The provincial government has launched an interactive crime dashboard, providing what it calls a detailed overview of the province’s statistical crime data.

Developed by the Policing Transformation Working Group with the cooperation of the Chief Information Officer, the RNC and RCMP, the dashboard provides “reliable and accurate crime statistics for each community in the province.”

The information is sourced annually from Statistics Canada’s police-reported crime stats, and includes data from each of the province’s 45 police detachments – broken into actual incidents, crime rate, Crime Severity Index, crimes against persons, property crime, traffic and other violations.

The most recent data on the site is from 2023.

Justice Minister John Haggie says they’re using the older data because it comes from a “trusted source,” despite government’s ability to get that information from police departments.

“Some groups in communities simply don’t believe what their local detachment may have said to them unless it’s been validated. And so we’re in a bit of a cleft stick,” he told reporters.

We’re certainly keen to work with StatsCan to see if we can get more recent data. It usually takes six months into the year to get the previous year’s data, so that’s why it’s 2023, not 2024.”

The provincial government says an additional 19 police officers are being hired starting next year.