Select ratingPoorOkayGoodGreatAwesome

No votes yet

Chief Economist Bernie Magnan

After several years of The Vancouver Board of Trade campaigning over misleading crime statistics, Statistics Canada is conducting a survey on the effectiveness of carrying out annual Criminal Victimization Surveys. Presently, this survey is conducted every five years. The last Survey conducted in 2004 indicated that crime was three times higher than those reported to police.

The news comes at the same time as Vancouver Police Chief Jim Chu’s unveiling of the VPD’s five-year strategic plan yesterday with a promise to reduce property crime by 20 per cent – the worst crime problem in the city.

The Board has long argued that only about one third of actual crimes in Canada are reported to police, and yet police statistics are widely quoted as representing actual crime rates.

“By referring to the annual police statistics as representing actual crime rates, the policy-makers, the media, the judicial system and the public are misled as to the level of crime in Canada,” Board chairman Henry Lee has written in past letters to the Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the Minister of Industry, Maxime Bernier (in charge of Statistics Canada).

Statistics Canada is currently researching the need for conducting the Criminal Victimization Survey on an annual basis. Canada would then have data comparable to Criminal Victimization Surveys conducted on an annual basis in the U.S.

“This is real progress for us. Statistics Canada has taken notice and, if the results are positive, Canadians will at last be able to see a more accurate picture of crime levels in this country,” said Bernie Magnan, chief economist, The Vancouver Board of Trade.

In September last year, The Vancouver Board of Trade also gained the support of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce to adopt a resolution “that the federal government direct Statistics Canada to carry out the Criminal Victimization Survey annually and provide Statistics Canada with the appropriate funds to do so, fiscal condition permitting, in order to give policy-makers, police, the justice system and public a better measure of actual crime rates in Canada.”