Rural crime slightly higher than urban crime, StatCan says — but stats prove tricky
James Pascual
Farmers Forum
OTTAWA — Rural crime is higher than urban crime, according to a new Statistics Canada report but that doesn’t tell the whole story.
The May 26 report titled Police-reported crime in rural and urban areas in the Canadian provinces, 2024 also reported that intimate partner violence in rural areas was almost twice as high as in urban areas. According to StatCan the number of victims aged 12 and over of intimate partner violence per 100,000 population was 573 in rural areas compared with 310 in urban areas.
The report noted that rural crime was lower than urban crime in 2009 but that has since flipped. But when you look at the Crime severity index (CSI), which tabulates a weighted severity of each crime for every 100,000 people, an interesting picture emerges. Crime in rural Ontario is only slightly higher than urban crime.
In 2024, the CSI in Ontario’s rural areas was 61.1, only slightly higher than the 60.7 for urban areas.
In raw numbers, the majority of Criminal Code offences (excluding traffic) in the provinces occurred in urban areas. But when you adjust for percentage of the population, there were 7,421 rural incidents per 100,000 population, compared to 5,235 urban incidents per 100,000 population in 2024.
However, the crime rate in the Ontario’s rural north was more than three times higher than the crime rate in the rural south.
Crime is worse in the territories. The highest crime rate or CSI in the country is in Iqaluit, Nunavut with a CSI of 639 and a CSI for violent crime at more than 800.
The StatCan report notes that rural areas have very different rates of crime, noting that living in rural areas you are likely to live with one of two extremes: a very high crime rate or a very low crime rate.
The report notes that the provincial north has a different socioeconomic and demographic profile. “There are higher proportions of First Nations people, Metis and Inuit in the provincial north, many of whose communities face high rates of crime or criminal victimization.”
StatCan was quick to blame European settlers. “This reality is inextricably linked to the historical and ongoing effects of colonial and assimilation policies that have been detrimental to the Indigenous people,” the report stated on page 15.
