Disinformation dog whistles: Populist politicians don’t actually misunderstand crime statistics
Another year, another raft of provincial and federal Conservatives lighting their hair on fire over intentionally badly interpreting data
August 22, 2026
Two Conservatives walk into a bar. After hearing about how local police caught a break-and-enter suspect, one says to the other: “Look at all this crime thanks to liberal soft-on-crime policies.”
Across town, two Conservatives walk into a different bar. After hearing about another break-and-enter, this one evading law enforcement, one says to the other: “Look at this crime thanks to liberal catch-and-release policies.”
One of the benefits of being an opposition Conservative, as they have been for 11 years federally and forever in B.C.,is that every crime story is win-win if you know how to spin.
“Chilliwack has the highest reported crime rate of any census metropolitan area in Canada,” Chilliwack-Fraser Canyon MP Mark Strahl shared on Twitter/X in July 2025 after Statistics Canada released crime severity index numbers.
“It’s clear that Liberal soft-on-crime policies are making Canadians less safe, criminals less afraid, and our streets less secure.”
Then last month, he repeated the same trope.
“After a decade of Liberal catch-and-release policies, Canadians are less safe,” he posted on July 29, 2026.
After a decade of Liberal catch-and-release policies, Canadians are less safe. pic.twitter.com/pcYZxmr5hs
— Mark Strahl (@markstrahl) July 29, 2026
The reality is that long-term statistical data is incredibly important for policy experts to help guide governments in criminal justice matters. To use the crime severity index to claim the sitting government is doing this or that in any given year is about as useless as an umbrella under water.
Dark numbers & when success looks bad
Sexual assault is a crime that is notoriously under-reported, more or less so depending on the jurisdiction, victim services in a community, the tenacity of police forces in investigating, and the outcomes in court.
Say there are 10 sexual assaults in one month in the fictional city of Chillville. There are also 10 sexual assaults in a month in the cross-province town of Wacktown.
In Chillville, police take victim complaints seriously, they investigate thoroughly and with a sensitivity that makes it more likely other victims will report sexual assaults later. Ten arrests are made. Eight charges are laid. Six offenders are convicted and sentenced.
Over in Wacktown, police interrogate victims about if they were drinking what they were wearing on the night of their alleged assault. Cases are treated as he-said/she-said allegations. Victims feel unheard, overlooked, leading to a reluctance in others to report sexual assaults. Six arrests are made. Four charges are laid. Two offenders are convicted and sentenced.
Chillville has a progressive elected representative. Wacktown has a conservative elected representative.
The headline in the news release issued by the opposition conservative in Chillville when crime statistics are released: “Chillville’s crime rate is the worst in the province!” Over in Wacktown the conservative elected official’s news release: “Crime numbers down thanks to tough-on-crime policies.”
Of course this is silly, but the point is that the crime rate or the crime severity index tells you virtually nothing when it comes to public safety.
Criminologists know this. Academics know this. Legal and police experts know this. And politicians know this, too, but it sure looks like they don’t understand it.
If you read their about crime in Canada and specifically in Chilliwack, you’ll be forgiven for wondering why you aren’t wading through dead bodies at Five Corners and fighting off gangs of purse-snatchers on the Vedder Trail.
When Strahl dog-whistled to his followers in 2025 that federal Liberal “soft-on-crime policies are making Canadians feel less safe” based on 2024 data, he was somehow trying to tell people that it was Justin Trudeau’s fault that Chilliwack had the highest crime severity index (CSI) of all 42 census agglomeration areas in Canada in 2024. This year it's Carney’s fault.
“In that one piece of data, somehow Chilliwack is the highest in Canada and that is because of a policy of the Liberal government?” asked University of the Fraser Valley criminology professor Irwin Cohen in an interview with Something Worth Reading in July 2025 when I read him the quote.
Politics notwithstanding, Cohen says it’s important to look at crime rates and other data over time, 10, 15, 20 years, to properly assess what is happening.
There are numerous factors that go into the crime severity index that can make it artificially high one year compared to another: changes in definitions, laws, policing practices, investigative techniques, prosecutorial policy, even a change in climate can drive crime, according to Cohen.
The most elusive piece of the puzzle in assessing the reality around crime are the “dark figures,” which does not refer to crime at night. Dark figures are what goes unreported.
“Dark figures represent the difference between the amount of crime in a community and the amount of crime reported to police,” Cohen explained. “Sexual assault has a huge dark figure.”
The crime severity index has become a more reliable statistic than crime rates because it is calculated based on two things: the proportion of sentences for a crime that result in incarceration and the average length of sentences. So murder is weighed more seriously than sexual assault or fraud or shoplifting.
But if people aren’t reporting sexual assaults or incidents of fraud or shoplifting, it doesn’t show up in the data.
Crime severity is “incredibly susceptible to reporting practices,” Cohen said.
Then there is the ironic reality that success on the front lines can look like failure in the headlines. Back to Chillville and Wacktown. If police forces and other agencies involved with criminal justice make changes that allow victims to feel safer or more confident to come forward and report crimes, then we will see more crime numbers.
