Telling Canada’s story in numbers

Guns and

Gangs

Lynn Barr-Telford

Director General,

Health, Justice and Special Surveys

Summit on Gun and Gang Violence

March 7, 2018

Gun crime is less than one half of one percent of

overall police-reported crime in Canada

2

Property crime62%

Other Criminal Code

18%

Firearm3%

Other weapon

18%

No weapon79%

20%Violent crime

In 2016, a small proportion of police-reported violent crime involved firearms – 3%. However, these incidents involved more

than 7,000 victims.

(Excludes Québec)

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

0

200

400

600

800

1,000

1,200

1,400

2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016

Police-reported crime involving firearms has

increased each year since 2013

3

Violent crime rate

Firearm-related

violent crime rate

What we know?

Since 2013:

• Overall police-

reported crime rate

up 1%

• Violent crime rate

down 4%

• There were 33% more

victims of firearm

related crime in 2016

than 3 years prior

Rate

per

100,0

00

Ra t e

per

100,0

00

(Excludes Québec)

Territories and Saskatchewan have highest

rates of firearm-related violent crime, 2016

4

Map data

100

0

18.2

12.3

10.1

21.9

12.9

89.0

67.550.7

34.8

55.9 48.5

21.9

Excludes

Québec

Canada: 25.5What we know?

• Increases in firearm

related violent crime

since 2013 in

Saskatchewan (+83%),

Manitoba (+48%),

Ontario (+46%), New

Brunswick (+45%),

Alberta (+30%)

• Decreases in firearm

related violent crime

since 2013 in Nova

Scotia (-37%), Nunavut

(-15%), British Columbia

(-7%)

Gun crime tends to be concentrated within larger cities

(7 out of 10 victims), 2016

5

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

Regina

Winnipeg

Moncton

Edmonton

Toronto¹

Hamilton²

Saskatoon

Windsor

Calgary

Ottawa³

Kelowna

Vancouver

Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo

Brantford

Abbotsford-Mission

London

Peterborough

St.Catharines-Niagara

Halifax

Barrie

Saint John

St. John's

Thunder Bay

Guelph

Victoria

Kingston

Greater Sudbury

rate per 100,000 population

Canada = 25.5

(Excludes Québec)

What we know?

• Regina and Winnipeg

have highest rates of

firearm related violent

crime among cities

(CMAs) followed by

Moncton, Edmonton

and Toronto

• In Canada overall, 3

out of 10 violent gun

crimes happen outside

of a major city

• In Toronto alone, there

were over 1,800

victims of gun crime in

2016 – 33 victims for

every 100,000 people

living there

However, in Saskatchewan 6 in 10 violent gun crimes

happen outside of a major city

6

56

8

36

61

42

30

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

Atlantic Ont. Man. Sask. Alta. B.C.

Canada = 29%

What we know?

• The proportion of

firearm-related violent

crime that occurs

outside of a major city

(CMA) in Saskatchewan

is higher than any other

region or province; only

the Atlantic Provinces

are close (56%)

• The rate of firearm

violence in

Saskatchewan’s non-

CMA areas has

consistently been

higher than the rates in

Regina and Saskatoon

Percent of firearm-related violent crime occurring outside of a major city, 2016

(Excludes Québec)

Outside of Saskatchewan, most gun crime in

Canada involves handguns

7

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

18

20

2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016

Can.-Handgun Can.-Rifle Can.-Firearm-like weapon

Firearm-related violent crime, by type of firearm

(Excludes Québec)

Ra t e

per

100,0

00

What we know?

• 60% of gun crime in Canada

involved a handgun in 2016

• Violent crime involving a rifle

is about 5 times higher in

Saskatchewan than in the rest

of Canada

• There were 19 victims of

violent crime involving a rifle

for every 100,000 residents of

Saskatchewan, well above the

rate of 4 per 100,000 in

Canada

• Though the rate of crime

involving rifles remains

higher, the rate of violent

crime involving handguns in

Saskatchewan has more than

doubled since 2013

8

The use of firearms in the most serious violent

crimes has increased

Attempted murder Homicide Robbery

2013

2016

45% 26% 13%

50% 39% 19%

Percentage of incidents involving firearms

2,096 victims109 victims211 victims

290 victims 195 victims 2,870 victims

What we know?

