Murder rates in Canada are the worst they've been in decades

Canada's murder and violent crime rates in 2021 were some of the worst in recent memory. They were so bad, in fact, that Statistics Canada said the country hasn't seen anything like it in decades. So what's going on?

Violent crime is on the rise all across Canada according to a February 2022 Statistics Canada report that revealed the country is facing its worst homicide rates since the mid-2000s. 

A total of 788 people were murdered in Canada in 2021 which marked the third consecutive year that the country has seen its homicide rate rise. 

“The national homicide rate increased by 3% to 2.06 homicides per 100,000 population, the highest rate since 2005,” wrote Jean-Denis David and Brianna Jaffray, the authors of the study. 

The overall increase in homicides was mainly associated with an increase in Ontario which was home to 277 murders in 2021.

But Saskatchewan recorded the highest rate of homicide per population in the country with 5.93 being killed for every 100,000 people. 

This represented a 9% increase from Saskatchewan’s 2020 homicide rate and was also the province's third consecutive year of murder growth. 

The highest homicide rates were recorded in Regina, which had a homicide rate of 5.67 murders per 100,000, and Thunder Bay, which saw 5.63 people killed per 100,000. 

The largest victim group included Canada’s Indigenous population who were six times more likely to be killed than Canada's non-Indigenous population.

Approximately one-third of murder victims in Canada were identified by police as racialized.

Moreover, the proportion of women who were killed by their spouse or intimate partner topped the list of vulnerable victims as they were seven times more likely to be killed than men. 

Among spousal and intimate partner homicide in Canada, 76% were women while only 24% were men. But spousal homicide wasn’t the biggest reveal of the study. 

Gun-related violence and crimes made up the majority of murders in Canada in 2021.

Roughly 40% of all victims were killed by shooting which has left concerned citizens wondering: why is all this violence occurring?

The simple answer is that Canada’s increase in violence goes hand-in-hand with an increase in gang activity in Canada’s largest cities. 

“Almost half (46%) of firearm-related homicides were identified as gang-related,” noted David and Jaffray.

Overall, gang-related homicides continued to account for nearly one-quarter (23%) of all homicides, David and Jaffary continued, “However, the 2021 gang-related rate was the highest (0.48 per 100,000 population) recorded in Canada since comparable data were first collected in 2005.”

Nevertheless, Canada is still doing much better than the global average according to the United Nations, which has projected that the average homicide rate is roughly three times that of Canada. 

However, the trend is still worrying. “Since murders rarely escape the attention of Canadian law enforcement,” National Post columnist Tristan Hopper, “they are generally considered the most accurate gauge of violent crime trends.”