Statistics Canada recently put out its latest Crime Severity Index (CSI), which measures the volume and seriousness of police-reported crime across the country, and a B.C. city came out on the bottom.
Last year, Chilliwack ranked highest for crime among all major Canadian cities in 2024, and it takes the dubious honour again in this year’s CSI, which looked at reported crime rates in 2025.
Chilliwack saw a slight improvement compared to last year, but it was still by far the highest in Canada.
This year, Chilliwack saw a CSI of 134.3, exceptionally high compared to the national average, which hovers around 75. Chilliwack’s CSI was driven primarily by property crime and crimes like assaults and drug offences.
One of the reasons Chilliwack is so high is because of the high crime volume amid a small population. As of 2025, the City of Chilliwack suggests there’s a population of around 112,500, which includes First Nations communities.
The City also shared that between 2020 and 2025, it saw lots of growth, adding around 11,700 residents.
Kamloops was the next highest, with a CSI of 126.2.
Vancouver’s CSI was 83.5, high compared to other major cities like Toronto (55), Calgary (61.7), and Victoria (74.6).
For the province as a whole, the CSI went down from 93.9 in 2024 to 92.4 in 2025.
B.C. has also seen a steep decline since 2023, when the CSI was at 104.6.
Nationally, there’s good news.
“In 2025, the CSI decreased five per cent to a value of 75.01. This marked the second consecutive annual decrease, following an upward trend beginning in 2015 that reached 81.27 in 2023,” Statistics Canada said.
It added, “The conventional crime rate — comprising Criminal Code offences but excluding traffic offences — declined two per cent to 5,585 incidents per 100,000 population in 2025. When compared with the CSI, this suggests that the overall severity of crime declined more than the volume of crime, as there was a steeper percentage decline in the CSI.”
While minor theft is down across the country, one of the crimes that is still seeing an increase is shoplifting.
“For the second year in a row, shoplifting of $5,000 or under was the largest contributor to offset the decrease in the CSI.”
National homicide rates also declined for the third consecutive year.
The B.C. Ministry of Public Safety also announced some news today on how it hopes to address crime across municipalities struggling with repeat offenders.