Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my colleague's remarks. He is from British Columbia, as I am.
He remarked about crime steadily falling and he mentioned statistics to show how crime is steadily falling. I would like to draw to his attention the remarks from the Vancouver Board of Trade which, just a couple of years ago, said that crime was out of control in Vancouver. In fact just a couple of years ago Vancouver had more murders than Toronto did in the first quarter of the year.
When we are talking about the statistics, going back to a 2004 survey by Statistics Canada involving 24,000 Canadians, which is quite a pile, only 8% of sexual assaults, 29% of thefts and 54% of break-ins were reported. Overall, only a third of victims reported to police. Let us update that. In September 2010, there were 20,000 grow ops in homes just in the Lower Mainland of B.C., and thousands more in the countryside. Only 31% of victims overall said they reported the crimes. Overall, 71% of property crimes were not reported.
We have made it so difficult for police to report on these things and the consequences have been so minimal in the past that people have not bothered to report the crimes. What is with that?