Canadian crime statistics

[Bar Sinister]

Actually Sir Joseph, I don't think you can give the Liberals too much credit on this one. To a large extent crime is demographic and economic. Canada's population is aging and older people tend to commit fewer crimes. You might note that there are more young people in Western Canada as well as larger numbers of people of Aboriginal origin. Unfortunately, these two groups tend to have higher crime rates. Giving Liberals credit for lower crime rates would be equivalent to blaming the NDP governments of Saskatchewan and Manitoba for their higher crime rates and since NDP policies tend to be more liberal than those of the Liberals it seems a bit contradictory.

 

[SirJosephPorter]

Actually Sir Joseph, I don't think you can give the Liberals too much credit on this one. To a large extent crime is demographic and economic. Canada's population is aging and older people tend to commit fewer crimes. You might note that there are more young people in Western Canada as well as larger numbers of people of Aboriginal origin. Unfortunately, these two groups tend to have higher crime rates. Giving Liberals credit for lower crime rates would be equivalent to blaming the NDP governments of Saskatchewan and Manitoba for their higher crime rates and since NDP policies tend to be more liberal than those of the Liberals it seems a bit contradictory.

No doubt there were several factors which contributed to the low crime rate. As you rightly point out, demographics probably was important, people are getting too old to commit crimes.

However, in a simplistic way, people give credit or the blame to the government in power. And I wouldn’t blame NDP governments in SK or Manitoba for anything. While crime rate in Saskatchewan and Manitoba is high, it is falling, same as everywhere in Canada. So if NDP inherited high crime rate and it is going down (if still high compared to rest of Canada), NDP can hardly be blamed for that. If anything, it gets the credit for lower crime rate.