A recent murder in rural Canada has captured headlines, but news reports ignore the elephant in the room: indigenous murder rates are shockingly high. Aboriginal crime rates of all kinds are higher than other Canadians. Unfortunately, Aboriginal Canadians are their own worst enemy.
Reality is much more complex than the simple story line that Europeans are victimizing natives. A peek into rural Canadian life is given by StatsCan, which reports that homicide rates are higher in rural communities than in urban Canada. This is not wrong, but of limited usefulness. Rural Canada is very, very diverse. A simple average is guaranteed to give a distorted picture.
Perhaps you’ve heard the old joke? On average, an individual is “comfortable,” if his head is freezing and his feet are roasting. StatsCan makes the same error in their reports on rural crime rates. See my earlier report.
Rural Canada is quite diverse. Crime rates (including murder) vary considerably from community to community, both on and off reserve, so any average is guaranteed to obscure — even if accurate.
Rural Canada is scattered across 10 provinces and 3 territories and includes many Aboriginal Reserves, some quite isolated, other close to cities. The bulk of Rural Canada consists of many small-towns and scattered settlements with a non-Aboriginal population. Aboriginal Reserves themselves are quite diverse, but they tend to have much higher crime rates, including homicide, than the rest of Canada. Unsurprisingly, diversity exists off reserve, in small-town Canada as well.
2016 Homicide rates (per 100,000 population)
Census Metropolitan Areas 1.63
Non-CMA 1.80
Canada 1.68
Now to look at the details.
With the shocking exception of Aboriginal-on-Aboriginal violence, life in small-town Canada tends to be safer than in large cities. The Aboriginal homicide rate is 8.2 per 100,000 Aboriginal population, while the rate for non-Aboriginals is just 1.34 per 100,000 population. As with victims, so it is with accused. Aboriginals are accused of homicide ten times as frequently as non-Aboriginal Canadians (9.8 vs. 0.9 per respective 100,000 populations).
Aboriginal crime rates dramatically skews crime rates in small-town Canada because Aboriginals are disproportionately located outside bigger Canadian cities, and mostly in western Canada. Almost two-thirds (61%) of Aboriginals live in smaller towns (non-CMAs), and suffer 58% of the Aboriginal homicide victims. (See Table 7, Juristat).
The homicide rate on reserves is more than six times the rest of Canada. On-reserve homicide rate 13 per 100,000 people vs 2 per 100,000 off-reserve. (See Table 2, Juristat)
Of course, pointing this out is politically incorrect. It is far more convenient for progressives in the media to paint a picture of innocent Aboriginals victimized by European “colonists.” This image in turn is exploited by the Trudeau Liberals to pass more and more intrusive gun laws and by the Police to crack down on respectable Canadians who own and use firearms responsibly.
All over the news lately is how indigenous prison population is much higher percentage then the demographic percentage of indigenous people in society. In a beat around the bush way they are saying that this must mean systemic racism in the justice system. I don’t buy what their selling. Most of indigenous people are not criminals, but a higher percentage of them are. Alcohol and drug addiction rates are higher as well. Coincidence?
What a waste of taxpayer money on the “missing and murdered Aboriginal” girls and women in Canada! It seems “they” are responsible for most of these crimes.