Vancouver police not reporting sexual assaults like other Canadian cities, study claims

VPD says Ottawa-based think-tank not using Statistics Canada crime data, instead relying on a predominantly U.S. agency

Published Sep 22, 2024  •  3 minute read

Vancouver Police Department spokesman Sgt. Steve Addison in a file photo. Photo by Francis Georgian /PNG

A report on violent crime from an Ottawa-based think-tank claims the Vancouver Police Department is not counting sexual assaults in the same way as police forces in other major Canadian cities.

On Sept. 14, the Macdonald-Laurier Institute released a report that looked at urban violent crime in Canada’s nine major cities — Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, York, Peel, Winnipeg, Calgary and Edmonton.

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Researchers used data from the Major Cities Chiefs Association to conclude that there had been “alarming spikes in violent crime, particularly sexual assault” in all those cities between 2014 and 2023.

The institute ranked each city in the categories of homicide, aggravated assault, sexual assault and robbery (per 100,000 persons).

Vancouver ranked sixth for homicide and aggravated assault and fifth for robbery but could not be ranked in the sexual assault category due to a discrepancy in definition, compared to the eight other cities.

The MCCA comprises police chiefs from the nine Canadian municipalities covered in the report and 70 from the U.S., sharing the latest crime data with one another.

“Vancouver’s sexual assault numbers are not comparable to data from other municipalities. The MCCA uses the term “rape” for American municipalities and “sexual assault” for Canadian municipalities,” the report states.

“All recent MCCA reports also contain a footnote explaining that Canadian definition of sexual assault is used to determine rape numbers for Canadian agencies except the VPD. This stems from a pre-existing VPD decision to report numbers that closely correspond to the American municipalities’ definition of rape, which means that Vancouver data cannot be compared to that from other Canadian cities.

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“Vancouver is a particularly sobering example of why data cohesion is crucial in addressing this issue. Because Vancouver’s data for sexual assault accords with a narrower definition of rape, Vancouver is excluded from the rankings for sexual assault thus giving us an inaccurate depiction of reality.”

In the U.S., rape is penetration without consent, while in Canada sexual assault includes rape but also acts such as unwanted touching.

VPD spokesperson Sgt. Steve Addison said that the Macdonald-Laurier Institute report focused on data from a single source, the MCCA Violent Crime report.

“Specifically for the MCCA report, there was a historical decision that the VPD would report rape numbers that reflected the number of incidents involving vaginal or anal intercourse. This is a caveat that we provide in our MCCA submission. The intent was to make the VPD numbers comparable to American cities represented in the MCCA.”

Addison said the VPD reports sexual assaults to Statistics Canada based on the Canadian definition, and so that data can be compared to other Canadian jurisdictions.

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“In short, the VPD publicly reports sexual offences using Statistics Canada’s Uniform Crime Reporting methodology. This is the methodology we use for the quarterly Public Safety Indicator reports and for the data that VPD sends to Statistics Canada on an ongoing basis,” he said.

“The MCCA report is a notable exception, and the only one we are aware of. Data cohesion does already exist Canada-wide and this is thanks to Statistics Canada’s methodology. Vancouver data can indeed be compared to that from other Canadian cities.”

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