FREDERICTON – New Brunswick was the only province in Canada to record fewer police-reported crimes in 2022 compared with the prior year, data from Statistics Canada show.
The agency’s crime severity index — a measure that includes violations of the Criminal Code and other federal statutes — rose by four per cent across Canada in 2022. Manitoba recorded the biggest increase, with 14 per cent, followed by Quebec, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Prince Edward Island, all with jumps of six per cent.
But New Brunswick bucked the national trend, with a crime severity index dropping by two per cent in 2022 compared with 2021.
Neil Boyd, professor emeritus at Simon Fraser University’s school of criminology, said there needs to be a closer look at what would insulate New Brunswick from some of the problems seen in other cities.
“We tend to think sometimes that crime goes up and down because of the legislation that we impose. But if you look at the legislation we’ve imposed over time in the Criminal Code amendments, they don’t really have much impact,” he said in a recent interview.
“It’s cultural change that matters.”
Crime in New Brunswick, however, isn’t evenly distributed. While crime dropped across the province, the city of Fredericton recorded increases in non-violent crime. As rates dropped in the city for violent crime — robbery, extortion, homicide and sexual assault — they rose for such things as property and drug offences.
The Statistics Canada report released last week showed an eight per cent increase in homicides across the country, with 874 reported last year, compared to 796 in 2021. Homicide rates were the highest since 1992, the report said, with British Columbia, Manitoba and Quebec leading the country.
There were 225 Indigenous homicide victims last year, 32 more than in 2021. About 69 per cent of Indigenous homicide victims were identified as First Nations, while three per cent were Métis and four per cent were Inuit.
The homicide rate for Indigenous people — 10.98 per 100,000 people — was nearly seven times higher compared with the rate for the non-Indigenous population — 1.69 per 100,000 people, the data show.
Last year, the report said there were 9,198 victims of violent crime in which a firearm was used, which is 10 per cent higher compared with 2021. The rate of victims of firearm-related crime has generally been increasing since 2013, it said.
Boyd said there’s “certainly” been an uptick in crime over the past four or five years.
“And, of course, that’s a legitimate concern,” he said. But the changes aren’t dramatic,” he said.
“In comparison to 2007 we’re a little higher than we were at that time.”
A larger data set with a 10-year time frame might help in getting a better understanding behind the national crime rate, Boyd said.
“We need to look behind the numbers. We need to get more detail and understanding (of) why crime is going up,” he said.
“And that can only be done by talking to the people who are dealing with crime — to police officers to community leaders and cities across the country and to those people who are witnessing these changes to get their sense of why it’s occurring.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 3, 2023.
