Vancouver is perceived as one of the least safe cities in the country
Vancouver is one of the least safe cities in Canada according to public perception.
Liaison Strategies published a national public safety perception study in which it surveyed a random sample of 1,500 Canadians between Aug. 30 and 31. It asked respondents to assess 15 major Canadian cities as very safe, somewhat safe, somewhat unsafe, very unsafe, or whether they do not know enough to say.
The margin of error for this study is +/- 2.53 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
Liaison Strategies then shared the results for net safety, which it defines as “the share who say a city is very or somewhat safe minus the share who say it is somewhat or very unsafe.”
Quebec City takes the top spot for safety, with a net safety score of 57. It is closely followed by Ottawa (56) and Charlottetown (51).
Vancouver, however, fares far worse. It actually has a negative net safety score, at minus eight. Only Toronto (-18) and Winnipeg (-28) are below it.
Liaison Strategies
Liaison Strategies first did this study in 2017. At that time, Vancouver had a positive net score of 20. In nine years, it declined by 28 points, which the polling firm says shows “how quickly reputations can move.”
Fifty-two per cent of respondents ranked Vancouver as somewhat or very unsafe.
David Valentin, the principal at Liaison Strategies, said in a release that only 12 per cent of survey respondents said that crime statistics “are the main thing shaping their impression of city safety.”
“That matters. If people are mostly relying on news coverage, personal experience, and word of mouth, then city safety is not just a policing issue. It is also a reputation issue.”
Meanwhile, news coverage shaped Canadians’ perception by 28 per cent, personal experience by 23 per cent, and friends or family by 14 per cent.
Women see safety as a bigger problem in Vancouver, as well as in Winnipeg, Edmonton, and Toronto.
Valentin also pointed out that while some cities look better “when judged closer to home,” Vancouver does not.
“For public leaders, the lesson is that perception has consequences. Residents, visitors, and investors react not only to police-reported crime, but to the reputation a city carries. That reputation can take years to build, and years to repair,” said Valentin.
In 2025, Vancouver’s Crime Severity Index (CSI) was 83.5, which measures the volume and seriousness of police-reported crime across the country. Toronto was 55, Calgary was 61.7, and Victoria was 74.6.
With files from Amir Ali