- Canada's Crime Severity Index fell 5% in 2025 to 75.0, the second consecutive annual decrease.
- Motor vehicle theft dropped 16% and breaking and entering fell 11%, both major drivers of the decline.
- Shoplifting rose 11% in 2025, its fifth consecutive annual increase, and is now 79% higher than in 2015.
- Canada recorded 672 homicides in 2025, the lowest rate since 2014 and the largest year-over-year drop since 1986.
- Indigenous people face a homicide victimization rate roughly eight times higher than the non-Indigenous population.
- Police-reported hate crimes fell 3% in 2025 but remain more than twice as high as in 2018.
Statistics Canada released its annual police-reported crime data for 2025 on July 22, 2026. The figures cover the full calendar year 2025 and give one of the clearest national snapshots of crime trends available. If you follow public safety issues, live in Canada, or are a newcomer trying to understand the country you now call home, this data tells an important story.
Overall, 2025 was a year of meaningful improvement. The headline Crime Severity Index dropped for the second year in a row after a long upward stretch. But the picture is not uniformly positive. Shoplifting is still climbing. Fraud rates, while down slightly, sit 61% above where they were a decade ago. And disparities in homicide victimization by Indigenous identity remain stark. Here is what the numbers actually say.
What the Crime Severity Index Tells Us
Canada measures crime in two main ways. The conventional crime rate counts all Criminal Code offences relative to population, treating a shoplifting incident the same as a violent assault. The Crime Severity Index, introduced in 2009, goes further. It weights crimes by seriousness, so a homicide pulls the index up more than a minor theft. That makes the CSI a better signal of whether crime is actually getting worse or better in a meaningful sense.
In 2025, the CSI landed at 75.0, down 5% from the previous year. The conventional crime rate also fell, but by a smaller margin of 2%, reaching 5,585 incidents per 100,000 population. The fact that the CSI fell faster than the conventional rate tells you something important: the crimes that declined in 2025 tended to be the more serious ones. Volume dropped a little, but severity dropped more.
To put 75.0 in context, the CSI was standardised at 100 in 2006. The 2025 value is 25% below that baseline and 37% below the peak of 118.84 recorded in 1998, the first year with comparable data. The lowest the CSI has ever been was 66.90 in 2014. Canada is not back to that historic low, but the direction in 2025 is encouraging. The upward trend that began in 2015 and peaked at 81.27 in 2023 now appears to be reversing. Both violent crime and non-violent crime contributed to the 2025 decline, with the violent CSI falling 4% and the non-violent CSI falling 5%. Non-violent crimes still account for 63% of the overall index.
The decline was national in scope, but not universal. Every province and territory recorded a lower CSI except New Brunswick, which rose 6%, and Nunavut, which rose 10%. Most census metropolitan areas also recorded declines. You can explore regional breakdowns through Statistics Canada's published data tables, including Table 35-10-0026-01, the primary source for these figures.
Property Crime: Wins and a Persistent Problem
Breaking and entering was the single largest contributor to the overall CSI decline in 2025. Because it carries significant weight in the index as the most severe property crime by CSI methodology, a sharp drop in its rate moves the needle considerably. The police-reported rate fell 11% to 264 incidents per 100,000 population, representing 109,753 total incidents. This was the third consecutive annual decrease. The rate is now 41% lower than in 2015 and 77% lower than in 1998.
Motor vehicle theft also improved significantly. After three straight years of increases, the rate fell 16% in 2025 to 201 incidents per 100,000 population, or 83,652 incidents. This matched the same rate of decline seen in 2024. The 2025 rate is 9% below 2015 levels and 64% below the all-time peak recorded in 2003. This is a genuine turnaround after what had been a worsening trend that attracted significant public and media attention in recent years.
Shoplifting tells a very different story. Police reported 208,941 shoplifting incidents in 2025, a rate of 502 incidents per 100,000 population. That is up 11% from 2024 and marks the fifth consecutive annual increase since 2020. Over the past decade, the shoplifting rate has risen 79% compared to 2015. This rise has now offset some of the CSI gains from property crime declines for two years running. Shoplifting was the largest single contributor to keeping the CSI from falling further.
For comparison, minor theft (other theft of $5,000 or under, excluding shoplifting) fell 5% in 2025, its third straight decline, and sits 26% below 2015 levels. Despite that, the minor theft rate at 805 incidents per 100,000 is still 1.6 times higher than the shoplifting rate. Both categories move in opposite directions, which suggests something specific is driving retail theft rather than a general shift in theft behaviour.
Fraud, Extortion, and Online Exploitation
Total fraud, which includes general fraud, identity theft, and identity fraud, fell 4% in 2025 to a rate of 492 incidents per 100,000 population. This is the first decrease after a decade-long upward trend. However, a single year of decline barely dents the longer picture: the 2025 fraud rate is still 61% higher than it was in 2015. Many fraud incidents also go unreported to police, so the real volume is likely much higher than what these statistics capture.
Extortion, classified as a violent crime because it involves obtaining property through coercion, also fell in 2025. The rate dropped 10% to 29 incidents per 100,000 population. That is the second consecutive annual decrease. But the 2025 rate is still more than three times the rate recorded a decade ago, when extortion sat at just 9 incidents per 100,000 in 2015. The long-term trajectory remains deeply concerning even as the short-term direction improves.
