Rising Crime in Canada: Evidence from Thunder Bay

 

Rising crime and perceptions of rising crime in Canadian urban areas have become more concerning as media reports increase and a recent study by the MacDonald-Laurier Institute provides some evidence to back up the feeling that crime is up.  The report looks at the last decade’s worth of police reported crime data for nine major Canadian urban centers: Calgary, Edmonton, Montreal, Ottawa, Peel, Toronto, Vancouver, Winnipeg, and York Region.  Essentially, crime and especially violent crime is up in all of these cities with sexual assaults in particular showing large increases.  Of course, this study omits a lot of cities and so of course the question that arises for inquiring local minds is how Thunder Bay has been doing over the last little while?  Is crime rising in Thunder Bay? Well, it depends on the time span you want to look at as well as the specific type of crime.  But overall, the feeling that crime is rising here is not misplaced.

 

Using police reported crime data from Statistics Canada, here is a quick snapshot of how some crime rates in Thunder Bay (crimes per 100,000 population) have been performing. Figure 1 plots the crime rate for total violent crimes and total property crimes for the period 1998 to 2023.  Over the long haul, the trends do not seem particularly concerning.  The property crime rate in 1998 was 6,285 crimes per 100,000 population and after 2009 it began declining quite steadily followed by a spike in 2019 and then further decline.  Between 1998 and 2023, the property crime rate fell from 6,285 crimes per 100,000 to 3,117 per 100,000 – a 50 percent drop.  

 

 

 

Violent crime between 1998 and 2023 has also dropped but not by as much.  It went from 2,401 violent crimes per 100,000 to 2,195 per 100,000 -a nearly 9 percent decline.  However, the violent crime rate seems to be broken into two phases.  It went from 2,401 in 1998 to a low of 1,414 in 2015 – a decline of 41 percent.  Since 2015, it has grown and by 2023 was, as noted, at 2,195 – an increase of 55 percent.  While violent crime is lower than 1998 that is small consolation given what appears to be a fairly rapid increase in recent years.

 

 

 

Figure 2 presents the percentage change in crime rates over a ten-year period – 2013 to 2023 – for a select number of crime categories.  The results paint a more complicated picture.  The total crime rates (all criminal code violations including traffic) are down 2.5 percent over the last ten years.  This seems to be driven in part by a decline in property crimes as the total property crime rate over the same period is down 13.4 percent.  However, over a ten-year period, the total violent crime rate is up nearly 39 percent.  Homicides are up 120 percent from 2013 (though these are two points in time.  Using a three-year moving average for 2012 and 2022, homicides are only up 87 percent if that makes you feel better).  Total sexual assaults are up 68 percent while total assaults in general are up 31 percent.   Impaired driving is up about 5 percent while robberies are up 39 percent. 

 

So, are perceptions of rising crime justified?  I would think so given that while overall crime rates might be down or flat, the rates for more serious crimes such as homicides, assaults and robbery are up.  There you have it.

Thunder Bay Crime, Policing and Population: An Update

 

Statistics Canada has released the police-reported crime statistics in Canada for 2022 and police-reported crime in Canada, as measured by the Crime Severity Index (CSI), increased for the second consecutive year, up 4% in 2022.  The CSI considers both the volume and the severity of crime. The police-reported national crime rate—a measure of the volume of crime—increased by 5% from 2021 to 2022, up to 5,668 incidents per 100,000 population. However, like the CSI, the crime rate in 2022 (-4%) was lower than in 2019.

 

Figures 1 and 2 provide the 2022 CSI and Crime Rate Per 100,000 population for Canada 35 CMAs and ranks them from highest to lowest.  Crime Severity was highest in Winnipeg, followed by Kelowna and Lethbridge while in terms of crime rates, Kelowna topped the ranking followed by Lethbridge and then Winnipeg.  In terms of crime severity, Thunder Bay ranked 7^th highest of the 35 CMAs whereas in terms of crime incidents per 100,000, Thunder Bay dropped to 10^th spot.  For those interested in a northern Ontario comparison, Thunder Bay's crime severity and crime rate exceeds  Greater Sudbury.

 

 

 

 

In the case of Thunder Bay, to provide some additional time series perspective, Figure 3 plots both crime severity and the number of police officers per 100,000 population from 2000 to 2022. Crime Severity has fluctuated somewhat over time though it has been on an upward trend since 2015 but remains below the peak year of 2009 when it reached nearly 115. Between 2015 and 2022, Crime Severity in Thunder Bay grew by 27 percent but if one looks at the period 2000 to 2022, then there has been a decline in crime severity of just over two percent.  

 

 

 

Another metric – not shown in any charts here – is the crime rate and the total number of crime incidents.  In 2000, the total number of total crime violations in Thunder Bay was 10,869 whereas by 2021 it had fallen to 8,117 – a decline of about 25 percent. Over the same period, the number of total crimes per 100,000 fell from 9084 to 6940 – a drop of 24 percent. If one takes the 2022 numbers in consideration, the rate appears to have declined further to 5842.

