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OTTAWA — Statistics Canada reports that both the rates and severity of crime were down almost across the board in 2025.
The agency said Wednesday Canada’s crime severity index dropped five per cent last year for the second annual decline in a row.
The index — which measures both the number of crimes compared to population and the relative severity of all police-reported crimes — stands at 75.01 after rising to 81.27 over the previous eight years.
Declines in the crime severity index were recorded in every province and territory except New Brunswick and Nunavut, and in most major cities.
The conventional crime rate, which tracks the volume of crimes regardless of their severity, edged down two per cent in 2025.
Most of StatCan’s crime metrics are represented as a share of population. The crime rate stood at 5,585 incidents per 100,000 people last year.
StatCan said the reduction in the crime severity index was driven by the rate of break-and-enter cases falling for a third year in a row. Last year’s 11 per cent decline brought the rate of breaking and entering to 264 incidents per 100,000 people.
There were 125 fewer homicides reported in 2025 than the year before, bringing the national rate to its lowest level since 2014. StatCan said last year’s 16 per cent drop in the homicide rate was the largest annual decrease on record since 1986.
Offsetting 2025’s declines in the crime rate was a rise in shoplifting for the fifth year in a row. Police reported 208,941 incidents of shoplifting in 2025, a rate of 502 incidents per 100,000 people, up 11 per cent since 2024.
StatCan said fraud was down in 2025 but the rate of fraud cases is still 61 per cent higher than in 2015, reflecting a surge in reported cases over the past decade. Extortion — a violent crime often linked to fraud — was down for a second year in a row. But the rate remained three times higher than it was a decade ago.
Motor vehicle theft was down in 2025 for the second consecutive year, after three years of increases. StatCan said the rate of car theft was nine per cent below 2015 levels and 64 per cent lower than the peak in 2023.
The rate of child sexual abuse and exploitation materials was down 21 per cent to 36 incidents per 100,000 population in 2025, though StatCan cautioned these incidents are typically undercounted in official data.
The rise of generative artificial intelligence is one factor leading to a surge in cases of child sexual abuse and exploitation materials that police sometimes lack the resources to tackle, the agency said.
The number of hate crimes fell slightly, from 4,841 incidents in 2024 to 4,708 in 2025. The three per cent drop followed a significant increase from 2018 to 2024, when hate crimes more than doubled.
StatCan said the decline in 2025 was mostly driven by a drop in hate crimes targeting religion and sexual orientation. It said it tracked an increase in other types of hate crimes, such as those targeting disability, sex or gender and newcomers to Canada.
The Liberal government passed three tough-on-crime bills in June, which introduced new offences to the Criminal Code, made it more difficult to get bail for a variety of crimes and restored mandatory minimum imprisonment penalties.
The bills came after a 2025 federal election campaign which saw the federal Conservatives — who had long attacked Liberal justice policies as too lenient — pitched policies to crack down on crime.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 22, 2026.
The Canadian Press
