Winnipegger Annette Dandonneau says she’s stopped going out alone at night in the last few years because it no longer feels safe to her.
“I feel sad, because Winnipeg’s known as a community,” she said. “I think we’re shrinking, where we’re being reduced to staying in our homes, not knowing who our neighbours are, not knowing who we can count on.”
Dandonneau, a 62-year-old Norwood resident, isn’t the only person who feels that way.
In a recent online survey, done ahead of the Oct. 28 civic election, 43 per cent of respondents said they aren’t going out as much as they used to because they’re worried about crime.
In a response to a separate question in the same survey, 68 per cent of Winnipeggers said they feel less safe now than four years ago.
Women, older Winnipeggers, people with young children, non-racialized Winnipeggers and Canadian-born residents were most likely to say they feel less safe than four years ago, according to the survey of 687 adults in Winnipeg by Abacus Data (formerly known as Probe Research), on behalf of CBC News.
WATCH | Some Winnipeggers say fear of crime keeps them from going out at night:
Fear of crime keeping Winnipeggers from going out, poll suggests
In an Abacus Data poll ahead of the October civic election, more than 40 per cent of the 687 Winnipeg respondents said they aren’t going out as much as they used to because they’re worried about crime. In a separate poll question, 68 per cent of respondents said they feel less safe now than four years ago.
Both of those survey questions resonate with Dandonneau. She uses Winnipeg Transit as her main method of transportation, but worries about who she’ll encounter or what might happen when she’s on the bus at night.
She would use a ride-hailing service or a taxi, “but that’s gonna cost me 20 bucks,” she said. “I don’t have that kind of money.”
Not going out alone at night means Dandonneau missed out on joining an evening cribbage group. She also said she won’t go to different parts of the city at night to see relatives if she’s by herself.
“It makes me a hermit,” she said. “I’m not usually that type of person. I like to be social.”
‘Hard to keep safe nowadays’
Lenex Redhead, 23, also considers himself a social person but also finds he’s not going out as much.
“It’s really hard to keep safe nowadays,” he said. “You never know what can happen and how people are, and [whether] they are under the influence or not, or just trying to cause issues.”
Mary Agnes Welch, a vice-president of Abacus Data, said the numbers in terms of safety in Winnipeg weren’t surprising.
“We’ve seen in survey after survey this increasing focus on kind of that nexus between street disorder, open drug use, encampments, homelessness and this general feeling of, increasingly, a lack of safety in the downtown, in our own neighbourhoods, at night in our communities.”
It also reflects what people are talking about in their own lives, “at the hockey rink, at Jets games in the downtown, but also in their own neighbourhoods, as there’s more property crime,” Welch said.
“Some of those traditional ‘downtown issues’ are seeping into some of those other neighbourhoods.”
A margin of error for the Winnipeg survey, which was completed from Aug. 4-17, can’t be calculated because the majority of responses came from online panels, which are non-random samples. A comparable random representative survey would have a margin of error of 3.74 per cent, 19 times out of 20.
Safety an election issue
The survey also polled people outside of Winnipeg.
Roughly the same percentage of people in Brandon and Selkirk said they’re not going out as much because they’re worried about crime, but far fewer people in Steinbach agreed.
Many more people in urban northern Manitoba agreed.
Welch also said given the feelings around public safety in Winnipeg, she expects it to be a prominent issue as the election campaign ramps up.
Winnipegger Rawley Walker said he’ll be paying attention to what candidates are proposing.
Rawley Walker hopes candidates running to be Winnipeg’s mayor put forward long-term solutions for crime, not temporary fixes. (Travis Golby/CBC)
He was attacked with a hatchet by two people he didn’t know after picking up a pizza on Selkirk Avenue last March.
Walker said he’s surprised more people in Winnipeg aren’t going out as much because they’re worried about crime, but said the survey result indicates there are “real problems” in the city.
“We need to really think about, going forward, how to fix these problems, not just bandage them up,” he said.
The Winnipeg Police Service has previously said total crime severity went down nearly nine per cent in 2025, while violent crime severity was down 11 per cent.
Overall reports of shoplifting also went down nearly five per cent, despite property crime rising slightly last year, according to the police statistics. There was also a 13 per cent increase in crimes where items were stolen in vehicles in 2025.
Hate-motivated crimes also saw a 154 per cent increase.
City police also released their citizen survey, which is done every two years, last week.
Public perception of the police service improved slightly, but in terms of safety, 44 per cent of respondents said they felt safe walking alone downtown during the day, which is down from 49 per cent in 2024.
Only eight per cent said they felt safe walking alone downtown at night.
Meanwhile, with 14 candidates registered as of Tuesday to run in the race to become Winnipeg’s next mayor, Norwood’s Dandonneau is preparing to do her research.
“I’m going to be looking for somebody who has a vision of Winnipeg for the future,” she said.