Is Nanaimo safe? What the numbers actually say
Safety is the first question most people ask before moving here. The answers tend to come in two flavours, reassurance or alarm, and neither is much use when you are trying to make a decision.
So we pulled the official Statistics Canada figures, the Nanaimo RCMP's own report to city council, and the province's own findings, and built a tool that shows you exactly where Nanaimo stands, compared with the city you live in right now.
The headline
Nanaimo's crime severity index sits above the national average. Measured on the police-service series it is also the lowest of any comparable mid-size city in British Columbia.
What is elevated
Property crime and vandalism. Mischief runs at roughly two and three quarters times the national rate.
What is not
Robbery, homicide and vehicle theft are all below the national average. Violent crime overall runs above it, though it is a smaller share of reported crime here than nationally.
See how Nanaimo compares to where you live
Nine short steps. Guess where Nanaimo ranks, pick the city you live in now, and see the difference for yourself.
What the tool says, written out
Everything the interactive above walks through, written out so it can be read without it. The figures are Statistics Canada's 2025 reference year, released 22 July 2026.
Where do you think Nanaimo ranks?
Out of Canada's 40 largest metro areas, from safest to least safe. No peeking. Just guess.
20 th
1st, safest 40th, least safe
That number is almost useless on its own.
It is called the Crime Severity Index, and it is not a percentage . Canada in 2006 was set at 100. Today Canada sits at 75.0. It weights every reported crime by how seriously the courts sentence it, which is what makes it so easy to misread. A score can climb on sheer volume, thousands of small property offences, without any increase in the serious crime people picture when they see a number like this. That is exactly what is happening in Nanaimo.
Compare it to where you live now
What crime here actually looks like
Forget the index. These are the questions people actually ask, answered with the reported numbers.
It is a small group of people.
Every dot is ten thousand British Columbians. There are 5.6 million of them.
British Columbia
And Nanaimo is where it started.
The province built a program for exactly this. It was tested here first, in one of only three pilot communities. In June 2026 the Minister of Public Safety came to Nanaimo to announce $16 million to take it province-wide.
56% The drop in police interactions with supervised individuals after 18 months in the violent-offender version of this program. The property-crime version is modelled on it.
The RCMP's own report
In May 2026 the Nanaimo RCMP told city council that violent crime made up 21.7 percent of all Criminal Code offences here, against 25.3 percent nationally . That is the share of reported crime that is violent, not the rate per person. Violent files fell 2 percent in 2025. In the downtown district, break and enters were down 52 files and violent offences down 33.
It rose. Then it turned around.
Crime here has not been steadily dropping. It climbed, peaked in 2022, and has come down since. The steep fall was 2024. In 2025 it eased a further 1.4 percent, while the country came down 4.9 percent.
Nanaimo Canada
2024
Turn the worry into a short list.
What is most elevated here is property crime. Robbery and homicide both run below the national rate. That means the things that protect your property are small, cheap and boring, which is good news.
01 Leave nothing visible in your car. Not a bag, not a charger, not loose change. Theft from vehicles is the most elevated thing that will actually touch you.
02 Lock the shed, the garage, the side gate. Opportunity is the whole game. Most of this is unplanned.
03 Put a motion light on the driveway. The cheapest deterrent there is.
04 Register your bike, and lock it properly. Even at home.
05 Use the same care after dark you would in any city. Robbery and homicide run below the national rate here. Violent crime overall runs above it.
What it is actually like.
I have lived and worked in Nanaimo for years. I have walked here at night, in a lot of different areas. I have never once felt unsafe doing it.
Are there corners I would skip after dark? Yes. Those exist in every city in this country, including the ones that score better than we do on this index. That is a city fact, not a Nanaimo fact.
What is true is that you should not leave a laptop on your back seat here. The risk in this town is to your things, not to you.
I am not going to tell you Nanaimo is perfect. You will see challenges downtown and in some other areas, and they are real. But we should not let a number that most people misread do the talking either.
Trav Bach, Bach Real Estate Group
The whole thing, in three lines
Nanaimo's challenge is property crime .
That is what drives the number .
Lock your car. Know the street you are on.
Above the national average. Lower than Kamloops and Chilliwack, higher than Kelowna and Victoria. Violent crime is a smaller share of reported crime here than nationally, and violent files fell 2 percent in 2025.
Get the safety checklist Talk to us about moving here
Sources. Statistics Canada, tables 35-10-0026-01 (Crime Severity Index by census metropolitan area) and 35-10-0177-01 (incident-based crime statistics), reference year 2025, released 22 July 2026, used with attribution. Statistics Canada revises prior-year figures, so an earlier version of this tool showed different numbers for the same years. Nanaimo RCMP Annual Performance Plan 2026/2027, presented to Nanaimo City Council 4 May 2026. Government of British Columbia, Chronic Property Offending Intervention Initiative, June 2026, and the 2022 provincial investigation into repeat offending, which is the source of the 420 figure. The next Statistics Canada release is due July 2027.
