Justice · Charts
Canada's most violent cities are not its biggest ones
Chilliwack, Thunder Bay and Kamloops have the highest police-reported violent crime rates of any Canadian metro. Toronto ranks 33rd of 40, Ottawa-Gatineau 37th. Pick a city below to trace its violent and property crime back to 1998, or explore all 40 on the map.
Justice
Where violent crime is highest is not where most Canadians live
Police-reported violent crime rate per 100,000 residents, 2025, for Canada's 40 census metropolitan areas. Circle size and colour scale with the rate — hover any circle for its numbers. The deepest-red, largest circles sit in interior B.C., Alberta and Northern Ontario, not in Toronto, Montréal or Ottawa.
Source: Statistics Canada table 35-10-0177-01 (released 2026-07-22) · circles at each metro's approximate centre · rates cover the whole CMA · r/OpenDataCanada · @OpenData_Canada · opendatacanada.ca
When people picture where crime is worst in Canada, they tend to picture the largest cities. The data says the opposite. In 2025 the highest violent crime rates were in mid-sized metros — Chilliwack in B.C.'s Fraser Valley (2,723 per 100,000), Thunder Bay in Northern Ontario (2,249), Kamloops (2,224), Red Deer and Lethbridge in Alberta (both above 2,100). Every one of Canada's three biggest metros sits in the bottom third: Toronto 33rd, Montréal 24th, Vancouver 28th of the 40 metros the survey tracks.
Trace any city back to 1998
Pick a census metropolitan area. Each chart shows that metro against the national rate, from 1998 to 2025 — hover any point for the exact figure. The 16 metros Statistics Canada added after 1998 begin partway across.
Violent crime — Toronto vs Canada
Property crime — Toronto vs Canada
Source: Statistics Canada table 35-10-0177-01 (released 2026-07-22) · the selected metro is shown in colour, Canada in grey · rates cover the whole CMA · r/OpenDataCanada · @OpenData_Canada · opendatacanada.ca
One caveat matters here and is easy to miss: these are metropolitan-area rates, covering the whole CMA rather than just the central city. A smaller metro built around a regional service centre — with the hospitals, courts, shelters and services that a wider rural region relies on — can record a higher rate than its resident population alone would suggest, because crime is counted where it is reported, not where the person reporting it lives.
Look up any city in the table
Every census metropolitan area, ranked by 2025 violent crime rate. Search for a city, or click a column heading to sort. Rates are per 100,000 residents; "since 1998" is the change over the full series and is left blank for the 16 metros Statistics Canada added to the table after 1998.
Violent crime held up. Property crime did not.
Nationally the two headline categories have moved in opposite directions.
National violent crime rate, 1998–2025
National property crime rate, 1998–2025
Source: Statistics Canada table 35-10-0177-01 (released 2026-07-22) · a Jan 2018 change to the survey's "founded" rules raised recorded counts for some offences from 2019 on · r/OpenDataCanada · @OpenData_Canada · opendatacanada.ca
Property crime — the more common of the two, and the one that shapes most people's day-to-day sense of safety — has fallen almost without interruption, ending 2025 about 45% below its 1998 level. Among the 24 metros with an unbroken record back to 1998, the property rate fell in all 24.
Violent crime did not follow. The national rate dropped through a 2014 low, then climbed back to 7% above 1998. Part of that climb reflects a 2018 change in how police decide whether a reported incident is "founded," which raised recorded counts for some offences from 2019 on. Among those same 24 metros, violent crime split almost evenly: 11 rose and 13 fell over the period.
What this page can and can't tell you
- These are police-reported incidents, not convictions or victimization rates. Not all crime is reported to police, and reporting rates differ by offence and by community. Statistics Canada's separate General Social Survey on victimization is the counterpart measure.
- CMA boundaries are not city boundaries. A metro rate blends the central city with its surrounding municipalities, and reflects where incidents are reported.
- A rate is not a risk you personally face. It is an area-wide average; risk varies sharply by neighbourhood, time and circumstance.
- The 2018 "founded/unfounded" change raised recorded counts for some violent offences from 2019 on, so pre-2019 and post-2019 figures are not perfectly comparable.
Sources and methodology
- All figures: Statistics Canada, Table 35-10-0177-01 — Incident-based crime statistics, by detailed violations, released 22 July 2026. Rates are per 100,000 population; "violent" and "property" are the table's Total violent Criminal Code violations and Total property crime violations aggregates.
- Geography: the 40 census metropolitan areas reported in the table. The two Ottawa-Gatineau part-CMAs are collapsed into the combined Ontario/Quebec metro. Map circles are placed at each metro's approximate centre. Sixteen metros enter the table after 1998 (in the 2001, 2006, 2016 and 2021 cohorts); their change-since-1998 is shown as blank rather than zero.
- Figures were cross-checked against the Statistics Canada Web Data Service API.
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