 

It is always interesting to compare the crime time series numbers to police resource numbers.  Policing numbers per 100,000 have trended upward throughout the period going from 173 officers per 100,000 population in 2000 and reaching 213 in 2022.  This represents an increase in per capita policing resources of 23 percent.  It should be noted that over the same period, the total number of civilian employees grew from 95 to 119 while the total number of officers grew from 207 to 249 – total increases of 25 and 20 percent respectively. 

 

Putting these increases into perspective, it helps to have some population numbers.  Over the same period, the population of Thunder Bay, Municipal as reported in these crime statistics by Statistics Canada fell from 119,657 to 116,968 – a decline of 2.2 percent. This is certainly a different number than one has seen in the past referring to either the CMA or the municipal population. While this is a larger number than the 2021 census city of Thunder Bay population figure of 108,843, it is also smaller than the CMA census population of 123,258.  One city, many population statistics.

 

So, that is a brief overview of the numbers. Make of them what you wish.  One imagines that personal and individual experience with crime never mind population growth in Thunder Bay may vary depending on your location or socioeconomic status.

Policing in northern Ontario's cities: Some Stats

 

It does seem to have turned into Police Month here on Northern Economist given that the first four February posts have been reposting of a series I did for the Fraser Institute Blog on policing in Ontario.  Well, to add to that, some charts, and statistics on policing in the five major northern Ontario cities: Thunder Bay, Timmins, Greater Sudbury, Sault Ste. Marie, and North Bay. The data is from Statistics Canada - Table 35100077 - Police personnel and selected crime statistics, municipal police services, annually.  These provide an overview of police resources in these cities and perhaps the best way to start off is with an overview of crime.  

 

 

 

Figure 1 plots the Crime Severity Index for these five cities over the period from 2000 to 2021.  Crime Severity was on a downswing in all five of these cities from about 2010 to 2015 and since then appears to have increased.  Between 2015 and 2021, crime severity increases 19 percent in Thunder Bay, 61 percent in Timmins, 78 percent in Sault Ste. Marie, 48 percent in Sudbury and 67 percent in North Bay.  While in 2010, crime severity was highest in Thunder Bay,  by 2021 Thunder Bay’s crime severity had been surpassed by Timmins, Sault Ste. Marie, and North Bay.

 

 

 

Figure 2 plots the number of municipal police officers for each of these five cities and the largest forces are in Sudbury, followed by Thunder Bay, Sault Ste. Marie, North Bay and then Timmins. In 2021, Sudbury reported 257 officers while Thunder Bay had 238, the Sault 136, North Bay 98, and Timmins 81.  Between 2000 and 2021, all of these police forces grew but since 2015 the Timmins force has actually shrunk 5 percent while the Sault and Sudbury remained flat and Thunder Bay and North Bay grew 7 percent each. 

 

 

 

Of course, police forces also employ civilian and other personnel to support the officers and Figure 3 plots the total number of these employees for the 2000 to 2021 period also.  Relative to 2015, these have increased though after a lengthy prior period of staying flat.  However, the largest increases appear to characterize Sudbury and the Sault.  Between 2015 and 2021 the number of civilian and other personnel employed by police forces grew 10 percent for each of Thunder Bay and Timmins, 24 percent in North Bay, 42 percent in the Sault and 43 percent in Greater Sudbury. The ratios of supporting civilian staff to police officers vary across these communities.  For example, Thunder Bay has 1 civilian staffer per 2.4 police officers while Sudbury has 1 civilian staffer per 1.6 officers.  

 

 

 

Another comparison is provided in Figure 4  for  police officers adjusted for population, that is police officers per 100,000 population and suggests an overall long-term increase in all of these communities from 2000 to 2021.  The most officers per 100,000 population in 2021 is in Thunder Bay at 200 per 100,000 followed by Timmins at 192, then the Sault at 177, North Bay at 170 and Greater Sudbury at 152.  Since 2015, the number of officers per 100,000 has grown 5 percent in Thunder Bay, 6 percent in North Bay, stayed flat in the Sault, and actually declined by 2 percent in each of Timmins and Sudbury.

 

 

 

Finally, what is the relationship between policing and crime in these five northern Ontario cities.  Well, figures 5 and 6 plot two relationships.  Figure 5 plots the Crime Severity Index against police officers per 100,000 and puts in a linear trend and it shows a positive correlation between crime severity and police officers per 100,000 population with a fair amount of variation around the trend.  In terms of interpreting the result, it could mean that communities with more crime severity need more police officers, or it could be that communities with more police officers are able to report more crimes.  However, if one wants a better indicator of effectiveness, then figure 6 may be more helpful.  It plots the relationship between weighted clearance rates and the number of police officers per 100,000.  Clearance rates are the proportion of crimes that are cleared, that is a charge laid.  A weighted clearance rate attaches a higher weight to the clearance of more serious crimes such as homicides. The chart shows a positive correlation between clearance rates and the number of officers per 100,000 also with a fair amount of variation around the trend. 

