Canada last year saw its first annual decrease in police-reported crime since the COVID-19 pandemic, Statistics Canada reported Tuesday, breaking a trend of three straight years of increasing incidents and severity.
The agency attributed much of the overall decline in the crime severity index in 2024 to a six per cent drop in non-violent crime, which includes such crimes as property and drug offences.
That included double-digit drops from the year before in breaking and entering, auto theft and child pornography offences, according to the new data. Those offences, along with drops in mischief and theft of $5,000 or less, accounted for three-quarters of the overall decrease in the crime severity index.
Between 2021 and 2023, the non-violent crime index rose nine per cent.
The 17 per cent drop in the rate of motor vehicle theft since 2023, to 239 incidents per 100,000 people, followed a three-year rise in police-reported car thefts following the historic low recorded in 2020, Statistics Canada noted.
The federal government convened a national summit on fighting auto theft last year and published a plan to curb the problem.
The violent crime severity index, meanwhile, decreased by one per cent in 2024, “having a comparatively smaller impact” on the overall crime level, Statistics Canada said.
That still marked an improvement from the 15 per cent increase over the previous three years.
Compared with 2023, the violent crime severity index saw slightly lower rates of sexual assault, robbery and aggravated assault, along with double-digit drops in extortion and attempted murder. Combined, those offences accounted for 80 per cent of the overall decrease.
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The homicide rate declined four per cent in 2024 to 1.91 homicides per 100,000 people, down from 1.99 the previous year, Statistics Canada said. Police reported 788 homicides in 2024, eight fewer than a year earlier.
There were 28 more women homicide victims in 2024 than a year earlier, and 34 fewer men, the agency said. There was also a large increase in the proportion of women who were killed by a spouse or intimate partner, rising to 42 per cent of women victims in 2024 from 32 per cent in 2023.
The number of police-reported hate crimes increased slightly to 4,882 last year from 4,828 incidents in 2023.
The total rate of police-reported cybercrimes declined nine per cent from the previous year.
“However, with advances in technology and widespread access to the internet, the incidence of cybercrimes had generally been increasing over time,” Statistics Canada said.
For example, despite the annual decrease, the rate of police-reported cybercrime in 2024 (225 incidents per 100,000 people) was over twice the rate in 2018 (92 incidents), the earliest year with comparable data, the agency said.
The crime severity index was developed to address the limitations of a police-reported crime rate that is driven by high-volume — but comparatively less serious — offences.
Statistics Canada said the police-reported crime rate fell four per cent last year from 2023, to 5,672 incidents per 100,000 members of the population.
Rising levels of crime in the years following the pandemic led to increasing political debates on how to best address it, including during the recent federal election and within other levels of government.
The federal Conservatives seized on the latest data, saying the Liberal government’s “reckless soft-on-crime policies” over the past decade have made Canadians less safe, criminals less afraid and streets less secure.
“The latest police-reported crime stats for 2024 confirm what Canadians already know: under the Liberals, crime pays, and Canadians pay the price,” Conservative MP and justice critic Larry Brock said in a statement shared on social media.
The statement focused on the comparatively higher rates of violent crime since 2015, when the Liberals were first elected to government, rather than the decreases recorded in 2024 from the year prior.
—with files from the Canadian Press
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