Every census metropolitan area, ranked
All 40 census metropolitan areas Statistics Canada publishes a Crime Severity Index for, safest first, 2025 reference year. Nanaimo is 34 of 40. The national figure for the same year is 75.01. The index is not a percentage and it is not a crime rate: it measures both the volume and the seriousness of reported crime, with Canada in 2006 set at 100.
| Rank | Census metropolitan area | Crime Severity Index, 2025 | Years of data |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Barrie | 46.93 | 11 |
| 2 | Saguenay | 49.31 | 11 |
| 3 | Sherbrooke | 50.25 | 11 |
| 4 | Ottawa-Gatineau | 52.76 | 11 |
| 5 | St. Catharines-Niagara | 53.84 | 11 |
| 6 | Hamilton | 54.82 | 11 |
| 7 | Québec | 54.97 | 11 |
| 8 | Toronto | 54.99 | 11 |
| 9 | Windsor | 55.39 | 11 |
| 10 | Trois-Rivières | 55.98 | 11 |
| 11 | Peterborough | 57.33 | 11 |
| 12 | Guelph | 57.82 | 11 |
| 13 | Montréal | 61.29 | 11 |
| 14 | Kingston | 61.48 | 11 |
| 15 | Calgary | 61.66 | 11 |
| 16 | Belleville-Quinte West | 63.06 | 10 |
| 17 | Greater Sudbury | 64.93 | 11 |
| 18 | London | 65.95 | 11 |
| 19 | Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo | 66.82 | 11 |
| 20 | Halifax | 68.61 | 11 |
| 21 | Saint John | 69.98 | 11 |
| 22 | Brantford | 72.08 | 11 |
| 23 | Drummondville | 72.3 | 5 |
| 24 | Victoria | 74.57 | 11 |
| 25 | St. John's | 79.22 | 11 |
| 26 | Fredericton | 80.52 | 5 |
| 27 | Vancouver | 83.51 | 11 |
| 28 | Regina | 87.36 | 11 |
| 29 | Abbotsford-Mission | 95.53 | 11 |
| 30 | Edmonton | 95.55 | 11 |
| 31 | Saskatoon | 98.87 | 11 |
| 32 | Kelowna | 103.68 | 11 |
| 33 | Moncton | 105.63 | 11 |
| 34 | Nanaimo | 106.02 | 5 |
| 35 | Lethbridge | 107.69 | 10 |
| 36 | Winnipeg | 113.42 | 11 |
| 37 | Thunder Bay | 114.13 | 11 |
| 38 | Red Deer | 114.36 | 5 |
| 39 | Kamloops | 126.22 | 5 |
| 40 | Chilliwack | 134.27 | 5 |
The six questions people actually ask
Each one answered with the reported numbers, Nanaimo against the national figure. Rates are per 1,000 residents a year unless the answer says otherwise.
| Question | Nanaimo | Canada | What the number means |
|---|---|---|---|
| Will someone break into my house? | 2.69 | 2.64 | About 2 to 3 break and enters per 1,000 residents a year get reported. That is now level with the national rate, down sharply from 2024. |
| Will my car get gone through? | 4.91 | 2.71 | This is the most likely thing to happen to you here. Roughly 5 per 1,000 residents a year report theft from a vehicle, against under 3 nationally. Leave nothing visible. |
| Is there a lot of vandalism? | 20.11 | 7.39 | Yes. Mischief is the most elevated category, running about two and three quarters times the national rate. |
| Is it safe to walk at night? | 0.4 | 0.55 | Robbery here is below the national average. So is homicide, and so is vehicle theft. Violent crime overall runs above the national rate, so the answer depends on which offence you mean. |
| Will I get assaulted? | 6.96 | 5.28 | Common assault runs about a third above the national rate. Robbery and homicide both sit below it. Most assaults are not strangers attacking people on the street. |
| Will my car get stolen? | 1.66 | 2.01 | Actually less likely than the Canadian average. Vehicle theft here runs about 17 percent below the national rate, and it fell again in 2025. |
Statistics Canada tables 35-10-0026-01, Crime Severity Index by census metropolitan area, and 35-10-0177-01, incident-based crime statistics, reference year 2025, released 22 July 2026. Nanaimo RCMP report to city council, May 2026. Every figure above, with the full 2015 to 2025 series for all 40 metropolitan areas, is also published as a plain CSV of all 46 items.
What the Crime Severity Index actually measures
The Crime Severity Index is not a percentage. It is a score where Canada in 2006 was set at 100, and everything since is measured against that. Today Canada sits at 75.01. It counts every crime reported to police and weights each one by how seriously the courts sentence it.
