Edmonton, Vancouver, Toronto Perceived Less Safe in 2023 Survey

Canadians are drawing a sharp line between the cities they feel safest in and the ones whose reputations now carry heavier baggage.

A Liaison Strategies survey of 1,500 Canadian adults conducted Aug. 30 and 31 asked about perceived safety in 15 Canadian cities. Its “net safety” score subtracts the share of respondents who see a city as unsafe from the share who see it as safe, making the results a measure of reputation as much as comfort on the ground.

Quebec City leads the rankings

Quebec City topped the list with a net safety score of +57, followed closely by Ottawa at +56 and Charlottetown at +51.

For Quebec City, the result marks a striking shift from the last version of the study in 2017, when it sat at +7. That 50-point rise made it the most dramatic mover in the survey’s comparisons over time.

“We brought this study back because city safety has a long memory,” David Valentin, principal at Liaison Strategies, said in releasing the data. “Quebec City now leads on net safety, Ottawa remains very strong, and Winnipeg and Toronto remain at the bottom.”

The tight gap between Quebec City and Ottawa leaves the top of the table looking less like a runaway and more like a close contest. But by Liaison’s net safety measure, Quebec City now owns the strongest safety reputation among the cities tested.

Winnipeg and Toronto trail

At the other end, five cities had negative net safety scores: Saskatoon at -5, Edmonton and Vancouver at -8, Toronto at -18 and Winnipeg at -28.

Winnipeg ranked last on perceived safety, with 59 per cent of respondents considering it unsafe. Valentin called Winnipeg “the clearest safety concern,” a phrase that captures how far the city sits from the rest of the field in this perception ranking.

Toronto was second-worst, but Liaison Strategies said its poor safety reputation was worse than official crime-severity data suggests.

“Toronto is different,” Valentin said. “Toronto is perceived as almost as unsafe as Winnipeg, but the official crime-severity data does not put Toronto in the same category. That is why Toronto stands out as the clearest reputational penalty in the report.”

That distinction matters because the survey is not simply asking where crime is highest. It is asking what Canadians believe about safety, and those beliefs can harden into a civic reputation.

Big shifts since 2017

The comparison with 2017 shows how much some city reputations have moved.

Quebec City climbed from +7 to +57. Edmonton and Vancouver each fell from positive net scores to -8. Toronto dropped from -12 to -18, while Winnipeg fell from -18 to -28.

That means Toronto and Winnipeg were already at the bottom in the earlier survey and have slipped further. Edmonton and Vancouver, meanwhile, crossed from positive territory into negative scores.

The pattern suggests that safety perceptions can change sharply, but not always in the same direction. Quebec City’s gain shows how a city can build a much stronger safety image over time. Edmonton and Vancouver show the reverse can also happen.

Headlines, experience and gender

The survey found that news coverage and personal experience shaped views of city safety more than crime statistics. Only 12 per cent of respondents cited crime statistics as the main influence on their impression.

“If people are mostly relying on news coverage, personal experience, and word of mouth, then city safety is not just a policing issue,” Valentin said. “It is also a reputation issue.”

The poll also found a gender gap, with women reporting sharper safety concerns in several major cities.

“A city can have one national number, but the lived meaning of safety is not the same for every audience,” Valentin said.

For city leaders, the survey’s message is blunt: official data may matter, but it is not the only thing shaping how Canadians judge a place. A city’s safety reputation is built through what people read, what they experience and what they hear from others. Once that reputation moves, Liaison’s findings suggest, it can take years to repair.

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