 

 

 

So, what is the takeaway from all this?  First, policing resources and crime severity vary a great deal even within these five communities.  Some of them have seen substantial surges in crime severity since 2015.  Second, police forces not only employ police officers, but they have substantial civilian staff also and some of them have more support staff than others. An important question is if these additional staff are able to free up officers for more police work and how effective their supporting roles are, but this question is difficult to assess without a lot more analysis with more confounding factors considered.  Third, as limited an analysis as it is, having more police officers per 100,000 is correlated with higher clearance rates though how many convictions ultimately result is also something that requires more data. 

 

One wonders if any of these municipalities have actually done any analysis of the data they must obviously have that examines their staffing and the relationship between staffing, crime rates and crime severity and clearance rates.  One imagines that all of these municipalities have in place staff with statistics training to do data analytics that can then be used to assess their own needs and performance as well as make the case for resources when the need.  I am actually surprised there was not more mention of things like "more officers improve clearance rates" in much of the public discussion reported on police requests for hiring.  Or, for that matter that large proportions of many police forces are nearing retirement age and you need to plan for replacements.  On the other hand, I may simply have an over active imagination and assume a lot about the abilities of public sector entities to make effective cases on their own behalf.

Policing and Crime in Ontario, Part 4: estimating needs

 This post originally appeared on the Fraser Institute Blog February 7th. This is the fourth and final post in the series.

In estimating policing needs across Ontario municipalities, one approach is to estimate the determinants of police resources then compute a predicted staffing level. Using the results for the police regression estimated in the third post in this series, we can construct an estimate of police resources per 100,000 for each community based on community characteristics such as available property tax resources, population density and regional variation, and then compare actual staffing with what would be predicted by the regression.

The chart and table below present the results of this exercise and plot the actual number of police per 100,000 versus the predicted for each municipality, and rank the results by the size of the difference between the two amounts.

 

 

 

 

 

Brantford has the largest difference with 182 actual officers per 100,000 and a predicted level of 163 resulting, for 19 more officers per 100,000 than the model would predict. It’s followed by Oakville (16 more), Windsor (14 more) and Thunder Bay (13 more). Indeed, of these 30 municipalities, about half have more officers per 100,000 than predicted, ranging from Brantford (19) to Niagara Falls and Hamilton (approximately 1 each). Toronto is also just above its predicted staffing at about one officer more per 100,000 than predicted. The remaining municipalities have staffing below what the model would predict, ranging from about one officer per 100,000 less for Ottawa and Richmond Hill to Oshawa (12) and Kitchener (14).

Of course, these are estimates and there can be other extenuating factors that affect police staffing and hiring in respective municipalities as well as the weight of historical staffing patterns. For example, Windsor is a border city, with cross-border demands and traffic, and an entry point into Canada that requires more policing while Thunder Bay has long-standing issues with high homicide rates, which absorb substantial investigative resources. One also wonders if the presence of casinos in some of these cities may lead to a need for more resources. Moreover, like the rest of the labour force, police forces are aging and some of the proposed hiring may reflect replacements of retirements rather than overall staffing increases.

And for those municipalities that are part of regional police arrangements, the results provide an interesting comparison of what their population sizes suggest their policing resources should be and what they’re getting via a regional arrangement.

For example, Oakville, Burlington and Milton based on the Halton Region staffing all are assigned 117 officers per 100,000 population by the statistics. The predicted staffing per 100,000 is 101 for Oakville, 120 for Burlington and 113 for Milton. Whether this is reflected in actual day-to-day operations or is simply a statistical artefact is an interesting question. It’s also interesting that even though some municipalities are near the bottom in terms of actual police officers per 100,000 population relative to other large Ontario municipalities, they still have more officers than predicted.

However, these results may assist in revisiting the cases of Toronto, Hamilton, Sudbury and Thunder Bay mentioned at the outset of this series. In the case of Toronto, there are long-standing narratives that the police force is either overstaffed or understaffed. Moreover, this debate has occurred against a background of recent rising crime and rising policing costs, more complicated policing needs, issues of racism and defunding, calls for alternate investment in areas like homelessness or mental health, and responses to evolving events such as the recent violence on Toronto public transit. Hamilton has issues similar to Toronto and in the evolving debate over its proposed increases in the policing budget there’s the recent news that Hamilton had a historic drop in homicides in 2022. Does this mean that Hamilton’s police force is so effective that it does not need more officers? Or that Hamilton just got lucky in 2022 and crime rates are more random than one might imagine?

Making resource decisions in a heated, emotionally or politically charged debate environment driven by the events of the moment is not always the best policy approach. While empirical evidence is but one piece of the decision-making process, both Toronto and Hamilton appear to be very close to what the determinants in the models would predict their staffing levels to be, suggesting that other factors notwithstanding, at the very least, better deployment of existing resources may be something worth considering.

