed how several Canadian cities surpassed U.S. cities in both property and violent crime.

Fraser Institute senior fellow Livio Di Matteo told AM800’s The Shift with Patty Handysides, that data from 2019 to 2022 showed Thunder Bay had Ontario’s highest rate of property crimes and violent crime, while Lethbridge, Alberta ranked first, or worst, in all of Canada for property crime.

“Of those Ontario Great Lakes centres, London is actually second, and then Windsor comes in seventh place, Kingston in ninth, Greater Sudbury in eleventh,” he said. “Ontario centres are certainly dominating in the top half of that distribution.”

Di Matteo says Windsor, Hamilton and Toronto all ranked higher for property crime than New York, Detroit, Flint and Ann Arbour, Michigan.

According to Di Matteo, smaller urban Ontario centres appear to be more rife with property crime.

“It’s not that there is not more crime in Toronto than say Windsor overall, because it’s a much larger centre, the absolute amount of crime is greater, but once you adjust for population, Toronto actually has less property crime than say Windsor.” Di Matteo said.

He says generally violent crime rates are lower in Canadian cities over U.S. cities.

“There are many American cities with violent crime rates below Canadian cities, even though on the North American ranking, almost the top 17 cities are U.S.,” Di Matteo said.

Winnipeg, Manitoba was found to be Canada’s most-violent city with the highest per person rate of violent crimes (murder, robbery, and assault with a weapon) of all Canadian urban areas.

Crucially, Winnipeg ranked 18th out of all 334 urban areas in Canada and the U.S.

Di Matteo says crime rates in some of Ontario’s largest cities, while still historically low, are on the rise, and should be of greater concern for both citizens and policymakers.

— Dustin Coffman/AM800 News