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Ottawa ranks among the country’s top 10 safest cities, according to 2023 crime severity statistics recently published by Statistics Canada.
The Crime Severity Index, or CSI, monitors the severity level of police-reported crime. Statistics Canada says the index accounts for both the amount of crime reported by police in a community and the seriousness of the crimes.
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Ottawa ranked seventh among Canada’s biggest cities for crime severity, with an overall crime severity index of 55.8. However, Ottawa’s CSI increased by 3.1 per cent between 2022 to 2023.
The national capital’s violent crime index was 66.5 in 2023, down 1.6 per cent from the year prior. Non-violent crime, however, increased by 5.6 per cent, the data said.
Halton Region, which includes Oakville, Burlington and Milton, has the lowest CSI of 31.4, followed by Durham Region with 46.8.
Major cities with the highest CSI included Winnipeg at 135.8, Saskatoon at 116, Edmonton at 113, Surrey, B.C., at 110 and Vancouver at 97.
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The index includes all Criminal Code violations including traffic, as well as drug violations and all federal statutes.
“In the Index, all crimes are assigned a weight based on their seriousness. The level of seriousness is based on actual sentences handed down by the courts in all provinces and territories,” Statistics Canada said. “More serious crimes are assigned higher weights, and less serious offences lower weights. As a result, more serious offences have a greater impact on changes in the Index. These weights are updated using data from the Integrated Criminal Courts Survey (ICCS) every 5 years.”
The CSI “provides a better understanding of the impact that crime has on individual community members, their families, and the community as a whole,” The University of Waterloo’s Canadian Index of Wellbeing project said.
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