Crime Statistics in Ontario 2026 | Key Facts

Crime in Ontario: The Full Provincial Picture in 2026

Ontario remains one of the safer provinces in Canada by nearly every measure that Statistics Canada tracks — and the most recent data, released in July 2025 covering the 2024 calendar year, confirms that position firmly. Ontario’s Crime Severity Index (CSI) decreased 1% from 2023, placing the province among the lowest CSIs in the country alongside Quebec and Prince Edward Island. At the national level, Canada’s overall CSI fell 4% in 2024 — the second decrease in a decade — driven largely by a 6% drop in non-violent crime severity. Ontario contributed meaningfully: the province posted an 18% decline in motor vehicle theft, among the largest provincial drops in the country, helping drive the national auto theft rate down 17% to 239 incidents per 100,000 population in 2024.

But Ontario’s 2026 crime picture is far from a single story of decline. While Ontario homicides fell by 30 in 2024 — one of the largest provincial drops nationally, alongside British Columbia’s 32-homicide decrease — intimate partner violence rose 18.1% province-wide according to Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) data, with 6,289 victims recorded in 2024 versus 5,326 in 2023. Firearm-related violent crime in Ontario climbed sharply in recent years, with Toronto driving roughly 70% of the national increase in 2022 alone. And shoplifting under $5,000 surged 18% nationally in 2024 — its fourth consecutive year of increases. This article lays out every verified statistic shaping Ontario’s crime landscape as of 2026, sourced from Statistics Canada, the OPP, Toronto Police Service, and provincial data portals.

🔑 Key Facts: Crime Statistics in Ontario 2026

ONTARIO CRIME SNAPSHOT — 2024 DATA (LATEST VERIFIED, STATCAN JULY 2025)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Ontario CSI change (2024)        ████                       -1% vs 2023
Canada national CSI (2024)       ████████████████████████████  77.9
PEI CSI (lowest, 2024)           ███████████████████████████  72.6
Ontario homicide decrease (2024) ████████████████              -30 homicides
Auto theft decline (Ontario)     ████████████████████████      -18% (2024)
National auto theft rate (2024)  ████████████████████████      239 per 100,000 (-17%)
Violent crime rate (Ontario)     ████████████                  1,201 per 100,000
IPV victims (Ontario, 2024)      ████████████████              6,289 (+18.1%)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Source: Statistics Canada Police-Reported Crime Statistics 2024 (July 22, 2025), Made in CA (January 2026), CBC News (July 2025), CrimeCanada.ca (April 2026), Ontario Data Catalogue (data.ontario.ca)

The single most important number in this table for Ontario’s national standing is its CSI sitting below the national average of 77.9 — far below the Prairie provinces, where Saskatchewan’s 153.9 and Manitoba’s 141.2 are roughly double Ontario’s level. Ontario’s 1% CSI decline in 2024 places it alongside Quebec and Prince Edward Island as the three provinces with consistently the lowest crime severity in the country, a pattern that reflects Ontario’s large urban populations, diversified economy, and well-resourced policing, particularly in the Greater Toronto Area.

At the same time, the 18.1% rise in intimate partner violence victims recorded by the OPP — reaching 6,289 in 2024 — contrasts sharply with the broadly positive headline trends elsewhere. Ontario’s IPV rate has grown from 233 per 100,000 in 2018 to 278 in 2024, a 19% increase over six years that has outpaced the national rate increase of 14%. This divergence — falling severe violent crime overall, but rising family and intimate partner violence — is one of the defining tensions in Ontario’s 2026 crime data, reflecting both genuinely rising incident volumes and improved reporting and police coordination.

1. Ontario Crime Severity Index & Provincial Comparison 2026

CRIME SEVERITY INDEX BY PROVINCE — 2024 (STATCAN)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Saskatchewan (highest)   ████████████████████████████████████████  153.9
Manitoba                 ████████████████████████████████████      141.2
Canada (national)        ████████████████████████                  77.9
Ontario                  ███████████████████████                   ~76 (-1%)
Quebec                   ███████████████████████                   ~76 (+1%)
Prince Edward Island     ███████████████████████                   72.6 (lowest province)
British Columbia         ████████████████████████                   (-11% YoY, biggest drop)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Source: Statistics Canada Police-Reported Crime Statistics in Canada 2024 (July 22, 2025), Made in CA (January 2026)

Ontario’s standing as one of the three lowest-CSI provinces in Canada — alongside Quebec and PEI — is not a one-year anomaly; it reflects a structural pattern across multiple Statistics Canada release cycles. The contrast with the Prairie provinces is stark: Saskatchewan’s CSI of 153.9 is roughly double Ontario’s level, and Manitoba’s 141.2 isn’t far behind. These differences are driven primarily by non-violent crime severity — property crime, drug offences, and theft — which concentrate more heavily in provinces with larger rural populations and fewer social services. Ontario’s urban concentration in the GTA, Ottawa, and the Golden Horseshoe gives it economies of scale in policing that smaller, more dispersed provinces cannot replicate.