“If you are doing a good enough job of making victims willing to report, the good news is, that’s great, you are going to be more aware of crime,” Cohen said. “The bad news in the short term is your crime rate is going to go up.”
It’s entirely possible that Chilliwack’s crime rate and crime severity index is higher than other similar-sized communities because of good police work and good connections between the community and victims.
When it comes to the most serious types of sexual assaults, involving bodily harm, weapons, threats, Chilliwack registers a 0.0 putting the city tied at 42 out of 42 CMAs in Canada.
As for the most minor type of sexual assaults and sexual assaults against children, Chilliwack is sixth and second respectively.
Why? Maybe Chilliwack has a smaller dark figure than most other communities. But we don’t know. Dark is dark.
’Most dangerous city in Canada’ is fear-mongering
Every year we see headlines about the crime rate or the crime severity index, and it’s clear that the media and much of the general public don’t really know what the CSI is, and it’s clear that politicians in power will take credit in good years and opposition politicians will point fingers in bad ones.
Strahl federally and Chilliwack North MLA Heather Maahs need to have a little planning session next year to decide if federal Liberals or provincial New Democrats are to blame for the crime severity index in one city in the Fraser Valley.
“How did we become the most dangerous city in Canada?" asked Heather Maahs, MLA for Chilliwack North in a news release from the local BC Conservative caucus. “This isn’t a blip. These numbers have been bad for years and the NDP still has no plan to turn it around.”
At least part of that is true. The numbers have been high for years. But only compared to some others and the provincial average.
“People are afraid to walk alone at night, properties are being broken into, and repeat offenders are cycling through the system with no accountability,” said fellow BC Conservative Á’a:líya Warbus, MLA for Chilliwack–Cultus Lake, stepping the rhetoric up a notch. “The NDP has let public safety crumble, and their failed drug experiment is making it worse.”
There is a lot to unpack there. There is nothing in the Statistics Canada data to draw a conclusion that people are more or less afraid to walk alone at night in this time and place than in others. Properties are being broken into, yes. Repeat offenders are cycling through the system with no accountability? Yes and no. There is accountability, some people just don’t agree with it. And repeat and prolific offenders do cycle through the system, but it’s a stretch to blame the elected government in Victoria on the topic of bail granted or sentences handed down by provincial court judges who are following the law, federal policy, the criminal code and legal precedents.
What Warbus says at the end is understandable. She campaigned on her opposition to B.C.’s drug decriminalization pilot program that ended in January 2026. Whether or not it was a failure or not is the subject of expert debate. Health officials broadly continue to support the policy while at least one published study involving interviews with police concluded that it was indeed a failure.
Correlation is not causation
The important piece to remember with statistics is they tell you something but that it will be far from the whole story. Sometimes statistics can be very misleading. If municipalities and police forces use the CSI and crime rate data to enact policies to tackle specific crimes, great. If the numbers are used to make excuses or point blame or for political fodder, they are useless.
“How do [police forces and municipalities] understand it and how do they use it,” Cohen said. “What do they do with the data that comes to them? That’s a much more interesting question.”
As for blaming or crediting federal or provincial political parties, there’s a difference between correlation and causation.
The biggest three-year drop in Chilliwack’s CSI was while Paul Martin was prime minister, a Liberal, when it went from more than 190 to below 160. Then while Conservative Stephen Harper was prime minister, 2006 to 2015, the CSI in Chilliwack it dropped to about 130 in the middle of his term but then shot back up to 145 by the last year. Between 2015 and 2024, while Trudeau’s Liberals were in power, the Chilliwack CSI is unchanged.
Provincially, the rate did drop during the period of rule by the (conservative) BC Liberals, 2001 to 2017 and, same story, under the NDP it’s flat.
What does all of that tell you? Not a hell of a lot.
Cohen compares this use of correlations dressed up as causation to the school system and crime.
“The best way we know how to socialize young people, to make them into Canadian citizens, is our formal school system,” he said. “By creating a formal school system, we have created people who fail in that system and the outcomes of failing are terrible.
“You could in theory say: Increases in crime are in part because of our school system.”
These logical fallacies just don’t fly.
The long-term trend in crime, however, as well as the long- long- long-term trend is that residents of the Fraser Valley and British Columbia and Canada and the entire planet are living in one of the safest periods of time in human history, especially compared to 100 years ago let alone the brutality and instability of medieval times.
Pretending otherwise is using statistics as a political weapon of fear-mongering.
Note: *Some of this article is recycled information from an evergreen interview with University of the Fraser Valley criminology professor Irwin Cohen a year ago on this topic. Cohen’s comments are as valid in 2026 as in 2025. – PJH, August 22, 2026
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Paul J. Henderson
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After a decade of Liberal catch-and-release policies, Canadians are less safe. pic.twitter.com/pcYZxmr5hs
— Mark Strahl (@markstrahl) July 29, 2026