Ottawa homicide rate on pace to match last year's, new Statistics Canada data suggests

Ottawa is on pace to match its homicide rate from last year, while Gatineau has seen significantly fewer homicides in 2015, according to new 2014 data from Statistics Canada.

Both cities are also less murderous than the national average, based on the detailed 2014 breakdown by census metropolitan area that Statistics Canada published Wednesday morning.

There were seven homicides in Ottawa in 2014, or 0.71 violent deaths per 100,000 people. That's the same number of homicides the city's seen in 2015, the most recent involving 41-year-old Dady Jean, who was shot to death earlier this month in Vanier.  

Police announced early Wednesday morning that they had made two arrests in connection with Jean's killing.

Gatineau experienced four homicides in 2014, or 1.25 homicides per 100,000 people, according to Statistics Canada. This year there's been only one: the October shooting death of 25-year-old Christine Macneil at the city's Four Points Sheraton Hotel.

Both cities had lower rates than last year's Canadian average of 1.45 homicides per 100,000 people. For Ottawa, 2014 represented the third straight year that the number of homicides was in single digits. 

Kingston, meanwhile, reported zero homicides in 2014, according to the data. The eastern Ontario city has had two homicides over the first 11 months of 2015.

Gun violence higher, still low overall

The Jean and Macneil homicides, coupled with a rash of recent shootings in Ottawa, have raised the profile of gun violence in the national capital region in recent days.

While Statistics Canada's data showed that firearms-related homicides saw a 14 per cent uptick in 2014 compared to the year before, the national rate of fatal gun violence in 2014 was still the second lowest since recorded data became available in 1974.

Police reported 156 firearm-related homicides in 2014, 21 more than the year before, according to Statistics Canada.

Other insights into crime trends from the report:

• Some 83 per cent of solved homicides were committed by someone who knew the victim.
• Almost one quarter of all homicide victims were reported by police as being aboriginal — despite aboriginal people only accounting for five percent of Canada's population.
• 85 per cent of homicides involving aboriginal people were solved in 2014, compared to 71 per cent involving non-aboriginals.

Toronto had the most murders in the country in 2014 with 50, followed by Vancouver and Edmonton. At the provincial level, Manitoba reported the highest homicide rate in the country for the eighth year in a row.

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