Ontario city is second worst for violent crime in Canada and Toronto is way down the list

International headlines about Toronto's car theft issue and rising rates of crime in general may give the impression that the city, being Canada's biggest, is the country's hotspot for serious offences.

But, at least when it comes to violent crime, a new study actually puts Toronto quite far down the list of the worst places in Canada, coming behind 23 other cities and also the national average for select metropolitan areas.

The study, from the Fraser Institute, compared crime trends across cities and provinces, but also in Canada versus the U.S. It analyzed locales with 100,000 or more people, looking mostly at StatCan data from between 2019 and 2022 and using the metric of average incidents per 100,000 residents annually.

The findings were somewhat surprising.

Out of the Great White North's five most major cities, Calgary had the worst stats, coming in 11th out of 36 places ranked. Vancouver was somewhat better, in 16th when it came to most violent crimes, followed by Montreal (18th) and Ottawa-Gatineau (23rd).

Toronto, meanwhile, was all the way at 24th, behind places like Kelowna, Halifax, Windsor, St. John's and Hamilton.

Graph from the Fraser Institute's Comparing Recent Crime Trends in Canada and the United States: Urban Areas.

Topping the chart was Winnipeg, which had a maximum violent crime rate of 675.1 per 100,000, on average, in the four years examined — a far cry from Toronto's 203.1.

Second-worst for violent crimes in Canada over the time period, the thinktank found, was Thunder Bay, with a rate of 546 per 100,000. Other Ontario areas found to have more violent crime proportion to population than Toronto include Greater Sudbury (318.5), Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterlo0 (311.9), Brantford (278.8), and London (265.6).

Looking south of the border, there were 17 American destinations that outperformed even Winnipeg for these types of offences, which include murder, robbery, and various assaults (though sexual assault is notably excluded). Memphis landed in the top spot with a population-adjusted maximum violent crime rate of 1,310.8, followed by Anchorage, Alaska (1,016.2) and Albuquerque (1,001.3).

Graph from the Fraser Institute's Comparing Recent Crime Trends in Canada and the United States: Urban Areas.

Property crime rates were much higher, with Lethbridge, Alberta leading the pack with 5,521.4 incidents per 100,000. Toronto was again quite far down this list, with a rate of 1,692.6.