Liberals failing to combat crime

Violence up across the nation

MLI’S LATEST JUSTICE REPORT CARD IS A DISCONCERTING READ. — MOHAMED

Crime has been at the top of the political agenda in Ottawa since the start of the year, and a new report card from one of Canada’s leading think-tanks helps explain why.

The Macdonald-laurier Institute’s third justice report card, released earlier this month, indeed makes for grim reading. Most alarmingly, the report shows that the narrative of increasing violent crime on our streets is not a mere figment of “if it bleeds, it leads” media sensationalism, but, in fact, is a real phenomenon backed by reams of hard data. (Disclosure: I was briefly employed by MLI as an editor last year.)

Co-authors Dave Snow, an associate professor of political science at the University of Guelph, and Richard Audas, a professor of health statistics and economics at Memorial University, report that Canada’s Violent Crime Severity Index is at its highest point since the start of former prime minister Stephen Harper’s government in 2007. Even more troubling, the national homicide rate and police-reported sexual assault rate are both at three-decade highs. A total of 874 Canadians were murdered in 2022, an increase of 78 from one year earlier. Tragically, 2022 marked the fourth consecutive year that the number of murders across Canada grew.

“When many people think about public safety, they think about violent crime — and on this front, the news is not good,” write Snow and Audas.

It’s not just a few large urban centres that have been driving this trend. Since MLI’S last report card, released in early 2018, violent crime (per 100,000) has trended upwards in eight of 10 provinces and all three territories, with Newfoundland and the territories seeing especially sharp increases. Each of the territories received an “F” on the subject of violent crime, as did Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Perhaps surprisingly, Ontario is one of the two provinces where the authors find violent crime has not increased significantly, joined by Alberta.

Critically, the report shows that violent crime was trending upward before the COVID pandemic and has continued to rise in its aftermath. If anything, lockdowns and other restrictions may have slowed down the trend of increasing violence. In Ontario, for example, the rate of violent crime dropped by more than four per cent in 2020 before bouncing back to just above the pre-pandemic level in 2021. Violent crime fell by about one per cent Canada-wide in 2020, before increasing by four per cent (versus the 2019 level) in 2021.

Unfortunately for Canadians, the nationwide uptick in violence defies easy characterization and is unlikely to be reversed by any legislative magic bullet. Highly publicized gun control measures imposed by the Liberal government haven’t stopped firearms-related offences from increasing for eight consecutive years under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s watch. This calls into question the efficacy of the Trudeau government’s overarching strategy of curtailing legal gun ownership and criminalizing a growing list of firearm models.

Conversely, while Conservatives point an accusing finger at our “broken” bail system, the report card paints a more nuanced picture. While Liberal modifications to Canada’s bail rules, passed in 2018 under Bill C-75, did indeed relax requirements for accused persons to obtain bail, it also, by some indications, led to improvements in the administration of justice of the court system.

Since Bill C-75’s passage, the proportion of “administration of justice offences,” such as breaching probation and failing to attend court, has decreased significantly in many provinces and territories. The authors find likewise that there are far fewer cases involving an offender unlawfully at large than there were five years ago. (Note that the relevant statistics don’t differentiate between violent and non-violent offenders; the authors refrain from taking a position on the question of bail reform.)

“The absolute number of ‘fail to comply’ cases has dropped in every jurisdiction except Ontario in the five years of study, and in most jurisdictions by a significant amount,” Snow told me in an email.

Co-authors Snow and Audas also speak to a worrying dearth of actionable data relating to our growing crime problem, especially as it pertains to so-called “repeat offenders.” The duo notes that neither the federal government nor the provinces and territories publish quality annualized data on criminal recidivism. They conclude, astonishingly, “We still have no sense of how well our criminal justice system rehabilitates offenders.”

MLI’S latest justice report card is certainly a disconcerting read, largely confirming the narrative of Canadian carnage that’s swept the national media and political class in the past few years. The report also underscores the complexities behind the growing violence, offering little hope for a quick fix.

One can only hope that the report card’s publication will spur efforts toward more rigorous data collection at all levels of government. It’s almost unbelievable that policy-makers are still effectively flying blind on such fundamental matters as rates of recidivism and rehabilitation among violent criminals.

It’s far past time for the statistics on violent crime in Canada to catch up to the slogans.

IT’S NOT JUST A FEW LARGE URBAN CENTRES THAT HAVE BEEN DRIVING THIS TREND.