Crime rates are relatively stable in Calgary and Alberta, but experts say there are still reasons to be concerned by the latest data from Statistics Canada.
Crime in Calgary increased by 5.81 per cent last year but that is very much within normal variations, said Mount Royal University justice studies professor Doug King.
He said that taken in context, crime is around two-thirds of peak levels seen in 1990.
“Compared to what it was like in the 1980s and 1990s, we are much less likely to be a victim of a crime, and crime severity has been dropping,” King said. “We rush to compare ourselves with what it was last year. That’s important to do, but the bigger comparisons are if you look at it over a longer period of time.”
Outside of Calgary, King said communities that have a larger population of people under the age of 25 will often see higher crime rates due to the effects of organized crime and substance use.
“When people get substance use disorder, they have to buy their stuff that they’re going to use, and oftentimes that turns into petty crime,” King said.
Rural areas of the province historically see higher rates of crime, as criminals target areas with a lower police presence.
However, Calgary’s crime rate remains higher than other major Canadian cities.
“Crime rates in Toronto and in Montreal are actually lower, considerably lower, than they are in Calgary, and to a certain extent, Vancouver,” King said.
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As the city approaches two million people, crime trends will hinge on the investment in the justice system, King said.
“We went through a period of time, 20 to 25 years ago, where we didn’t invest enough in policing and the number of police officers on the street started to drop,” King said. “The key to crime rates and keeping them where they are right now is in large part having to do with how much we fund our police. We just got to keep doing it, and it sounds like this council is engaged in that quite actively, so that’s positive.”
The latest data is from 2025, King said, and does not take into account crimes that took place in 2026, including a spree of extortions targeting the South Asian community.
“We know that extortions have gone up,” King said. “I’m going to be watching that in particular as the numbers come out for next year.”
Western provinces lead the country in crime, says U of A professor
Across Alberta, the crime rate declined by 0.73 per cent, said University of Alberta criminology professor Temitope Oriola.
In 2024, Alberta’s crime rate declined by 7.28 per cent.
Oriola believes the change falls within the average, and it will take a few more years for a definitive pattern to emerge.
Still, Western provinces and cities tend to lead the country in crime.
“Manitoba and Saskatchewan are the two provinces that are generally ahead of Alberta, then Alberta comes next,” Oriola said.
Oriola also noted the disproportionate number of violent crimes committed against Indigenous people in the province.
In 2025, 9.59 homicides were recorded for every 100,000 people in the Indigenous population.
This is approximately eight times higher than homicides among the non-Indigenous population, which stands at 1.13 per 100,000.
“What that means is as an Indigenous person, you’re eight times more likely to be a victim of homicide than a non-Indigenous person,” Oriola said.
“That is staggering and we must not accept it as a natural order of things. We must try to bring it down.”
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