Decrease in crime an inconvenient truth for Poilievre

Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives have apparently decided that facts are an obstacle to their crime narrative.

The latest crime statistics from Statistics Canada, released this week, show the overall crime severity index in Canada fell five per cent in 2025. The conventional crime rate fell two per cent. The violent crime severity index declined and the non-violent index was also down. In other words, crime is falling.

So how did the Conservatives respond this week?

They ignored the broader trend, cherry-picked a few numbers that suit their political messaging and continued to claim that Liberal “catch-and-release” policies are responsible for “rising crime.”

That isn’t serious crime policy, it’s political propaganda.

The overall crime severity index in Canada was 75.01 in 2025. Just to compare, that’s lower than seven of the 10 years Stephen Harper’s Conservatives were in government, from 2006 to 2015.

It was also dramatically lower than it was 20 years ago, when the index was 101.33. The overall severity of police-reported crime today is roughly one-quarter lower than it was two decades ago.

Meanwhile, the non-violent crime severity index was 66.78 in 2025. That was lower than every year under the Harper government except one: 2014, when it was 65.38. And the violent crime severity index was roughly the same in 2025 as it was in 2005.

So much for the theory that the Liberal government has somehow unleashed an unprecedented crime wave through so-called soft-on-crime policies.

If that were truly the case, crime rates would be steadily climbing. They aren’t. They go up, they go down and right now they’re trending downward.

Sadly for Poilievre, that doesn’t fit the Conservative narrative. So he simply pretends the recent data doesn’t exist.

This is what passes for crime policy in the Poilievre era: find a number or two that frightens people, ignore the evidence that shows crime is declining and, with the most bluster possible, blame the Liberals for everything.

It’s Trumpian politics.

There is a legitimate debate to be had about crime and public safety in Canada, especially in Manitoba, which has among the highest violent crime rates in the country.

Canadians have every right to be concerned about violent offenders, repeat offenders, organized crime, the opioid crisis and the failures of a justice system that too often leaves victims feeling abandoned.

But a legitimate debate requires facts and honesty.

Crime rises and falls for a host of complicated reasons: demographics, economic conditions, drug use, social disorder, policing practices, mental health issues, reporting patterns, and countless other factors.

Government policy can matter, but the idea that crime statistics immediately rise or fall according to the political party in power is simplistic nonsense.

The crime severity index exists precisely because raw crime counts don’t tell the whole story. The index measures both the volume of crime and the seriousness of the offences being reported, assigning greater weight to more serious crimes.

By that measure, Canada’s situation in 2025 was considerably better than it was 20 years ago.

Breaking and entering declined for a third consecutive year. Motor-vehicle theft declined for the second consecutive year. The rate of motor-vehicle theft in 2025 was 64 per cent lower than its peak in 2003.

Some crimes have worsened. Shoplifting, for example, has increased for five consecutive years. That’s a real problem.

But to claim overall crime rates continue to skyrocket — and to try to connect that to Liberal government policy — is simply inaccurate.

The Conservatives don’t want Canadians to look at the full picture. They want them to look at a carefully selected handful of numbers that can be used to reinforce the false belief that the country is collapsing and that Liberal criminal-justice policies are to blame.

It’s insulting to Canadians who are capable of understanding that crime is complicated.

Poilievre can keep pretending that every crime increase is proof of Liberal incompetence and that every decline in the crime rate is irrelevant. He can keep selling the fantasy that tougher rhetoric, longer jail sentences and bail reform will solve a problem that has no simple cause and no simple solution.

At some point, the public should demand more than political fear-mongering dressed up as policy.

The latest numbers are clear: crime rates are falling, for reasons nobody can prove with evidence. That may be politically inconvenient for the Conservatives, but the data doesn’t lie.

tom.brodbeck@freepress.mb.ca