After record number of homicides, Manitoba sees highest increase in crime severity index in Canada

Terri Morrissette doesn't walk alone to her neighbourhood convenience store anymore.

It's a choice the Winnipegger made long before a store employee was shot by a gunman this week on Logan Avenue — a violent act triggered by the theft of a beverage worth only a few dollars. 

Speaking Thursday afternoon with her granddaughter by her side, Morrissette said she's felt less safe in her neighbourhood since the pandemic. 

"I got anxiety where I can't go walking around with someone beside me," she said.

"And something I never used was a cellphone, now I carry a cellphone with me just in case I need it."

New data from Statistics Canada backs up what Morrissette has observed.

In Manitoba, the crime severity index — one of the tools the federal agency uses to track the volume and severity of reported crimes — increased by 14 per cent in 2022 from the year before, the largest spike in any province in Canada.

The index rose four per cent across the country, reaching the highest point since 2007.

In Manitoba, both violent and non-violent crime contributed fairly equally to its increase on the index scale.

Winnipeg leads the pack

As well, the agency says the crime severity index in Winnipeg, which rose by 20 per cent from 2021 to 2022, is the highest of any census metropolitan area with a population of at least 100,000 people.

Morrissette isn't surprised by the statistics, but they still make her uneasy.

"It's getting nerve-racking, hearing about all of this," she said, "and it's scary, especially when it's in your neighbourhood."

One recent example of that violence occurred late Tuesday morning, when police responded to a 21-year-old man suffering from "life-threatening injuries" at the Logan Avenue store, east of Arlington Street.

Video surveillance shows the man, an employee, walked out of the store to confront a man who left without paying for their drink. The alleged shoplifter, a 22-year-old man, responded by shooting the worker and running away. He was later arrested, while the employee was sent to hospital. His condition has since been upgraded to stable. 

The challenges this neighbourhood experiences with crime are visible. 

The convenience store's exterior walls are outfitted with at least nine surveillance cameras. Two billboards touting the Manitoba government's commitment to tracking violent criminals are approximately 120 metres apart from each other.

Morrissette said her family, which lives a 10-minute walk away on Ross Avenue, has instituted a buddy system. They don't walk around without a family member joining them.

"I even got my daughter a dog for her protection," she said.

NIkki Komaksiutiksak, the executive director of Tunngasugit, an Inuit-specific resource centre in Winnipeg, knows well the cost of violent crime.   

She grew up in a violent household and has lost a cousin, Jessica Michaels, to what she believes was a murder on the streets of Winnipeg.

She said she has seen the rising statistics in real time in her local Inuit community.  

Since 2019, "we have 10 [people] that have now passed on to the spirit world, and we have no idea who the perpetrators of their deaths are." 

Crime numbers rising from pandemic levels

Michael Weinrath, a criminal justice professor at the University of Winnipeg, noted Manitoba's crime severity index of 146.5 is an increase from the years of pandemic-era lockdowns, when crime was generally down because people spent more time indoors, but is also slightly higher than 2019 figures. 

The numbers were worsened by an increase in the number of homicides.

Winnipeg counted a record number of killings, 53, in 2022. The city's police force has previously stated the number of violent crimes, including assaults, homicides and kidnappings, was nearly 24 per cent higher in 2022 than the five-year average.

"A lot of these issues and these crimes and even the shoplifting reflects, in this province and in some of the other western provinces as well, that we have some really big challenges in terms of poverty, in terms of some of our disadvantaged racialized and indigenous groups," Weinrath told CBC Manitoba's Up to Speed guest host Stephanie Cram.

"We need to think about these folks actually as victims, disproportionate victims. Indigenous people are seven times more likely to be victims of homicide than non-Indigenous people."

The new data is a "matter of great concern for the province," justice department spokesperson Jon Lovlin said.

He explained the government "has, and will continue to" spend money on sophisticated criminal intelligence techniques to target dangerous offenders, an integrated high risk offender apprehension unit and a recent commitment to double the number of officers patrolling downtown Winnipeg.