The territorial figures — Northwest Territories at 526.9, Nunavut at 415.2, and Yukon at 209.2 — dwarf every provincial figure by three to seven times. While these don’t affect Ontario’s ranking directly, they show how national averages get pulled upward by very small-population jurisdictions. Ontario’s 1% decline in 2024 becomes more significant given that 3 of 10 provinces saw their CSI rise that year — Ontario was on the right side of a genuinely divided national trend.

2. Homicide, Firearms & Violent Crime Statistics in Ontario 2026

HOMICIDE CHANGE BY PROVINCE — 2024 (LARGEST DROPS, STATCAN)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
British Columbia    ████████████████████████████████████  -32 homicides
Ontario             ████████████████████████████████      -30 homicides
Manitoba            ██████████████████                    -15 homicides
National total 2024 ████████████████████████████████████  778 (-14%)
Newfoundland & Lab. ████                                   +5 homicides (rose)
Territories (all 3) ████████                               Rose overall
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Source: Statistics Canada Police-Reported Crime Statistics 2024 (July 2025), Statistics Canada Firearms and Violent Crime 2022 (January 2024), CrimeCanada.ca (April 2026), Globalnews.ca (December 2025)

The 30-homicide decrease in Ontario during 2024 is the second-largest provincial improvement in Canada, trailing only BC’s 32-homicide drop. Together, these two provinces drive most of the national 14% homicide decline — the first such drop after four straight years of increases. With Ontario’s violent crime rate of 1,201 per 100,000 below the national average, and Toronto confirming a homicide drop to 45 in 2025 from 85 in 2024, both datasets tell a consistent story of broad-based reduction in lethal violence.

The firearms data reveals a more complicated recent history. In 2022, Ontario recorded 4,791 firearm-related violent crimes — up 1,016 over 2021, roughly 70% of the national increase that year. Toronto CMA alone added 725 incidents, reaching 2,576 after three years of decline. This pushed Ontario’s rate to 32.1 per 100,000 (+24%), and the national rate to its highest since 2009 at 36.7. The subsequent response — Bill C-21’s handgun freeze, tougher trafficking penalties, and coordinated OPP/TPS operations targeting illegal US firearms — appears to be contributing to the homicide and shooting declines now visible.

3. Auto Theft & Property Crime Statistics in Ontario 2026

MOTOR VEHICLE THEFT RATE — CANADA NATIONAL TREND
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
2003 (historic peak)   ████████████████████████████████████████  100% (peak)
2020 (historic low)    ████████████████████                      Lowest on record
2023 (3-yr rise +40%)  ████████████████████████████████          ~288 per 100,000
2024 (national)        ████████████████████████████              239 per 100,000 (-17%)
2024 vs 2003 peak      ███████████████                            43% of historic peak
Ontario decline (2024) ████████████████████████                  -18%
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Source: Statistics Canada Police-Reported Crime Statistics 2024 (July 2025), Toronto Police Service Data (December 2025), Government of Canada National Action Plan on Combatting Auto Theft (2024)

The auto theft turnaround across Ontario is one of the clearest policy success stories in the province’s recent data. The national rate falling 17% to 239 per 100,000 in 2024 reversed a 40% three-year increase that prompted a National Summit on Combatting Auto Theft. Ontario’s 18% provincial decline was among the largest contributors, second only to Quebec’s 27% drop. Toronto’s data — a 25.5% drop to 7,044 incidents in 2025, down from a 2023 peak of 12,143 vehicles worth $790 million — shows how concentrated Ontario’s problem had become in the GTA, and how concentrated the recovery has been too.

The shoplifting trend runs the opposite direction and deserves equal attention given Ontario’s massive retail sector. 182,361 incidents of shoplifting under $5,000 were reported nationally in 2024 — a 14% increase, the fourth consecutive year of growth and a cumulative 66% rise over that period. While Statistics Canada doesn’t isolate Ontario’s exact figure, the trend tracks retail density and cost-of-living pressures — both pronounced in the province’s urban centres. Retailers across the GTA, Ottawa, and southwestern Ontario have cited rising “organized retail crime” as a growing cost through 2025 and into 2026.

