Is Thunder Bay Really Worse Crime Wise Than It Used to Be? Crime Data Shows a Complicated Answer

THUNDER BAY — Many Thunder Bay residents say on social media that the city feels more dangerous than it did years ago.

People are seeing our city as more dangerous today than in the “good old days”. Is that true or is that simply time helping people forget?

Some point to violent assaults, homicides, open drug use, downtown disorder, property crime, weapons calls and the sense that public spaces feel less predictable.

The data does not support a simple “everything was better before” argument.

But it does show that one part of the public concern is justified: serious violent crime has become a deeper and more persistent problem in Thunder Bay than it was 20 years ago.

The short answer: property crime was often worse before, but violent crime severity is worse now

Statistics Canada’s Crime Severity Index, known as CSI, is designed to measure not just how many crimes are reported to police, but how serious those crimes are. More serious crimes are given more weight, based partly on court sentencing patterns. The base index is 100 for Canada in 2006.

That distinction matters in Thunder Bay.

On total crime volume, the city is not clearly worse than it was in the late 2000s. Statistics Canada’s Safe Cities profile shows Thunder Bay’s total police-reported crime rate was 8,616 per 100,000 people in 2008, compared with 5,778 in 2018 — a 33 per cent decline over that decade.

Property crime also fell sharply, from 5,136 per 100,000 in 2008 to 3,321 in 2018.

But violent crime tells a different story.

Thunder Bay’s violent CSI was 100 in 2004, rose to 160 by 2018, and Thunder Bay Police’s 2024 public crime charts show the city’s violent CSI above 200 — far higher than Ontario and Canada.

Thunder Bay’s 2024 numbers were troubling

Statistics Canada reported Thunder Bay’s overall 2024 Crime Severity Index at 107.7, up eight per cent from 2023. The city’s police-reported crime rate was 6,867 per 100,000 people, also up eight per cent. That placed Thunder Bay well above the national CSI of 77.9 and national crime rate of 5,672 per 100,000.

Thunder Bay Police also summarized the 2024 data by stating that the city’s average is higher than both provincial and national averages for crime severity.

That helps explain why the city can feel worse even if some categories of crime are not at historical highs. The issue is not only how many incidents occur. It is the seriousness of the incidents people hear about, witness or experience.

Homicide rates support public concern

Homicide is a small-number statistic in a city the size of Thunder Bay, so it can swing sharply from year to year. Even so, the long-term pattern is hard to dismiss.

Statistics Canada reported that Thunder Bay had no homicides in 2008, but eight homicides in 2018, a rate of 6.38 per 100,000 people, notably higher than Ontario and Canada.

In 2019, Thunder Bay recorded the highest homicide rate among Canadian census metropolitan areas for the fourth consecutive year, at 5.56 per 100,000.

The pattern continued. Statistics Canada reported Thunder Bay had Canada’s highest CMA homicide rate in 2023 at 5.39 per 100,000, and again in 2024, when the rate rose to 6.08 per 100,000.

That is a strong reason many residents feel the city has changed for the worse.

Why people remember the past differently

Public memory often blends safety, community confidence and visible disorder. A person may not be comparing spreadsheet data from 2004 and 2024.

They may be remembering a time when they felt more comfortable walking downtown, letting children ride bikes, parking without worrying about theft, or going to work without seeing open drug use or violence nearby.

That feeling matters. Perception is not the same as crime data, but it is part of public safety.

At the same time, nostalgia can distort the picture. Thunder Bay had serious crime in earlier decades. Property crime rates were higher in parts of the 2000s. Break-ins, thefts and vehicle-related crimes were not new problems.

What appears to have shifted is the visibility and severity of violence, along with the social conditions surrounding addiction, homelessness, mental health crises and organized drug trafficking.

Social media amplifies fear, but it does not create the whole problem

Social media can make a city feel more dangerous by turning every police call, scanner post, video or rumour into a community-wide alarm. A person may see multiple incidents in a day that, in the past, would never have circulated beyond one neighbourhood.

But dismissing public concern as “just Facebook” would be a mistake.

The statistical record shows Thunder Bay has a serious violent-crime problem compared with Ontario and Canada. The city’s homicide rate has repeatedly led the country among CMAs.

Its violent CSI has risen substantially from the early 2000s and now sits far above national and provincial levels.

What the numbers do not show

Police-reported crime data has limits.

It reflects incidents known to police, not every crime that occurs.

Reporting behaviour changes over time. Some victims do not call police. Some businesses may stop reporting repeated thefts if they believe nothing will happen. Some domestic violence, sexual violence, hate crime and fraud remain underreported.

Statistics Canada also cautions that police-reported crime statistics can be affected by local policies, procedures and enforcement practices.

That means crime data should be read as a strong indicator, not a complete picture of lived experience.

Regional pressures make Thunder Bay different

Thunder Bay is not only a city of local residents. It is the service, health, court, education, transportation and emergency hub for much of Northwestern Ontario.

People come here for medical care, school, shelter, court, shopping, work, treatment, family support and crisis services. That regional role brings economic importance, but it also concentrates social pressure in the city.

Addiction, poverty, homelessness, intergenerational trauma, lack of treatment beds, gaps in mental health care, youth disconnection and drug-trafficking networks all show up locally.

Police enforcement alone cannot resolve those issues.

So, were things better in the past?

The fair answer is: in some ways, yes; in other ways, no.

If the question is whether Thunder Bay had less serious violent crime 20 years ago, the data suggests the concern is justified. Violent crime severity is much higher now than it was in 2004, and homicide rates have been a persistent national concern.

If the question is whether every category of crime is worse than before, the data does not support that. Property crime and overall crime rates fell significantly between 2008 and 2018, and some forms of older-style volume crime were worse in earlier years.

If the question is whether residents are wrong to feel worried, the answer is no.

A city can have fewer property crimes than it once did and still feel less safe because the violence is more severe, more visible and more connected to broader social disorder.

The challenge for Thunder Bay

The city’s challenge is to move beyond arguing over whether people are exaggerating.

Thunder Bay needs a public safety strategy that addresses violent crime directly while also tackling the conditions that feed it: addiction, housing insecurity, mental health gaps, youth violence, poverty, racism, trauma, organized drug networks and lack of treatment access.

The data says the past was not crime-free. But it also says today’s concern about serious violence is real.