While crime rates have risen nationally in recent years, the surge in rural areas has outpaced that of Canada’s big cities, challenging small police forces to tackle bigger issues than they had in the past.
Kensington, Prince Edward Island, with a population of 2,300, is one such place that has seen a rise in the number and severity of crimes.
“We’re used to having gas drive-offs, minor thefts, impaired [driving], or assaults. But now what we’re seeing is some high-level crime in a small community,” Kensington Deputy Police Chief Landon Yuill told The Epoch Times.
The province as a whole had the biggest rise in the crime severity index in Canada in 2022–23, at an increase of 17 percent. The index measures not only the rate of crimes (the number of Criminal Code incidents per capita), but also weighs them by severity.
The territories have seen the largest rise in the index over the past decade.
Law enforcement in both regions spoke to The Epoch Times about what’s behind the high crime statistics. An increase in drugs was a factor common to both regions, as was the spread of organized crime, especially in isolated and vulnerable communities in the territories.
Officials also explained the nuances of evaluating crime statistics in low-population areas and why those stats don’t always give a clear picture of the situation on the ground.
Northwest Territories
Canada’s territories have the highest crime rates in the country but far smaller populations than the provinces.Const. Josh Seaward of the Northwest Territories (N.W.T.) RCMP told The Epoch Times that a small increase in the number of crimes can have a bigger impact on rates in low-population areas. For example, a single homicide would put the N.W.T. homicide rate at 2.23 per 100,000, he said, which is close to exceeding the national average.
N.W.T. has the highest homicide rate nationwide, at more than 13 homicides per 100,000 people in 2023. The next highest is the Yukon, at almost nine. Manitoba, Nunavut, and Saskatchewan are all close to five, and the remaining provinces are less than three.
Homicide rates in the territories have fluctuated over the past decade, but have generally remained well above the provinces.
N.W.T. had the second-highest total crime rate in Canada in 2023, at nearly 55,000 Criminal Code incidents per 100,000 people. Only Nunavut was higher, at more than 56,000. The next highest was the Yukon at over 22,000. All provinces were below 13,000.
“In recent years, there has been an increase in illicit drugs entering the territory, often through out-of-territory organized crime groups,” Seaward said. In response, he said, the government of N.W.T. has increased funding to the First Nations and Inuit Policing Program and Crime Reduction Unit. Roughly half of the N.W.T. population is indigenous.
The goal for these initiatives is “a proactive community and enforcement-based approach to policing,” the constable said.
He said isolated communities have few resources to address the root causes fuelling drug demand, and social challenges faced by many make them vulnerable to exploitation by organized crime groups.
N.W.T.’s police-reported crime severity index has risen dramatically in the past decade. The index is weighted, taking into account not only the crime rate (number of Criminal Code incidents per 100,000 population) but also the severity of the crimes.
N.W.T.’s index rose 50 percent from 2013 to 2023, tied with Nunavut for the biggest rise in Canada.
Prince Edward Island
P.E.I. had the biggest rise in crime in Canada from 2022 to 2023, at 17 percent. Drugs are a driving force behind the increased crime severity in the province, Yuill said.“We’re seeing here on P.E.I. drugs that we’ve never seen here before, and more frequently,” he said, noting fentanyl as one of the major new drugs in the area.
“It becomes dangerous not just for the users, but also for anybody who comes in contact with it. All our officers now are all carrying Narcan on their person,” he said. Narcan is a drug that’s used to treat opioid overdose.
He said addiction is likely behind large-scale robberies and other serious offences the town has seen recently but not in the past.
Though the province’s police-reported crime severity index rose 17 percent over the course of one year, Sgt. Shaun Coady of the P.E.I. RCMP said a lot of the increase may be explained by the definition of “police-reported.”
“It’s not necessarily verified by charge; it’s reported instances,” he said. For example, the RCMP has been encouraging islanders to report internet crimes more, and they have.
He said the RCMP has had a higher call volume in general, along with a growth in the island’s population and also changing demographics. The RCMP handles the rural areas of the province, and more people post-pandemic are working remotely and residing outside of the cities. But he said there’s hasn’t been a big jump in charges.
P.E.I. RCMP in Stratford, P.E.I., on April 23, 2019. The Canadian Press/Andrew Vaughan
Nonetheless, it’s hard to capture the perspective for the whole province, he said. The statistics lump the RCMP’s number together with numbers from the three police jurisdictions of Charlottetown, Kensington, and Summerside.
“It becomes really difficult for any one of us to speak to the overall change,” Coady said.
The Charlottetown and Summerside police services did not respond to Epoch Times requests for interviews.
Kensington’s Yuill said his department has also seen an increase in internet crimes being reported. It was once unheard of for the town’s police to handle child pornography charges, but his force has dealt with multiple cases in recent years. These kinds of investigations are difficult for a small police force to tackle, he said.
One of his force’s challenges has also been repeat offenders.
“We put a lot of resources into a file and then have the person get two months in jail. And there doesn’t seem to be much of a deterrent for these people to come back out and just fall right back into the same trap,” Yuill said.
Coady spoke about the strain on police forces in P.E.I. as the population grows.
“You have 18 percent, approximately, in population growth. And you don’t have a corresponding increase in public safety budgets,” he said.
Urban vs Rural Crime Stats
Statistics Canada in 2021 reported on the rise of crime in rural areas outpacing that in urban areas. Not all rural communities saw a rise, but a relatively dramatic rise in some communities tipped the scale.Police services for rural communities served only 15 percent of the population, but reported 24 percent of violent crimes, 18 percent of property crimes, 30 percent of Criminal Code traffic offences, and 23 percent of other Criminal Code violations.
The territories were left out of the analysis because of their high crime rates. Including territories in the analyses would “disproportionally impact overall rural crime rates,” StatCan said.
The crime severity index was 33 percent higher in rural areas (91.9) than in urban areas (69.3).
“For many, including those in the media and in academic research, the general perception of crime is that it is an urban issue. Conversely, rural areas are seen as an escape from the city, places that are quiet and free from social problems,” the report said.
“Yet recent studies and police-reported statistics challenge the perception that crime is concentrated in large cities ... and rural crime is becoming a focus for public safety policies.”
