For the first time since 2020, crime has dropped in Canada in 2024, including in Montreal. But the metropolis is an exceptional in Quebec, one of the three provinces which experienced a slight increase in crimes, according to a report published Tuesday by Statistics Canada.
The “index of gravity of crime” (IGC), a statistic that takes into account the number and severity of crimes, decreased by 4 % for all of Canada in 2024 after three consecutive years of increases. It is above all the crimes considered to be “without violence” – in particular the offenses against goods and linked to drugs – which experienced a sharp decline, almost 6 % according to Statistics Canada. The organization uses here another, simpler calculation of the number of crimes declared by the police by 100,000 inhabitants.
The five offenses that were the most decreased were all non -violent: break -in introductions, juvenile pornography, engine vehicle flights, those of $ 5,000 and the harms were fewer in 2024.
Autos flights: -27 % in Quebec
For break -in introductions, “the type of crime against the most serious goods according to the weighting of the IGC”, there was a drop of 11 % compared to 2023, with a rate of 293 crimes per 100,000 inhabitants. This rate, it is said, is 75 % lower than that recorded in 1998, the year when this data was compiled for the first time.
Regarding the flights of motor vehicles, which have been the subject of wide media coverage for two years, Statistics Canada notes that 239 flights per 100,000 inhabitants have been brought in in 2024, down 17 % compared to 2023.
“This is a trend reversal compared to the rise of 40 % that has been recorded over three years since the historic hollow of 2020,” read. It is in Quebec (-27 %) and Ontario (-18 %) that vehicle flights have remote the most.
The organization still recalls that the rate of 239 vehicle flights in 2024 represented only 43 % of the summit reached in 2003.
Homicides and Aboriginal
There is also a lower drop in violent crimes by 1 %. Sexual assaults (-3 %), extortion (-10 %), qualified flights (-2 %), murder attempts (-12 %) and serious facts (-8 %), were less numerous for the whole of Canada.
The police reported 788 homicides in 2024, 8 homicides less than the previous year. The rate of homicides, which was 1.99 homicide per 100,000 inhabitants in 2023, increased to 1.91 homicide per 100,000 inhabitants in 2024. By way of comparison, according to the World Health Organization, this rate was 6.1 worldwide in 2021, last year of update.
On the other hand, Statistical Canada note, the homicide rate continues to be alarming in First Nations. The police reported 225 indigenous victims in 2024, 29 more than in 2023. “The homicide rate of 10.84 homicides per 100,000 Aboriginal people was about eight times higher than that of the non -indigenous population,” notes the body.
From Vancouver to Yellowknife
Overall, the portrait differs considerably from one province or from one territory to another. While there is a drop in the gravity of crime of 11 % in British Columbia and 9 % in Alberta, at the other end of the spectrum, the northwest territories recorded an increase of 9 %. And if Ontario has brought in a modest decrease of 1 %, Quebec finds itself with a slight increase of 1 %.
The statistical Canada report gives few explanations on these differences within Canada.
Montreal under the average
The thinner data for all of Quebec, however, contain a surprise: for the first time since 1998, the crime gravity index is lower in Montreal than the Quebec average.
Montreal and Gatineau are in fact the two Quebec metropolitan regions which experienced a drop in IGC between 2023 and 2024, respectively -3.4 % and -1.3 %. In Quebec, it was in Saguenay (+5.4 %) and Quebec (+3.2 %) that we reported the strongest increases. In these last two cases, the crimes with violence that have been responsible for this trend: the increase was 12 % in Saguenay and 3.9 % in Quebec.
With the collaboration of Pierre-André Normandin, The press
