This article originally appeared in The Hub.
By Dave Snow, November 13, 2025
From Victoria to St. John’s, Canadians are worried about violent crime. The data back up their concerns: Violent crime in our cities is rising.
This week, the Macdonald-Laurier Institute published the second volume of its Urban Violent Crime Report, written by myself and Richard Audas. We use Statistics Canada data from 20 of Canada’s largest census metropolitan areas (CMAs)—representing nearly two-thirds of Canada’s population—to explore changes in homicide, sexual assault, aggravated assault, and robbery, as well as the overall violent crime rate and violent crime severity index over the last decade.
The results are bleak. Using three-year rolling averages, we show that urban violent crime has increased in nearly every major urban area, and that the problem is no longer confined to the country’s largest centres. Over the last decade, the violent crime rate and the sexual assault rate have increased in all 20 CMAs we studied. For violent crime severity—an index that tracks more serious violent crimes—19 of 20 CMAs have experienced increases over the last five years and over the last decade.
In terms of region, violent crime is by far the worst in four Prairie cities. Regina, Saskatoon, Edmonton, and Winnipeg often record violent crime rates that are double those of other large cities. Winnipeg stands out as the most violent city in the country: its homicide rate is more than twice that of nearly every other city, while its robbery rate is more than four times higher than 16 of the other 19 CMAs.
Yet this Prairie exceptionalism should not detract from our central finding: The violent crime crisis has become national in scope. Smaller CMAs such as Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo, Halifax, and Victoria are now matching or even surpassing larger centres in violent-crime growth. Moncton and St. John’s currently have the highest violent crime rate of the 20 CMAs in our report, even higher than Winnipeg.
And while urban areas in Quebec and Ontario tend to have the lowest rates compared to other CMAs, many have experienced enormous spikes in violent crime: Over the last decade, the violent crime severity index is up 71 percent in Kitchener, 63 percent in Quebec City, and 61 percent in St. Catharines.
This evidence should put an end to any lingering narrative that violent crime is improving. Canadians have too often been gaslit by politicians, advocacy groups, and media reports repeating the familiar refrain that “crime rates have declined since a peak in 1992.” It is cold comfort to tell Canadians that life was more dangerous before 40 percent of them were born. The data from the last decade show Canadians are right to be increasingly concerned about the level of violent crime in their communities.
For policymakers, the challenge is immense. The growth in violent crime has emerged amidst other crises of criminal justice: rising property crime, dropping clearance rates, increasing criminal trial delay, more cases stayed or withdrawn, and growing public sentiment that our bail system is too lenient. Meanwhile, our highest court has decided that consecutive life sentences for mass murderers and one-year mandatory minimums for possessing child pornography constitute “cruel and unusual punishment.” There is much about the criminal justice system that needs fixing.
The federal government seems to be slowly waking up to the scale of the problem, introducing legislation to extend the reverse onus on bail for repeat offenders and permitting more consecutive sentences (it even cited rising violent crime rates in its press release). Yet tougher bail laws and consecutive sentences for certain crimes will not be sufficient to meet the scope of the challenge. As Peter Copeland has written, “our problems are bigger than bail.” Better data collection on recidivism, a focus on organized crime, investment in police and judicial capacity, and tougher sentencing for repeat violent offenders are all necessary steps to stem the tide. It will also require challenging a legal and judicial culture that too often mistakes leniency for compassion.
It is time that criminal justice reform moved to the top of the national agenda. Addressing this crisis will require buy-in—and money—from all levels of government. But Canadians ought to feel safe in their communities, and they deserve leaders who take violent crime seriously. We should begin by facing the facts: The numbers don’t lie.
Dave Snow is an Associate professor in political science at the University of Guelph and a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute
