Data Files & Official Statistics

The Numbers Behind the Files: What Statistics Canada Actually Records About Gang-Related Homicide (August 17, 2026)

Every briefing on this site describes a single incident. This one steps back to the ledger the whole beat is measured against — and the most recent official numbers point the opposite way to the impression a daily crime feed tends to leave.

Police services across Canada reported 119 gang-related homicide victims in 2025, down from 155 in 2024 and down 42 per cent from the 2022 peak of 206. At 0.29 victims per 100,000 population, it was the lowest national gang-related homicide rate since 2015. Gang-related killings made up less than one-fifth of all homicides in the country.

Those 2025 figures are new to this page. They come from Statistics Canada’s data tables, released July 22, 2026, and not from a Juristat article — the analytical report covering 2025 homicide in detail has not been published yet.

What “Gang-Related” Means Here

The classification is not a court finding. Statistics Canada records a homicide as linked to organized crime or a street gang when police confirm or suspect that the victim or the accused was a member, a prospective member, or otherwise associated with an organized crime group or street gang, and the killing followed from that association. Both “yes” and “suspected” responses are counted in the same figure. The determination is made by the investigating police service, not by a judge.

That has two consequences worth holding on to. A killing later shown in court to have no organized crime connection can remain in the count. A killing never established as gang-linked during the investigation will not appear at all.

The definition also changed partway through the series. Footnote 6 of the source table records that before 2005 police were asked a single question about whether a homicide was gang-related. From 2005 the question was split, letting police report a killing as either confirmed or suspected to be linked to organized crime or a street gang. Statistics Canada states directly that counts reported before 2005 may be underestimated as a result.

That is why this file does not compare figures across 2005. Part of the apparent climb through the mid-2000s is a change in how police were asked the question, not only a change in how many people were killed. We have not adjusted the early years to compensate, because Statistics Canada has published no adjusted figures to use.

The percentage series is narrower than it looks. Statistics Canada calculates the gang-related share against homicides for which police established the link either way — cases where the status was simply unknown are excluded from the denominator. The share figures cited here are therefore gang-related homicides as a proportion of classified homicides, not of all homicides.

Why There Is No Gang Breakdown by City

An earlier version of this file carried a comparison of gang-related homicides across Toronto, Montréal, Vancouver and other census metropolitan areas for 2020 and 2021. That has been removed, and it has not been replaced with a longer city gang series, because no such series exists in the published record.

Statistics Canada publishes gang-related homicide in Table 35-10-0075-01. The geography of that table is Canada, geographical region of Canada, and province or territory. It contains no census metropolitan areas in any year from 1999 to 2025. The agency does publish homicide by census metropolitan area, in Table 35-10-0071-01, covering 1981 to 2025 — but that table records total homicide victims and rates only, with no gang-related dimension at all.

The last city-level gang breakdown Statistics Canada published was Table 4b of the Juristat article Homicide in Canada, 2021, covering the 2020 and 2021 reference years. Nothing equivalent has appeared since. The Police-reported Information Hub homicide dashboard describes itself as offering both gang-related detail and census metropolitan area geography, which reads like a city-level gang series is available; it is not. The dashboard is built from the same two tables, and neither one can produce that crosstab.

We could have generated city gang numbers for 2022 through 2025 by apportioning provincial totals across metropolitan areas. We did not, and we will not. A number Statistics Canada has not published is not a number this site will publish.

What the Regional Data Does Show

The province and region series is the finest geography that actually exists for gang-related homicide, and it runs to 2025. It is a true decomposition: the eight regional rows sum exactly to the national figure in every year — 155 in 2024, 119 in 2025.

Ontario carried the largest share throughout, peaking at 65 victims in 2021 and falling to 32 in 2025, its lowest count in a decade. British Columbia, where the province’s conflicts have driven much of the coverage on this site, peaked at 53 in 2022 and fell to 19 in 2025 — a decline that runs alongside the long attrition documented in the Hells Angels in Canada file. Quebec moved against the national trend in 2024, rising to 31 victims from 21 in 2023 before falling back to 18 in 2025; the province’s underworld is the subject of both the Rizzuto crime family and Montréal street gangs profiles.

Two geographies are less granular than they appear. All four Atlantic provinces are reported as a single “Atlantic Region” row, and Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut are reported as a single “Territories” row. Neither is broken out further in this table, so no Halifax, Moncton or Whitehorse gang figure can be read from it.

The City Figures That Do Exist

There is a city series in the published record — but it counts something different, and the distinction is the whole point. Table 35-10-0071-01 publishes homicide victims and rates for 43 census metropolitan areas from 1981 to 2025. It has exactly two indicators and no gang-related dimension in any year. What it shows is all homicides.

So the city figures below are not gang figures. They are set out because the question “what is happening in Toronto” deserves the best published answer available, and this is it — provided nobody reads it as the gang figure it is not.

Read that way, 2025 is remarkable. Toronto recorded 64 homicide victims, down from 133 in 2024 — a rate of 0.91 per 100,000, against 1.90 the year before. Montréal was close to flat at 52. Vancouver rose slightly to 47. Winnipeg fell to 23 from 43, though per capita it remained the highest of the cities listed, at 2.48 per 100,000 — nearly three times Toronto’s rate on roughly a third of the victims. “Ottawa” in this table means the Ontario part of the Ottawa–Gatineau CMA; the Quebec side is reported separately.

One integrity check is worth stating. The Canada column of the city table and the total-victim row of the gang table are produced from the same Homicide Survey, and they agree exactly for every year from 2015 to 2025 — 613, 620, 670, 666, 693, 767, 802, 888, 798, 797, 672. Two separately downloaded tables reconciling to the victim is a reasonable sign neither was mis-parsed on the way onto this page.

A Correction to the 2024 Figure

This file previously reported 152 gang-related homicides for 2024, at a rate of 0.37 per 100,000. That was the number Statistics Canada published in The Daily on December 2, 2025, and it was correct on that date.

It is no longer the operative figure. Statistics Canada accepts revisions for a one-year period after data are first released, applies them once, and then freezes the series permanently. The July 22, 2026 release carried that revision through: the 2024 count is now 155, at a rate of 0.38. The agency’s own July 2026 release describes the 2025 decline as running “from 155 in 2024 to 119 homicides in 2025,” using the revised figure. The 2021 count was likewise revised, from 184 to 185.

The tables on this page use the revised, frozen values throughout. Where an older Gangland Files briefing cites 152 for 2024, that briefing is out of date by three victims.

Standing of This File

What is verified. Every figure on this page is a published cell in one of two Statistics Canada data tables, both released July 22, 2026. Gang-related figures — the national counts, the rates, the percentage series and all eight regional series — come from Table 35-10-0075-01, reference years 1999 through 2025. The all-homicide city figures come from Table 35-10-0071-01, reference years 2015 through 2025. No value on this page is interpolated, averaged, modelled or carried forward. Two checks were run: the eight regional rows sum exactly to the national row in every year, and the Canada columns of the two tables agree exactly for 2015 through 2025.

What is missing. There is no city-level gang-related homicide data after the 2021 reference year. The city figures on this page are a different quantity, not a replacement. Atlantic Canada and the three territories are each published as a single region, so no province-level gang figure exists for Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland and Labrador, Yukon, the Northwest Territories or Nunavut. One indicator in the gang table — the count of homicides whose gang status was reported as unknown — is blank for every geography from 2017 onward; that gap is Statistics Canada’s and is not filled here. The 2025 method-and-motive detail that earlier versions of this file carried is also absent, because the underlying breakdowns for 2025 have not yet been published in a form we can cite cell by cell.

What is not comparable. The national series is not continuous across 2005. Statistics Canada changed how police were asked to report the gang link that year and states that earlier counts may be underestimated, so 1999 to 2004 should not be read against later years as though the same question were asked. This file marks the break rather than hiding it. Separately, the agency corrected Toronto, Oshawa and Hamilton figures for 1991 through 2022 on August 3, 2023; the values used here are post-correction.

What is provisional. The 2025 figures carry no preliminary flag in either source table, but they have not yet passed through Statistics Canada’s one-year revision window. On past practice they are more likely to be revised upward than downward. The 2024 gang figure on this page has already moved once, from 152 to 155.

When this will be updated. Statistics Canada has stated that an analytical report covering 2025 homicide in detail will be released in the fall of 2026. We will update this file when that report appears, and again if the 2025 counts change when the revision window closes in mid-2027.