Sudbury, on the other hand has eight fewer officers per 100,000 population than the model would predict while Thunder Bay already has 14 more officers per 100,000 than one might expect. A simplistic interpretation of these results given their size would be that Sudbury should go ahead and hire more while Thunder Bay should not. However, if Sudbury is currently able to achieve its policing goals with fewer resources, then it should not automatically feel compelled to ramp them up. As for Thunder Bay, the picture there’s probably more complicated than even a regression equation can possibly imagine, but that still does not mean better deployment of existing resources should not be a complement to whatever else is deemed necessary.

The takeaway from all this is that policing and public safety is complex and complicated and more effort should be made to acquire evidence to support decision-making. The types of results are simply one piece of evidence that can go into resource allocation decisions at budget time, and municipal ratepayers and their city councils should make wise use of all available information. This is especially the case given the large increases in tax rates that seem to be marking municipal budget season in Ontario this year.

 

Policing and Crime in Ontario, Part 3: statistical relationships

 This post originally appeared on the Fraser Institute Blog, February 7th.

 

Crime rates and severity, as well as policing resources per person, can differ substantially across Ontario municipalities. Naturally, Ontarians want to know the relationship between crime and police resources, particularly when police forces are asking for more money.

The first chart below plots the number of police officers per 100,000 against the Crime Severity Index (CSI) in Ontario’s 30 largest municipalities. As illustrated, there’s a positive relationship between crime severity and police levels, which some might find counterintuitive as one would think that more police means less crime. However, as has been noted, it’s sometimes difficult to sort out if more police officers result in less crime or whether more crime leads to a call for more police resources and an increase in police officers. Or even if more officers and more crime are positively related because of more effective reporting and control of crime.

 

 

While one could interpret this as evidence that more crime requires more police, it remains that we must account for the aforementioned bidirectional nature of the relationship and this ultimately requires controlling for confounding factors before attempting to answer the question as to whether the crime severity in these communities supports the policing numbers.

The table below presents regression estimates of the determinants of crime severity and policing using data for the 30 largest Ontario municipalities in 2021 and with a methodology similar to other studies. The regression models first estimate a regression of the CSI on police officers per 100,000, average household income in the municipality, and regional variables placing the municipalities in either Northern, Eastern, Western, Central/GTA or the Niagara Peninsula (with Central/GTA as the omitted regional comparison variable). Northern municipalities are Thunder Bay and Sudbury. Eastern municipalities are Ottawa and Kingston. Western municipalities include London, Windsor and Chatham-Kent. The Niagara peninsula includes Hamilton, St. Catharines and Niagara Falls. The remainder are in the Central/GTA region.

 

 

To account for bidirectional or simultaneous effects, this regression was used to estimate a fitted CSI from the estimated coefficients, and it was then used in the police officers per 100,000 regression as the crime variable. The remaining determinants in the police regression were average residential property taxes for a three-bedroom bungalow as a measure of potential community resources, population density (persons per square kilometre), and then again, the set of regional variables, which are included to capture regional differences that might uniquely affect not only crime rates and severity but also the operation of police services. For example, Indigenous peoples comprise a larger population share of Northern Ontario and according to self-reported information from the 2009 General Social survey (GSS), aboriginal people were two times more likely than non-aboriginal people to experience violent victimization such as an assault, sexual assault or robbery (232 versus 114 incidents per 1,000 population). The approach is essentially a simultaneous equations technique and also uses weighted regression where observations were weighted by municipal population size thereby providing greater weight to larger population size municipalities.

The results show that variables significantly affecting crime severity positively include police officers per 100,000 population and the regional variable with Northern and Western Ontario demonstrating higher crime rates relative to the Central/GTA municipalities. As well, crime severity is negatively and significantly related to average household incomes in the municipality. Crime severity is also positively and significantly related to police officers per 100,000, which can be interpreted either as having more police officers per person results in more crime being reported and dealt with, or more crime requires more police officers.

In the police determinants regression, police officers per 100,000 is positively and significantly related to crime severity (fitted) and population density. The only regional variable that’s significant here is Western Ontario and that variable shows that Western Ontario has fewer police officers per 100,000 in relation to the Central/GTA region, all other things given. Both regressions explain a high proportion of the variation in the dependent variables.

Having established a statistical relationship between policing resources and crime rates after accounting for a number of confounding factors, the next step (in the fourth and final post of this blog series) is to use these results to see what predicted police staffing levels are like and how they compare to actual levels.

 

 

 

Policing and Crime in Ontario, Part 2: severity and levels

 This post originally appeared on the Fraser Institute Blog on February 6th.

While crime in Ontario has been rising recently, it’s still at comparatively low levels while the number the number of police officers per person is also relatively low. However, there are sometimes rather large differences across Ontario’s cities both in terms of police staffing, crime rates and crime severity. The reasons for these differences can be complex ranging from historical and institutional factors to geographic spread of municipalities and local policing environments rooted in different crime rates and types of crimes.

The chart below plots police officers per 100,000 population in 2021 for Ontario’s 30 largest municipalities by population and ranks them from highest to lowest. (Note that a number of these municipalities have regional police services and in the chart the per-person policing number for the regional service has been assigned to the municipality.) The average across these 30 municipalities is 144 officers per 100,000, which is below the provincial level of 176 per 100,000 reflecting higher police per 100,000 population in more rural or remote areas with large geographies and sparser populations.