That weighting is what makes it so easy to misread. A city's score can climb on sheer volume, thousands of small property offences, without any increase in the serious crime people picture when they see a number like this. That is exactly what is happening in Nanaimo.
How Nanaimo compares to similar BC cities
Measured on the police-service series, Statistics Canada table 35-10-0063, against British Columbia cities of a similar size, Nanaimo has the lowest crime severity index of the group. These are police detachment figures. They are not the same series as the 106.02 above, which is for the Nanaimo census metropolitan area, table 35-10-0026.
For reference, British Columbia sits at 92.37 and Canada at 75.01 on that same metropolitan-area series. Nanaimo is above both, and it is lower than every comparable city in the province. All of those things are true at once.
What crime in Nanaimo actually looks like
Reported incidents per 1,000 residents per year, compared with the national rate.
The crime that is most elevated in Nanaimo is property crime and vandalism. Robbery, homicide and vehicle theft all sit below the national average, though violent crime overall runs above it.
The Nanaimo Safety Checklist
A one page checklist for anyone weighing a move here. What to look for when you visit a neighbourhood, the questions worth asking, and the small things that actually protect your property in a city like this one. Free, and yours in a click.
Why the number is what it is
A 2022 investigation commissioned by the Government of British Columbia found that a small number of people, many living with serious mental health and substance use needs, account for a disproportionate share of theft and property crime across the province. The report warned against stigmatising language and called for investment in the underlying causes.
Nanaimo is where the fix started
In June 2026 the province committed $16 million to expand the Chronic Property Offending Intervention Initiative across British Columbia, focused on 420 chronic property offenders province-wide. Nanaimo was one of only three pilot communities for that program, and the Minister of Public Safety came to Nanaimo to make the announcement.
Questions people ask before moving here
Is Nanaimo safe to walk at night?
Robbery, homicide and vehicle theft in Nanaimo all run below the national rate. Violent crime overall runs above it: the violent crime rate per person is about 46 percent above the national figure, and the violent Crime Severity Index is about 19 percent above. What the Nanaimo RCMP told city council in May 2026 measures something different again: violent crime made up 21.7 percent of all Criminal Code offences here against 25.3 percent nationally, which is the share of reported crime that is violent, not the rate. Violent files fell 2 percent in 2025. As in any city, there are areas people avoid after dark.
Does Nanaimo have a high crime rate?
Nanaimo's crime severity index of 106.02 is above the national average of 75.01, placing it in the higher range of Canadian metro areas. That figure is for the Nanaimo census metropolitan area, Statistics Canada table 35-10-0026. Among comparable British Columbia cities measured on the police-service series, table 35-10-0063, Nanaimo is the lowest of that group. The index is driven primarily by property crime and vandalism rather than by violent crime.
What kind of crime is most common in Nanaimo?
Property crime. Mischief and vandalism run at roughly 2.7 times the national rate, and theft from vehicles is about 81 percent above the national rate. Break and enters have come down sharply and now sit about level with the national rate. The Nanaimo RCMP reported that property crime remains the most frequently reported crime in the city.
Is crime in Nanaimo going up or down?
Nanaimo's crime severity index peaked in 2022 at 128.32 and has come down since. The steep fall was 2024, when it dropped about 15 percent. In 2025 it eased a further 1.4 percent to 106.02, while the national figure came down 4.9 percent to 75.01. Statistics Canada revises prior-year figures, so a number published for an earlier year can change in a later release. The next release is due in July 2027.
Where does Nanaimo rank among Canadian cities?
Nanaimo ranks 34th of 40 census metropolitan areas in Canada by crime severity index, placing it in the higher-crime portion of Canadian metro areas. Measured on the police-service series against comparable British Columbia cities, it ranks lowest, meaning safest of that group.
Statistics Canada revises prior-year figures, so a number published for an earlier year can change in a later release. The figures on this page are the 2025 reference year as published on 22 July 2026.
Sources: Statistics Canada, tables 35-10-0026-01 (Crime Severity Index by census metropolitan area) and 35-10-0063-01 (Crime Severity Index by police service), reference year 2025, released 22 July 2026, used with attribution. Nanaimo RCMP Annual Performance Plan 2026/2027, presented to Nanaimo City Council 4 May 2026. Government of British Columbia, Chronic Property Offending Intervention Initiative announcement, June 2026, and the 2022 provincial investigation into repeat offending. The next Statistics Canada release is due July 2027.
Safety is one question. There are others.
Cost of living, which neighbourhoods suit which kind of life, what the ferries and the commute actually mean day to day, and what people get wrong about the Island before they arrive. Our relocation guide covers the whole picture, not just this piece of it.
Want the numbers for a specific block?
Book a quick call with Travis or Kiel, two locals who help people make this move every week. What you hear may not match what you were hoping for.