Crime is dropping in Canada, and if the government would listen, it could save us a lot of money.
Statistics Canada reported this week that there were five per cent fewer criminal code incidents in 2010 than in 2009, extending a 20-year downward trend, and pushing the country's crime rate to its lowest point since 1973.
The numbers run counter to the belief held by many conservatives that crime is getting worse, and put the lie to Ottawa's tough-on-crime agenda.
Throw-away-the-key types will argue, as they have in the past, that the trend is an illusion, that despairing victims are simply not reporting crimes to an overworked police force - and that they are apparently five per cent less likely to do so each year.
This assumption is silly. When virtually all insurers require that crimebased claims have a police file number, what would possess victims not to report car thefts or break-ins? Since when do people not report murders?
This popular view is the result of the attention paid to crime by the media, and of the perennial perception that everything was better when we were young. When your grandfather asked his grandfather if the neighbourhood was safer back in the day, what do you think was his answer?
The drop in crime is real, and more than likely the result of an aging population. In light of this, Ottawa's plan to spend billions on new prisons, makes no sense. In lean times, we should be basing our budgets on facts, not ideology.