 

 

The level of policing ranges from a high of 200.4 officers per 100,000 in Thunder Bay to a low of 117 per 100,000 for the set of communities in the Halton region—a substantial difference. The four highest number of officers per 100,000 are for Thunder Bay, Windsor, Brantford and Toronto, ranging respectively from 39 per cent to 17 per cent above the 30-municipality average of 144. Conversely, the four lowest communities of Milton, Burlington, Oakville and Waterloo (which incidentally are all part of regional forces) are respectively 12 per cent to 18 per cent below the average.

The second chart plots the ranked Crime Severity Index (CSI) for these 30 communities. The CSI is a relatively new tool that complements existing measures of traditional crime rates by taking severity and the volume of crime into account (Statistics Canada, 2009). All Criminal Code offences, including traffic offences and other federal statute offences, are included in the CSI. In the calculation of the CSI, each offence is assigned a weight, derived from average sentences handed down by criminal courts with more serious sentences on average for the crimes resulting in a higher weight for that offence. Thus, more serious offences (for example, homicides versus traffic offences) have a greater impact on changes in the index.

 

 

The results again show a substantial range in overall crime severity ranging from highs of 105 and 98 for Windsor and Thunder Bay to lows of about 23 for the Halton region communities of Oakville, Burlington and Milton with an average CSI across these 30 communities of 57. While there’s a wide range in crime severity across these Ontario cities, given that the CSI is standardized with Canada equal to 100, Ontario cities generally rank lower in crime severity than some other parts of Canada such as Manitoba, Saskatchewan and the Territories.

Again, it should be noted that a number of these municipalities have regional police services and the crime severity index as reported for the regional service has been assigned to the municipality. The communities with the highest crime severity are Windsor, Thunder Bay, Brantford and Sudbury, which range from 84 per cent to 54 per cent above the average crime severity. Meanwhile, for the communities at the bottom—Brampton, Oakville, Burlington and Milton—they are 35 per cent to 60 per cent below the average crime severity. Notably, the per cent differences from the average for crime severity across these communities is larger than the difference in policing resources.

Of course, when examining what crime is like in these same communities and ultimately what relation the municipality may have to policing resources, it’s important to bear in mind that the relationship between crime rates, crime severity and policing is bidirectional or somewhat murky. On the one hand, one would expect that more police, all other things given, should result in lower crime rates as more resources are brought to bear on the problems. At the same time, one might also find that higher crime rates spur calls for more police resources, which in turn results in the hiring of more police. Put another way, it’s sometimes difficult to sort out if more police officers result in less crime or more crime also leads to more police officers.

In the next post in this blog series, we’ll take a more in-depth look at the relationship between policing resources and crime severity in these Ontario communities.

 

 

Policing and Crime in Ontario: Part I

 

This is the first post in a blog series exploring the state of policing levels and crime rates in Ontario. This post first appeared on the Fraser Institute Blog, Feb. 3rd, 2023.

Municipal budget season in Ontario comes with an assortment of budgetary issues including proposed hefty increases in policing budgets partly fuelled by rising crime rates.

Recent proposals include:

• A 4.3 per cent increase of police spending in Toronto, which would increase the police budget by $48.3 million to $1.17 billion, and an increase of 200 officers (in light of a planned 5.5 per cent increase in property taxes, this proposal has generated much debate).
• A 5.6 per cent increase in the police budget in Sudbury, accompanied by a proposal for 15 new officer cadet hires and ultimately 24 new officer positions. The proposed hires come at a time when crime rates have not fluctuated a great deal.
• In Hamilton, the Police Services Board asked for a 6.7 per cent increase ($12 million) in its budget that includes 18 new civilian positions and 13 new officers yearly.
• In Thunder Bay, a proposed increase in the police budget for 2023 accounts for about one-third of the proposed 6.2 per cent tax levy increase and also includes the hiring of 21 positions.

When proposing these large budget requests, advocates often cite the effects of capital renewal, general inflation of operating costs, rising demand for police services given their more complicated roles (especially with respect to social and mental health issues) and rising crime rates—that is, the number of police service reported criminal code incidents per 100,000 population. As chart below shows, crimes rates in both Canada and Ontario have grown since 2015 but took a sharp drop in 2020 (the first pandemic year) and then resumed upwards.

However, by historical standards crime rates remain quite low. At the same time, policing numbers in both Canada and Ontario are also at comparatively low levels in terms of officers per 100,000 population over the 1986 to present period (see second chart below). Since the mid-1980s, there have been two peaks in officers per 100,000—1991 and 2010. Both peaks were followed by declines in the number of officers but the decline after 2010 appears more pronounced with officers per 100,000 population in Ontario declining from 200.3 in 2010 to 174.9 in 2019 (a 13 per cent drop) followed by a slight rebound to 176 by 2021.

 

 

 

Given these numbers are per 100,000 people, another factor in the demand for more officers is simply Ontario’s rapid population growth. Since 2010, Ontario’s population has increased from 13.1 million to 14.8 million (an increase of 13 per cent) while the total number of police officers has remained flat, hence the per-person decline.

