The Business & Community Newsletter – November 2016

Police-reported crime in Canada, as measured by both the Crime Severity Index (CSI) and the crime rate, increased in 2015. This marked the first rise in police-reported crime in 12 years. The CSI grew 5% from 2014 to 2015, but was 31% lower than it was a decade earlier in 2005.

The rise in the CSI, which measures the volume and severity of police-reported crime, was primarily a result of more incidents of fraud, breaking and entering, robbery, and homicide. A notable increase in crime reported in Alberta and smaller increases in British Columbia, Ontario and Saskatchewan also contributed to the upward movement of the national CSI.

The traditional police-reported crime rate, which measures the volume of police-reported crime relative to the population size, also increased in 2015, rising 3% from the previous year. While the crime rate grew in 2015, it has generally been on a downward trend since the early 1990s, with the only other increase reported in 2003.

For more analysis and data, please consult Police-reported crime statistics, 2015.

There were nearly 33,000 cases completed in youth courts in Canada in 2014/2015, about 19% fewer cases than in the previous year. The number of completed cases in youth courts was the lowest since these data were first collected more than two decades ago. A declining trend was also observed in the rate of youth charged by police over the last decade.

The number of completed cases in youth court decreased in all provinces and territories, except Nova Scotia (+2%). The Northwest Territories (-40%) recorded the largest year-over-year decline in completed youth court cases, followed by Newfoundland and Labrador (-29%) and Alberta (-29%).

In 2014/2015, the most often heard cases in youth court were theft (11%), common assault (8%), breaking and entering (8%), failure to comply with an order (7%), and mischief (6%).

Using data from the Integrated Criminal Court Survey (ICCS), the article “Youth court statistics in Canada, 2014/2015” presents information on youth court cases completed in Canada in 2014/2015. It highlights key youth court indicators such as the number of completed charges and cases, case decisions, sentencing outcomes, and case processing times. This article also presents trends over time and some characteristics of youth who appear in court.

In 2014, 28% of Aboriginal people aged 15 and older (about 275,000) reported that they or their household had been a victim in the previous 12 months of at least one of the eight types of crime measured by the General Social Survey (GSS) on Victimization. This was a higher proportion than for non-Aboriginal people (18%). The analysis in this release is based on provincial and territorial data from the 2014 GSS on Victimization.

The proportion of Aboriginal people who reported having been victimized decreased from 38% in 2009 to 28% in 2014 in the provinces and from 36% to 28% in the territories.

The overall violent victimization rate—which includes sexual assault, robbery and physical assault—was 163 incidents per 1,000 people among Aboriginal people in Canada in 2014, more than double the rate among non-Aboriginal people (74 incidents per 1,000 people).

Rates of almost all types of violent victimization were higher for Aboriginal people than for non-Aboriginal people. Specifically, the sexual assault rate of Aboriginal people (58 incidents per 1,000 people) was almost three times that of non-Aboriginal people (20 per 1,000), while the physical assault rate of Aboriginal people (90 per 1,000) was nearly double that of non-Aboriginal people (47 per 1,000).

The article “Victimization of Aboriginal people in Canada, 2014” uses data from the 2014 General Social Survey on Victimization to present information on Aboriginal victimization, with a particular focus on violent victimization. Characteristics associated with these incidents, including possible risk factors, as well as consequences of victimization, reasons for reporting or not reporting the victimization to the police, perceptions of personal safety, and perceptions of the criminal justice system are also explored.

One in three Canadians living in the provinces has experienced a major emergency or disaster in their community during their lifetime that severely disrupted their daily lives.

According to results from the 2014 Survey of Emergency Preparedness and Resilience (SEPR) in Canada, blizzards, winter storms or ice storms were the most commonly reported emergency or disaster, experienced by 46% of the more than 9 million Canadians who endured a major emergency or disaster. This was followed by extended power outages that lasted 24 hours or longer (36%) and floods (12%).

According to the SEPR, the most common disruptions to daily lives experienced by victims of major emergencies or disasters were an inability to use electrical appliances (63%), missing work or school (61%) or missing an appointment or planned activity (52%).

These findings come from the report titled “Canadians' experiences with emergencies and disasters, 2014”, which investigates the experiences of Canadians aged 15 and over from across the 10 provinces with emergencies and disasters, as well as the socio-demographic characteristics of those affected.

In addition, Emergency preparedness and resilience: Community-based fact sheets, 2014 are also available. Each fact sheet outlines the following: risk awareness and anticipated sources of help in an emergency or disaster; prior lifetime experience with a major emergency or disaster; emergency planning, precautionary and fire safety behaviours; and, social networks and sense of belonging. The fact sheets are divided into five regions: the Atlantic provinces, Quebec, Ontario, the Prairie provinces and British Columbia. There are 63 community-level fact sheets, and there is one additional fact sheet per province with results from residents of smaller communities.

If you are interested in crime and justice, you will love Juristat – a publication of Statistics Canada that provides in-depth analysis and detailed statistics on a variety of justice-related topics and issues such as victim services, shelters for abused women, legal aid, police resources, firearm and violent crimes.

Through an e-mail notification service, it is easy to get a free subscription to the online edition of Juristat.

Once you subscribe to the electronic version, you will receive email notification when the latest version of Juristat is released. The email will include a link, providing you with instant access to the publication.

Now that Canadians have completed their 2016 Census questionnaire, the census is hardly over. From planning to dissemination of data, the census is a multi-year affair. The data are being compiled and analyzed as we speak and the first set of data, those on population and dwelling count, will be released on February 8, 2017.

Until then, we thought it would be a good idea to look at some of the planning that goes into a census program. In the 2016 Census, for example, while most households received the short form with only 10 questions on such topics as household composition, age, sex, marital status and language, one in four households were also asked to answer additional questions on education, ethnicity, mobility, labour market activities, employment and others. So how does Statistics Canada determine what questions to include on a census questionnaire?

Before each census, Statistics Canada undertakes a user consultation and testing program, taking into account emerging social and economic issues to:

The users we speak to include federal departments, provincial/territorial and municipal governments, organizations representing or providing services to Aboriginal peoples, Canadians with disabilities, immigrant communities, academia, non-profit organizations, and the general public. They are asked for their views on the type of information they feel should be available from the census.

Many things have to be considered before a question is included on the census. The first step is to look at the information needs, i.e. the relevance and quality requirements of users. This includes the size of the population of interest, suitability of alternative sources, and comparability across Canada and continuity over time. The second step is to consider the time it takes for people to complete the census (respondent burden) and privacy concerns. The third step is to look at Statistics Canada considerations, such as the costs, operational factors, and safeguards against loss of data quality and efficiency in both the census and other Statistics Canada programs.

Questions are then tested for quality and quantity. In other words, are the questions well understood and answered in sufficient numbers to provide reliable and relevant data. This includes testing in an actual collection environment, which take places around two years before the actual census.

The final questions are presented to and approved by Cabinet and published in the Canada Gazette.

The next census will take place in the spring of 2021. Statistics Canada is already hard at work planning for it. Consultations on census content for 2021 will take place in 2017. The agency will seek to further refine collection processes, with a view to ensuring the 2021 Census continues to improve inclusiveness, data quality and efficiency.

Stay tuned for more details on the consultation program so that you can have your say. For more information on the census consultation, visit Statistics Canada's website and select Census Program.