Child sexual abuse and exploitation material (CSAEM) incidents fell 21% in 2025 to a rate of 36 incidents per 100,000 population, totalling 15,075 incidents. This was the second decline in a row after a sharp 54% spike in 2023. Making or distributing CSAEM accounted for 61% of incidents; the remaining 39% involved possession or access. Statistics Canada explicitly cautions that these figures undercount actual occurrences. Police services face significant investigative challenges, including the use of generative artificial intelligence, high volumes of text-based content, IP address privacy limits, and legal thresholds for warrants. Annual counts reflect active and closed investigations, not all identified cases.
Homicide: the Lowest Rate in Over a Decade
Police reported 672 homicides in 2025, a drop of 125 from the year before. The rate of 1.61 homicides per 100,000 population was down 16% from 1.93 in 2024. This is the lowest homicide rate Canada has recorded since 2014, and the year-over-year decline is the largest since 1986. These are genuinely significant milestones.
Among victims, 494 were men or boys and 175 were women or girls, with three victims of unknown gender. Men and boys account for 74% of homicide victims. But women face a distinct pattern of risk: 41% of female homicide victims were killed by a spouse or intimate partner, compared to just 5% of male victims. That disparity reflects a persistent pattern in domestic and gender-based violence that cuts across broader crime trends.
Gang-related homicides fell from 155 in 2024 to 119 in 2025, a rate of 0.29 per 100,000 population. These accounted for less than one-fifth (18%) of all homicides. The drop was driven largely by fewer gang-related killings involving handguns, which fell 39%, from 79 to 48 incidents. Overall, handgun homicides dropped 31% in 2025.
In 2025, the homicide victimization rate among Indigenous people was 9.59 per 100,000 Indigenous population. For non-Indigenous people, the rate was 1.13 per 100,000. That means Indigenous people were approximately eight times more likely to be homicide victims. This gap is not new, and the 2025 data shows it has not closed.
This disparity is one of the most serious public safety inequities reflected in the data. It is connected to broader structural issues including poverty, geographic isolation, under-resourced policing in remote communities, and the ongoing legacy of colonial policies. The data alone does not explain why the gap exists, but its persistence across multiple years makes it impossible to treat as a statistical anomaly.
Hate Crime: Down in 2025, but Still Elevated
Police reported 4,708 hate crime incidents in 2025, down 3% from 4,841 in 2024. Expressed as a rate, that is 11 incidents per 100,000 population, a 4% decline. That is the first decrease after a sustained upward trend. From 2018 to 2024, the number of police-reported hate crimes more than doubled, rising 166%. The 2025 rate is still more than twice the 2018 rate of 5 incidents per 100,000.
The decline in 2025 was driven primarily by fewer hate crimes targeting religion, which fell 18% to 1,115 incidents, and those targeting sexual orientation, which dropped 19% to 534 incidents. Hate crimes targeting race or ethnicity were essentially flat at 2,391 incidents in 2025, just one fewer than in 2024. The category of other motivations, which includes hate crimes targeting people based on disability, language, sex or gender, age, or immigration status, rose 52% to 562 incidents. That increase stands out as a troubling counter-trend within an otherwise improved picture.
For newcomers and immigrants specifically, the data on hate crimes targeting people based on immigration status falls within that "other motivations" category, which was up sharply in 2025. If you experience a hate-motivated incident in Canada, you can report it to your local police service. Statistics Canada's detailed online data tables (35-10-0066, 35-10-0067, and 35-10-0191) contain the full breakdown by motivation, type, and geography.
2025 Crime at a Glance
| Crime Type | 2025 Rate (per 100K) | Annual Change |
|---|---|---|
| Crime Severity Index (overall) | 75.0 (index value) | -5% |
| Conventional crime rate | 5,585 | -2% |
| Breaking and entering | 264 | -11% |
| Motor vehicle theft | 201 | -16% |
| Shoplifting ($5,000 or under) | 502 | +11% |
| Total fraud | 492 | -4% |
| Extortion | 29 | -10% |
| Homicide | 1.61 | -16% |
| Hate crimes (rate) | 11 | -4% |
| Child sexual abuse and exploitation material | 36 | -21% |
The full dataset, including provincial and territorial breakdowns and violation-specific tables, is available through Statistics Canada. An accompanying infographic and interactive dashboards through the Police-reported Information Hub were also released alongside this data.
❓ Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Crime Severity Index and how is it different from the crime rate?
The conventional crime rate counts all Criminal Code offences equally, relative to population. The CSI weights crimes by seriousness, so serious offences affect the index more than minor ones. It was introduced in 2009 and standardised to 100 in 2006.
Did crime go down across all of Canada in 2025?
Mostly, yes. The national CSI fell 5% and nearly all provinces and territories recorded declines. The exceptions were New Brunswick (+6%) and Nunavut (+10%), both of which recorded increases.
Why did shoplifting keep rising even as overall crime fell?
The data does not explain why shoplifting continues to climb. What it shows is that shoplifting rose 11% in 2025 and has increased 79% since 2015. It was the largest offset to the overall CSI decline for the second year in a row.
How are hate crimes counted in Canada?
Police services flag incidents as hate-motivated when they are driven in whole or in part by factors such as race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, language, or similar characteristics. Statistics Canada collects this data nationally each year.
Where can I find the full 2025 crime data?
Statistics Canada's Table 35-10-0026-01 is the primary source for CSI data. Hate crime details are in tables 35-10-0066, 35-10-0067, and 35-10-0191. An interactive Police-reported Information Hub dashboard was also released alongside the July 22, 2026 report.
Sources: Government of Canada (canada.ca), Statistics Canada (statcan.gc.ca), Police-reported Crime Statistics in Canada 2025, released July 22, 2026. Last verified: July 23, 2026. This article is general information, not legal advice. Consult official Statistics Canada publications or a qualified professional for guidance on your specific situation.
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