In general, public debate on rising police costs should be considered within the context of overall public spending in Canada and the demands of a more complex society. Policing has evolved beyond just dealing with crime and includes a wider range of problem social behaviours, which are factors in police resource and expenditure growth.

The key question then in municipalities across Ontario is what should municipal councils do in response to demands for more policing? To answer that, we must know what the relationship between police resources and crime is and how that might shape the assorted requests across the province for larger police budgets. Given the diversity that is Ontario, in terms of the size and needs of its urban centres, there’s not a one-size-fits-all answer to such questions. In the next post in this series, we’ll explore the relationship between police staffing and crime severity across major Ontario municipalities.

 

 

Thunder Bay: The Challenges Ahead in 2022

 

The start of a new year is always a time for reflection on the past and a looking ahead to the future.  During a pandemic which has yet to see its end, the temptation is to simply to hunker down and focus on the present. Yet, Thunder Bay is a city that needs to look ahead given the collection of challenges that it faces.  One could summarize the challenges as threefold - the social fabric, the economy and civic finances – which are often considered as separate compartments, but which move together as one given, they are all related and intertwined.  Our tendency is always to compartmentalize because that is of the course the easiest way to try and understand the problems, but it is important to realize that the solutions themselves are not organized in watertight compartments.

 

To start with, there is the deteriorating social fabric that has created two Thunder Bays – a Thunder Bay of crime, homelessness, poverty and addiction and another that is a relatively prosperous enclave that on a day-to-day basis does not see the other side.  Intertwined with all of this has been a history of racism with respect to Indigenous peoples in the community. Occasionally, there is spill over between the two worlds especially with respect to crime and addiction but for the most part they are indeed two separate worlds.  One of the best recent overviews of poverty and social issues in Thunder Bay comes from a 2019 community report by the Wellesley Institute documenting Thunder Bay social and developmental indicators that lag the provincial average as well as note a high proportion of households with an average income below $20,000 .  Indeed, compared to the rest of the province, a higher proportion of youth in Thunder Bay live in low-income households.

 

The deteriorating social fabric has generated a growing long-term demand for emergency services. Indeed, many of the demands made on police, paramedics and fire are social and domestic disputes or relate to mental illness.  The statistics for crime are telling because while total criminal violations per 100,000 are down somewhat, those for homicides have been on an upward trend for quite a few years now as Figure 1 illustrates.  Table 1 illustrates the rate per 100,000 for several select criminal code violation categories and they suggest that despite an aging population and a decline in some types of crime, Thunder Bay has become a more violent place in general as the number of total violent criminal code violations per 100,000 has grown by 17 percent since 2015.  

 

 

 

Per 100,000 population, homicides have been the highest in the country for several years now while the city’s booming gang related drug trade has also resulted in a nearly 50 percent increase in total drug violations since 2015.  At the same time, the pandemic itself has resulted in fewer service calls for police especially around property crimes given more people are at home thereby better safeguarding property.  However, other emergency services – namely the Superior North EMS paramedic services have seen an increase in service calls per capita and are forecasting large increases well into the 2020s.  Indeed, even city officials have acknowledged that the rising demand for emergency services in general is leading to cost increases that are unsustainable when it comes to the city budget.

 

Aggravating the social distress by fueling homelessness is the rising cost of housing in the city both in terms of rents as well as the price of homes.  While Thunder Bay’s housing prices remain a far cry from Vancouver or the GTA, since 2010 they have grown at an uncharacteristically fast pace with the average MLS price being $144,034 in 2010 and forecast at $289,186 in 2022 as illustrated in Figure 2.  While the demographic trend towards smaller households and low interest rates have been factors as demand drivers, also important is the slow pace of new residential construction in Thunder Bay on the supply side.  Housing starts are at their lowest point in decades while new apartment construction has been unable to fill the gap.  The average of course masks the range in prices and there are homes approaching $1 million in Thunder Bay.  As for rents, since 2010, the average rent for a 2-bedroom apartment in Thunder Bay has grown from $761 to $1,089 while the rent for a larger three bedroom went from $867 to $1,358 – increases of 43 and 57 percent respectively.  

 

 

 

These social issues in the end are effectively compounded by an economy and by extension a property tax base that has not really grown in several decades.  As Figure 3 illustrates, employment in Thunder Bay has essentially been flat for almost 20 years.  If the rest of the province was in a similar boat that might be somewhat more palatable but going only forward from the Great Recession, Thunder Bay has seen a decline in employment growth not to mention a compositional shift. Indeed, a rising share of that employment – approximately 30 percent - is now in the broader public sector given the declines in industrial employment over the last two decades.  