• Attempted murder

and robbery both

saw increases in

the number of

victims

• The number of

shooting homicide

victims almost

doubled from 2013

to 2016

(Excludes Québec)

In 2016, shootings were the most common homicide

method followed by stabbings

9

Shooting

Homicides, by most common method, Canada, 1986 to 2016

0.0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1.0

1.2

1986 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 2016

Stabbing

Beating

What we know?

• Over the past 25

years, shootings and

stabbings have been

the two main

methods used to

commit homicide

• The rate of homicide

by shooting in 2016

was 21% higher than

the average for the

previous decade

• In 2016, there were

more shootings than

stabbings for the

first time since 2012

Ra t e

per

100,0

00

10

• The recent increase in homicides (up 20% since 2013) is related to more gun homicides

and more gang homicides.

• Since 2013, gang-related homicides in our largest cities have almost doubled (from 65 to

121), with significant increases in Toronto (13 to 33), Edmonton (3 to 11), and

Ottawa (0 to 7) …regardless of method used.

Gang homicides on the rise

The majority of gang-related homicides involve guns

• In 2016, just over one in three (34%) guns used to commit homicide were recovered. Only

a small proportion of these were registered firearms. About one-third (32%) were not

registered because they are prohibited by law and of the guns that could be registered,

only one quarter actually were.

Across the provinces, youth charged with firearm-

related violent crime at a higher rate than adults

11

0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160

Nunavut

Northwest Territories

Yukon

British Columbia

Alberta

Saskatchewan

Manitoba

Ontario

New Brunswick

Nova Scotia

Prince Edward Island

Newfoundland and Labrador

rate per 100,000 youth or adult population

Youth and adults accused of firearm-related violent crime, provinces and territories, 2016

Canada

youth rate: 46.1

Canada

adult rate: 18.6Adult rate

Youth rate

What do we know?

• The rate of youth accused

of a firearm-related violent

crime was 20% higher in

2016 than it was in 2013

• In Saskatchewan the rate of

youth accused of firearm

related crime is triple the

national average; in

Manitoba it is double

• The rate of adults accused

of firearm-related violent

crime increased 37% from

2013 (14 per 100,000) to

2016 (19 per 100,000)

• In absolute numbers, more

adults are accused than

youth (Excludes Québec)

12

25% of homicides

64%of attempted

murders

Proportion of selected offences involving a firearm,

by victim-accused relationship, 2016

Gun crimes typically committed by strangers

What do we know?

• In 6% of crimes

committed by a

stranger, a gun was

involved, compared to

1.5% of crimes where

the victim knew the

offender

• Attempted murder,

homicide, and robbery

are all more likely to

involve guns when

they’re committed by a

stranger 20% of robberies

…involved guns when committed by a stranger(Excludes Québec)

Recent increase in firearms offences driven by more

incidents of discharging with intent

13

Discharge with intent

Firearms offences, Canada, 2002 to 2016

0.0

1.0

2.0

3.0

4.0

5.0

6.0

2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016

Using firearm in

commission of offencePointing a firearm

What do we know?

• In 2016, unlike

previous years, there

were more incidents of

discharging a firearm

with intent than

pointing a firearm

• The rate of firearms

offences increased

26% from 2013 to 2016

– the rate of

discharging a firearm

with intent almost

doubled (+88%)

Ra

t e

per

100

,00

0

There are still many unknowns about gun crime …

What we don’t know

• the origin of firearms involved in gun crime in Canada

• if firearm-related violent crimes are linked to organized crime

• the ethnicity of both victims and persons accused of firearm-related violent crime

• the Indigenous identity of both victims and offenders in firearm-related violent crime, with the exception of homicides

• enough about marginalization and gun crime in Canada

14

15

There is a data source data issues!

Organized crime/street gang flag is on

the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR)

Survey.

Flag allows all police services to flag ANY

criminal incident reported to Statistics

Canada as organized crime/street gang

related.

This flag is not being reported properly

by police services rendering the data

unusable.

Recent efforts by Statistics Canada,

Public Safety Canada and the Police

Information and Statistics Committee

(POLIS) of the Canadian Association of

Chiefs of Police (CACP) identified

concrete ways to improve this flag.

Structure has not been put in place to

report quality data

We could better understand the impact of organized

crime on gun crime if…

but there are