A new report suggests the Mounties in Moncton are Canada's top investigators.
A Statistics Canada report released yesterday says the Codiac Regional RCMP, which is based in Moncton, has the highest adjusted crime clearance rates of major police forces in Canada.
The list measured how effectively police forces in regions with populations of at least 100,000 people resolve serious crimes, typically by laying charges.
Moncton's crime clearance rate was 46, followed closely by police in Durham, Ontario and Windsor, Ontario.
Of Canada's major cities, Toronto was tops with a "weighted clearance rate" of 39.7, while Ottawa was a close second.
The weighted clearance rate was used for the first time this year in the annual "Police Resources in Canada" report to compare police performance in regions with different levels of serious crime.
The report adjusts forces' clearance rates, which is the percentage of all reported crimes that are resolved, by placing a heavier emphasis on the solving of serious offences.
So the clearance of a homicide buoys a region's rate more than laying a charge of disturbing the peace.
The report says the national weighted clearance rate for 2008 was 37.6 -- the highest since 1998.
The report also included a crime severity index, which measures changes in levels of crime from year-to-year.
Moncton scored quite low on the crime severity index, suggesting a drop in serious crime from the previous year.
While the report is good news for the Mounties of Moncton and across Southern Ontario, it suggests police out West have some work to do.
The report finds Victoria city police and RCMP detachments in the B.C. communities of Burnaby, Coquitlam, Langley Township and Richmond all had weighted clearance rates below 20 per cent -- the five lowest in the country.
"There are a lot of factors behind these findings," said B.C. RCMP Sergeant Rob Vermeulen, adding that police forces often disagree on what makes a crime "cleared."
He also pointed to a B.C. regulation that requires the Crown to approve charges recommended by police, suggesting B.C. may be keeping track of crime data incorrectly.
In many other provinces, the police can lay charges directly and don't need Crown approval.
Victoria deputy chief Bill Naughton said his department's rate is low because the city sees an influx of people from other regions accessing social services and coming to its entertainment district.
"Our base population pretty much doubles every day and night," he said.
He believes the B.C. capital is very safe, adding its homicide rate remains quite low.
Robert Gordon, director of the school of criminology at Simon Fraser University, called the study's methodology "ingenious," but notes it doesn't note precisely which crimes are cleared.
The report found Regina's crime severity index to be the highest, suggesting it saw the biggest spike in severe crime year-over-year. Police in Halton, Ont., a community sandwiched between Hamilton and Toronto, had the lowest crime severity index.