 

 

 

For decades the top ten employers in Thunder Bay have been broader public sector institutions ranging from municipal, provincial, and federal governments to school boards, the hospital, and the post-secondary sector.  And of course, there is construction which has been increasingly dominated by public sector projects of one type or another. While the regional mining sector has been a bright side in Thunder Bay’s role as a mining services sector it remains that the mining sector in the region is not as labour intensive as it was in the past. And yet, Thunder Bay appears at least in some regards to still have some substantial gleams of prosperity if the number of shiny new trucks being driven around can be taken as an indicator.  But then, the pandemic has seen the city, like much of the country, awash in government support payments.

 

Which then brings us to the final challenge which is really driven by the first two.  The economy in the city and private sector wealth generation has not been robust.  We have a set of social issues which has been fueling increasing demand for services in health and emergency services – many which are provided by municipal government. And we have a municipal government whose finances are stretched given the demands being placed on it and the resources available.  The sources of municipal financing are threefold -the property tax, government grants and assorted user fees and other own source revenues including a dividend from the municipal telecom company.  Of these, only taxes and user fees are directly within the control of municipal government, and they make Thunder Bay property owners the main funders of increases in municipal spending.

 

In the case of Thunder Bay, the property tax is increasingly borne by the residential taxpayer especially given the decline in industrial and business assessments over the last two decades.  Grants in per capita terms have essentially been flat notwithstanding the COVID-19 supports which have helped fuel some of the surpluses of recent years.  Nonetheless, the 2022 budget exercise will be an important one given the projected gross tax levy increase of 2.44 percent which would raise the tax levy by almost $5 million and bring the total levy to nearly $209 million.  Water infrastructure issues are being dealt with by a 3 percent increase in water rates.  However, the gross- tax supported budget – when one adds the capital budget – will be up about 23 percent mainly because of the near doubling of the capital budget with major capital projects planned such as a new police station at nearly $60 million.  Given the limits of the tax base and available reserves, this new capital spending is going to be funded primarily by debt.  While interest rates are still at historic lows, increasing the city’s debt will have ramifications down the road with increased debt servicing costs.

 

There is no easy solution to these problems.  Crime and social problems cannot be solved on a municipal budget alone and require provincial and federal support.  At the same time, raising municipal taxation rates more will continue to place the burden of these problems squarely on the residential taxpayer.  The municipal tax base was designed to provide revenues to service property. It was not designed to provide a broad range of social and health services to the public.  Yet, municipal councillors do not always seem to be sensitive to this point.  In response to the release of the 2022 budget, one councillor has already stated that we should add $1 million to an already rising police budget –already up by $1.8 million - to hire more officers. How simply adding more officers will fix the complex problems of crime and social issues needs to be explained.  As another councillor has noted, the costs for emergency services are exceeding inflation for the city again reinforcing the issue of sustainability.  It is only a matter of time before yet another helpful councillor with aspirations of grandeur will suggest that tax increases should match the new higher inflation rates nearing 5 percent nationally.  Unfortunately, residential ratepayers pay taxes out of current incomes that do not rise lockstep with inflation.

 

If Thunder Bay wants to spend even more on police as a solution to its crime and social problems, then it will have to spend a lot less on other things.  In the absence of external resource increases from the provincial or federal government, you cannot spend more on police services and just as much more on everything else and limit the tax levy increase to 2.44 percent.  There really is no other way to explain it. 

 

Another Pandemic Effect: Falling Crime Rates

 

As analysis of the pandemic and its effects continues, here is another result: falling crime rates.  The police reported crime statistics for 2020 were released today and they show that in 2020 crime in Canada fell substantially after being on an upward trend since 2014.  As the accompanying Figure 1 shows, as measured by the crime severity index, crime rates fell from 2000 to 2014 and then began to increase to 2019.  

 

 

 

However, 2020 as a result of people being more at home saw a fall in crime.  For example, there were significantly lower rates of breaking and entering, robbery, shoplifting and theft which is not surprising given that people were largely at home safeguarding their property and retail access was severely limited by assorted pandemic restrictions.

 

Police-reported crime in Canada, as measured by the Crime Severity Index (CSI), decreased 8% in the first year of the pandemic—falling from 79.8 in 2019 to 73.4 in 2020. The CSI was 11% lower than a decade earlier in 2010.  One exception was an increase in police reported hate crimes which saw a 37 percent increase in 2020.  Homicide rates also increased as well as police-reported opioid offenses.

 

 

 

More interesting is a ranking of the change in CSI by Canadian CMA as shown in Figure 2.  The largest declines in crime severity were in Regina, Calgary, Ottawa, Barrie and Toronto and ranged from -20 percent to – 15 percent.  However, some cities nevertheless saw increases in crime severity even during the pandemic with the largest increases in Kingston (4%), Greater Sudbury (7%) and Peterborough (14%).  

 

 The two northern Ontario CMAs had quite different profiles this time with Thunder Bay mirroring the national trend coming in with a decline of 8 percent whereas Sudbury saw an increase. Nonetheless, crime severity is still higher in Thunder Bay relative to Sudbury though the gap closed considerably in 2020.   Sudbury saw increases in identity fraud, homicide and breaking and entering.  Thunder Bay saw decreases in breaking and entering, shoplifting and theft though homicides were up.

