Toronto viewed as unsafe
Mainstreet Research polled 4,231 Canadians and asked how they felt about the safety of 15 cities in their country. The respondents were asked if they found the cities to be either very safe or safe or if they found them to be unsafe.
Toronto wasn’t viewed as most unsafe. That dubious distinction fell to Winnipeg. Fifty-six percent of respondents felt Winnipeg to be unsafe but T.O. was second, with 47 percent saying they felt Toronto was unsafe; in third place was Montreal, with 44 percent viewing Montreal as unsafe.
Toronto was viewed as safe by 46 percent, while 7 percent were unsure.
Stats Canada numbers
As Mainstream notes in a press release, stats from the federal government show a different picture. The Stats Canada Crime Severity Index does find Winnipeg to have the most police reported crime among Canadian Census Metropolitan Areas (CMAs).
But Winnipeg is followed by Thunder Bay, Saskatoon, Regina and Edmonton — with Vancouver, Kelowna and Abbotsford-Mission in B.C. all ranking high. When it comes to police reported crimes, on a per-capita rated level Toronto ranks among the safer cities in Canada, 30th down the list. Montreal has more police reported crime than Toronto but is 10th down the list.
In the poll, respondents view Ottawa, with 72 percent calling it very safe or safe, as Canada’s safest city. In the Stats Can Index Ottawa is ranked safer than 28 other Canadian cities in police reported crimes. The Mainstream poll is considerate accurate 19 out of 20 times with a margin of error of 1.52 percent.
While Toronto just had its 42nd murder of the year in 2016, their numbers pale when compared to U.S. cities. For example in 2015 Chicago had 468 murders. And while it has a population of only 319,000 (Toronto has 2.6 million), in 2014 St. Louis had America’s highest per capita murder rate with 159 murders.
