If you want to be safe from crime, move to a big city

Canadians think Ottawa is safer than it is, and that Toronto is much more dangerous

Crime in Ottawa is worse than in Toronto but we’re doing a good job fooling people, according to a national survey asking people how safe they think Canada’s major cities are.

Mainstreet Research conducted a poll on this earlier this month and released the results Wednesday morning. For the second year running, Ottawa has topped public perceptions as the safest among 15 big cities in the country. Seventy-four per cent of respondents said Ottawa’s either very or somewhat safe, compared to just 14 per cent who said it’s unsafe.

That’s a fabulous impression we make on the rest of the country, a net plus-60.

People think Ottawa’s even safer than Charlottetown (plus53) or Victoria (plus-42). Poor Toronto’s way down at minus-12 and Winnipeg’s at the bottom of the list at minus-18.

Mayor Jim Watson welcomed the survey findings, pleased that Ottawa’s been “ranked the safest Canadian city.” Coun. Eli El-Chantiry, who chairs the police board, thanked him for his support in making Ottawa “the safest city in Canada.”

The thing is, the poll measures perceptions, not reality. And mostly, people don’t know what they’re talking about.

In most of the country, people are tougher in judging the cities in their own provinces than cities elsewhere: Nobody is harsher on Toronto and Ottawa than Ontarians are.

Also, the older you are, the more likely you are to judge any city as unsafe, regardless of the reality.

Statistics Canada calculates a “crime severity index” based on the number of police-substantiated crimes and how serious those crimes are. A homicide counts for more than an assault, which counts for more than trespassing.

It’s not a perfect measure — it relies on crimes being reported and on police assessments of whether the reports are legit.

But using those stats, Ottawa is indeed a pretty safe city. The capital’s crime-severity index was 51 in 2016, well below the national figure of 71 and close to the overall Ontario number of 53. (I’m rounding slightly; Statistics Canada calculates the number to two decimal places.)

People’s perceptions of Ottawa have even improved slightly since last year, though our crime-severity index worsened a bit.

Indeed, our crime-severity index has ticked up each year for the past three. If we care about crime, that’s a problem.

Poor Winnipeg, which apparently we all think of as a Prairie Thunderdome, has a crime-severity index of 104. In other words, it’s just slightly more crime-ridden than Kelowna, B.C. — Kelowna! — whose index is 100. Regina (126), Saskatoon (118) and Edmonton (106) are worse and Vancouver (94) is comparable.

You know what one of the very safest places in the country is? Toronto.

In fact, as rough rules, cities are safer than rural areas and the bigger the city, the safer it is.

Toronto’s crime-severity index of 48 is within a couple of points of the very best scores, held by Quebec City and Barrie (both 45). It has been for years.

Toronto’s crime severity is better than Ottawa’s, better than Kingston’s (55), better than London’s (68) or Kitchener-Waterloo’s (61), better even than Prince Edward Island’s (49; Charlottetown is too small to get its own calculation).

If we count all crimes and don’t weight them by awfulness, Toronto is the safest large city in the country, with fewer crimes per person than Ottawa.

The point of the survey really is to point out discrepancies like these. In the company’s report on the poll, Mainstreet president Quito Maggi speculates that stereotypes and media coverage have a lot to do with it.

“National news about Ottawa can sometimes be bad news, but it is rarely about crime or violent crime,” he says.

“Positive associations with the current prime minister and other popular government figures likely also adds to the perceived safety of the City of Ottawa.”

The mess that security made of Canada Day this year might also have helped, Maggi says. Five-hour lines to get onto Parliament Hill were a problem in other ways, but if people across the country hear that your city’s locked down and crawling with cops, at least they aren’t expecting to get mugged.

Conversely, the concentration of media in Toronto means we’re more likely to hear about crimes there, Maggi hypothesizes. Plus, the big population means that although Toronto has a pretty low homicide rate (lower than Ottawa’s, even), it has more actual homicides than any other city Mainstreet asked about.

“Statistically, you are safer in Toronto than many other cities but that can be difficult to get across when media coverage of crimes in the city becomes amplified by social media and national pickup,” he says.

Mainstreet says the poll was conducted through 2,050 telephone interviews, using land lines and cellphones, between Aug. 14 and 18. The nationwide findings have margins of error of 2.16 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

National news about Ottawa can sometimes be bad news, but it is rarely about crime or violent crime