You are Much More Likely to be a Victim of Violent Crime in Canada than the United States. Total violent crime in Canada is 295% higher than the US.
Although the media and most public discussions focus on crimes reported to the police, victims report only a small share of violent crimes. This distinction becomes especially important when making international comparisons because reporting rates can vary dramatically across countries. For example, Statistics Canada found that victims reported only 24% of violent crimes to the police in 2019. In the same year, the comparable reporting rate in the United States was 41%. In 2024, 48.1% of violent crimes in the US were reported to the police. Everything else being equal, the higher reporting rate in the United States would make its violent crime rate appear 41% higher than Canada’s in 2019 (41%/29%=1.41), even if both countries experienced exactly the same level of violent crime.
Still, even with this relative bias against the US, Canada’s total violent crime rate in 2019 was 295% higher than the rate in the US. Even removing rape/sexual assault to remove the bias agains the Canadian numbers but leaving assault so that there is still the bias against the US numbers, the Canadian violent crime rate is still 175% higher than the rate in the US. In addition, the robbery data is highly comparable between the two surveys and the robbery rate in Canada is 268% higher than in the US. Canadians are about 366 times more likely to be robbed than they are to be a homicide victim.