 

However, the crime severity index is different from police reported crime rates.  One is a weighted index with 2006 set at 100 while the other is the number of actual police reported crimes per 100,000 population. Here both Sudbury and Thunder Bay saw a decline in the number of police reported crimes per 100,000 population with Thunder Bay reporting a 16 percent drop and Greater Sudbury a 6 percent drop.  The crime rate (as opposed to crime severity index) in 2020 was down in all the Canadian CMAs except one - Peterborough - which saw a 5 percent increase. 

Of course, you are probably keenly interested in which CMA was number one for homicides in 2020 as measured by the homicide rate.   Thunder Bay had 8 homicides in 2020 for a rate per 100,000 of 6.35 - putting it once again in the top spot for CMA homicide rates in Canada.

Why Understanding Crime Numbers Is Important for Public Policy

The meetings currently underway in Thunder Bay for police service boards and chiefs is focusing on challenges facing the north and in particular those dealing with guns, drugs and gangs.  In particular, the lack of funding for addressing what is perceived to be escalating crime is a major grievance given that the federal government has transferred money to the Ontario government to fight gangs, drugs and gun related activity but to date the province has apparently only chosen to assist Toronto and Ottawa.  Jeff McGuire, executive director of the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police, is in Thunder Bay for the meetings and stated: “I think the government had the right intentions, there were serious guns and gangs issues going on at that moment in Toronto and GTA area. Members of OACP were quick to point out it’s not just a GTA challenge.”

What is interesting when looking at this issue is taking a look at the violent crime statistics.  Figure 1 plots total violent crimes from 1998 to 2018 for Thunder Bay, Toronto and Ottawa.   If a provincial government politician handing out money to fight growing violent crime is deciding on where need was most urgent based on Figure 1, they would automatically judge that need was greatest in Toronto.   Toronto not only has the most violent crime incidents of the three cities but also what seems visually to be a rapidly escalating problem since 2015 - which by the way was preceded by a long decline.  Indeed, after a period of decline, all three cities have seen an increase in total violent crime largely related to increased gang and drug activity, but Toronto has the most violent crimes, followed by Ottawa and then Thunder Bay.

 

However, making the decision only based on total volume misses the point that crime is not only about total scale but also intensity relative to the size of local populations. Toronto and the GTA does indeed have the most violent crime, but it also accounts for almost half of Ontario’s population.  What is also relevant is crime per person or per capita which adjusts for total population size.

 

Figure 2 plots the number of violent crimes per 100,000 population and here the difference is startling.  While all three cities have seen an increase in violent crimes per capita over the last three years, Thunder Bay’s rate is practically double that of either Ottawa or Toronto.  Its policing numbers and resources per capita are definitely not double those of either city.  Some help is obviously needed.

The provincial government does need to address the local policing situation though as has been noted, more money alone will not solve the problem.  We need to understand why it is that after years of decline, violent crime in all three cities is now trending upwards.  As was noted by Jeff McGuire, there are other issues to be addressed including mental health, poverty and firearm access. Nevertheless, a good start would be understanding the distinction between totals and per capita amounts and making it part of any decision making process that allocates new resources.

Crime and the Economy: Are Low Interest Rates a Factor?

The most recent set of crime statistics for Canada revealed that police-reported crime in Canada, as measured by both the crime rate and the Crime Severity Index (CSI), increased for the fourth consecutive year in 2018, rising 2%.  The accompanying figure below further reinforces the fact that after years of decline – a decline that stretches back to the 1990s – crime rates are rising.  Of course, all of this begs the question as to why crime rates are rising again after years of decline.

Explaining the drop in crime rates has been a source of some debate.  The fall in crime rates since the 1990s in Canada as well as the United States has been attributed to a number of factors including new policing strategies, changes in the market for illegal drugs, an aging population, a stronger economy, tougher gun control laws and increases in police numbers. As for the impact of the economy on crime, well that is also a source of debate. 

On the one hand, the intuitive feeling is that a weak economy should cause people to turn to crime.  Yet, many studies of the relationship between the economy and crime have found statistically small relationships between unemployment and property crime and often no relationship between violent crime and unemployment.  It has also been argued that economic downturns may actually reduce criminal opportunities as when unemployment is high more people are at home "protecting" their property and when out and about they carry less cash and possessions.

If the latter is the case, one could make the argument that the strengthening economy of the last couple of years has been a key factor in fueling the recent surge in crime.  Unemployment rates in Canada are at historic lows and to add fuel to the fire – so are interest rates.  Low interest rates mean that even if more employment today is part-time or uncertain, people are still able to consume more and go out more simply by borrowing more.  Indeed, Statistics Canada also noted recently that the seasonally adjusted household credit market debt to disposable income ratio increased to 178.5 percent in the 4^th quarter of 2018. 

More debt to fuel spending on homes and basic consumption frees up resources to spend on more illicit things like illegal drugs and much of the recent crime increase is drug related. 

With unemployment low and cheap money sloshing around both fueling spending and consumption, the opportunities for crime may have mounted. It is certainly a point worth considering.