4. Intimate Partner Violence & Family Violence Statistics in Ontario 2026

INTIMATE PARTNER VIOLENCE — ONTARIO TREND (OPP DATA)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
2018 (Ontario rate)   ████████████████████              233 per 100,000
2022 (Ontario)        ████████████████████████          5,326 victims context*
2023 (Ontario)        ████████████████████████          5,326 victims (OPP)
2024 (Ontario)        ████████████████████████████      6,289 victims (+18.1%)
2024 (Ontario rate)   ████████████████████████          278 per 100,000 (+19% since 2018)
National rate growth  ████████████████████              +14% (2018–2024)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Source: OPP data via CBC News (July 2025), Statistics Canada Trends in Family Violence and IPV 2024 (October 28, 2025), Toronto Police Service Data Portal (November 2025), Ottawa Police Service (January 2026)

Intimate partner violence is the clearest counter-narrative to Ontario’s otherwise improving statistics, and trend lines genuinely diverge by geography. At the provincial OPP level, the 18.1% jump to 6,289 victims in 2024 — following a 13.5% increase the year before — represents two years of double-digit growth across rural and regional Ontario, areas the OPP primarily polices. Eastern counties like Lanark and Renfrew have flagged rising crisis calls, with victim services reporting a 24% increase in referrals for IPV, sexual assault, and trafficking cases between the 2023–24 and 2024–25 service years.

Yet Toronto’s IPV data tells a different story at the city level: occurrences stayed essentially flat for a decade, moving from 18,584 in 2014 to 18,122 in 2024 — under half a percent change, fluctuating within 17,200 to 19,300 every year. This stability, despite a decade of legislation, City funding, and Council’s 2023 declaration of gender-based violence as an epidemic — the first by a major Canadian city — suggests Toronto’s IPV volume has resisted policy intervention, even as rural Ontario shows accelerating growth. National data confirms the gendered pattern: 78% of the 128,175 IPV victims aged 12+ in 2024 were women and girls, with risk peaking at age 30 for women (1,146 per 100,000) — nearly four times the peak rate for men (308 at age 38).

5. Fraud, Cybercrime & Emerging Crime Trends in Ontario 2026

NATIONAL CYBERCRIME & FRAUD TRENDS — 2024 (CONTEXT FOR ONTARIO)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Cybercrime rate (2018)         ████████████              92 per 100,000
Cybercrime rate (2024)         ████████████████████████  225 per 100,000 (+144%)
Cybercrime change (2024 only) ▼                          -9% (first dip)
Extortion rate growth          ████████████████████████  +35% (2024, 4th yr rise)
Shoplifting growth (4-yr)      ████████████████████████  +66% since ~2020
Child pornography rate (2024)  ████████                  -15% (after 54% rise in 2023)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Source: Statistics Canada Police-Reported Crime Statistics 2024 (July 22, 2025), staysafevancouver.com (November 2025)

The fraud and cybercrime landscape is where Ontario’s crime story shifts from physical to digital — and the trend lines are almost uniformly concerning, even as violent and property crime improve. The 144% increase in Canada’s cybercrime rate since 2018 — even with a 9% dip in 2024 — places fraud, extortion, and cyber offences among the fastest-growing crime categories, and Ontario’s status as the largest population centre and financial hub means it bears a disproportionate share. The 35% surge in extortion — now four times higher than a decade ago and nearly half cyber-related — reflects growing sextortion, ransomware, and online intimidation that Ontario police have flagged as a rising workload.

The 66% four-year increase in shoplifting is perhaps the most visible of these trends to Ontarians, given its frequent appearance in local news across the GTA, Ottawa, and southwestern Ontario since 2022. With shoplifting under $5,000 reaching 182,361 national incidents in 2024 — a 14% single-year jump — and Ontario the largest contributor to national retail volume, this persistent rise is shaping how retailers and police allocate resources heading into 2026. Combined with the fact that only about 11% of fraud victims report to police, true fraud-related victimization across Ontario is almost certainly several multiples larger than official statistics show.

Disclaimer: This research report is compiled from publicly available sources. While reasonable efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, no representation or warranty, express or implied, is given as to the completeness or reliability of the information. We accept no liability for any errors, omissions, losses, or damages of any kind arising from the use of this report.

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