OTTAWA, Ont. — Saskatchewan's top rating in fire-arm related violence could be reflective of overall high rates of violence, says a publication released May 27 by Statistics Canada.
The Juristat, a regular article looking at topics of interest to the justice community, says rates of firearm-related violent crime in 2020 were highest in Saskatchewan, Manitoba and the Territories.
The high rates of firearm-related violent crime in Saskatchewan and Manitoba were mainly due to high rates of robbery and major assaults where a firearm was present, states the Juristat.
Among the provinces, Saskatchewan reported the second-highest combined rate of firearm-related homicide and attempted murder in 2020 — second to Nova Scotia where the high rate was due to the mass shooting in April 2020.
The Northwest Territories and Nunavut had the highest rates, but rates in the Territories can vary considerably from year to year due to low counts and low populations, the Juristat points out.
Regarding Saskatchewan and Manitoba, the article says because non-firearm-related violent crime was also high in the aforementioned areas, these high rates of firearm-related violent crime may be a reflection of overall high rates of violence.
It points to the example that, in 2020, rates of both firearm-related violent crime and violent crime where a firearm was not present were high in the Territories. As a result, the proportion of all incidents involving a firearm was relatively low (fewer than two per cent in all three Territories). The provinces where the proportion of violent crime that was firearm-related was highest were Saskatchewan (3.9 per cent), Alberta (3.4 per cent) and Ontario (3.2 per cent).
This was also the case among major cities. As in 2019, the census metropolitan areas (CMAs) with the highest rates of firearm-related violent crime in 2020 were Regina, Brantford, Winnipeg and Saskatoon. However, the CMAs with the highest proportions of violent crimes where a firearm was present were Regina (5.5 per cent), Brantford (4.8 per cent), Toronto (4.6 per cent), Saskatoon (4.3 per cent), Winnipeg (4.2 per cent) and Windsor (4.2 per cent) (Table 4).
For some CMAs, high rates of firearm-related violent crime reflected overall high rates of violent crime in communities. This, however, was not always the case. For example, it is worth noting that Toronto had a relatively low rate of firearm-related violent crime, but these firearm-related crimes accounted for a relatively high proportion of all violent crime.
The Juristat article, “Trends in firearm-related violent crime in Canada, 2009 to 2020” by Mary Allen, Canadian Centre for Justice and Community Safety Statistics, also points out important gaps in knowledge about firearm-related crimes.
“It is important to recognize that there are limitations in our knowledge about firearms used in crime. There is little information currently collected about the characteristics of these firearms, such as details about the exact type of gun, who owned it (e.g., accused, victim, or someone else), how it was stored, or whether the owner was licensed. In addition, while some police services collect information on shootings, there is no consistent definition of a shooting applied by police services in Canada, nor are there consistent criteria used to assess whether a shooting actually occurred (e.g., witness heard shots fired, bullet casings found)," Allen writes.
She points out the concern that there is currently little information available to determine the source of firearms used in crime, such as whether they were stolen, illegally purchased or smuggled into the country.
“This information is sometimes not recorded by police services, recorded inconsistently or, in some cases, the information is simply not available. For example, not all firearms are recovered from firearm-related homicides; consequently, only some of these guns are available for tracing,” states the Juristat.
Additional gaps in knowledge of the nature of firearm-related violence in Canada are the extent to which organized crime is involved in firearm-related violence, and the patterns in ethnicity, Indigenous identity (with the exception of homicide data), and socioeconomic characteristics of both victims and persons accused of firearm-related violence.
The article states CCJCSS has revised its crime reporting survey to improve reporting, noting, however, it may take a few years for those changes to be fully implemented by police.
