In July, Statistics Canada published its police-reported crime figures for 2025.
The Crime Severity Index fell 5%, its second straight annual decline. Breaking and entering fell 11%. Motor vehicle theft fell 16%. Other minor theft fell 5%.
Shoplifting rose 11%.
That is the fifth consecutive annual increase. The rate now sits at 502 incidents per 100,000 people, 79% higher than in 2015, on 208,941 police-reported incidents. For the second year running, shoplifting was the largest single offense pushing against an otherwise falling index.
This edition is about what a national series shows that a patchwork cannot, and the caveat inside the same release that every LP leader should read before quoting it.
The series the US does not have
American LP leaders argue about theft trends using a survey of retailers, a sample of 18 to 21 cities, and earnings-call commentary. Edition #21 covered what that leaves you with: no public benchmark at all.
Canada has one number, from one agency, covering the whole country, broken out to the offense:
Shoplifting $5,000 or under: 502 per 100,000, up 11% in 2025, up 79% since 2015.
Other theft $5,000 or under: 805 per 100,000, down 5%, its third consecutive decline.
Breaking and entering: 264 per 100,000, down 11%, and down 41% since 2015.
Motor vehicle theft: 201 per 100,000, down 16%, the second straight decline.
The comparison that matters is the second line. Non-retail minor theft is the closest control group a crime statistician can give you: same value band, same broad offense, different victim. It is falling. Retail theft is rising.
When the control falls and the treatment rises, the general crime environment is not what moved.
The caveat in the same release
Here is the sentence that matters most.
Statistics Canada notes that online reporting of shoplifting may contribute to higher police-reported counts relative to other thefts.
Read that carefully. Online reporting lets a retailer file a theft without waiting for a dispatched officer. Some of the 79% is more theft. Some of it may be more reporting.
The release does not say how much is which.
That does not make the series useless. It makes it a measure of two things at once: what happened in stores, and what retailers chose to tell police about. The second one is under your control.
What Ottawa changed in response
Bill C-14, the Bail and Sentencing Reform Act, received Royal Assent on June 15 and took effect on July 15. The government's own release led with extortion, auto theft and organized crime.
The retail provision is narrower than most headlines suggested:
A new aggravating factor at sentencing when a property offense was committed with intent to sell, barter or fraudulently return the stolen merchandise.
It applies after conviction. It creates no organized retail theft offense, no mandatory minimum, and no automatic custody.
On bail, there is no blanket reverse onus for repeat shoplifting. Courts must now weigh the number and seriousness of outstanding charges.
So the instrument activates only on cases that reach a conviction, and only if someone documents the resale or return intent. That is an evidentiary job, and it starts in your case file, not in the courtroom.
A perspective from the field
Every LP leader I know quotes police data when it supports the budget and dismisses it when it doesn't. The Canadian release forces a harder conversation.
If part of the rise is retailers reporting more, then the most-cited theft number in the country is partly a measure of our own behavior. That is not a reason to report less. It is a reason to know your own reporting rate before you stand in front of a board with someone else's trend line.
What it means south of the border
The US is not data-poor for lack of a code. The FBI's NIBRS system has a dedicated shoplifting offense, 23C. The national conversation still runs on larceny totals, city samples and retailer surveys instead.
Meanwhile, the private benchmark got harder to read. NRF retired its long-running shrink survey in 2024. Its replacement mixes diffusion indices (the share of retailers who said something went up) with averages of respondent counts.
Here is what the US had to work with this summer:
NRF: shoplifting incidents down an average 12.4% in 2025, across 66 responding retailers.
Council on Criminal Justice: shoplifting down 10% in 2025 across 21 cities, then up 4% in the first half of 2026 across 18 cities.
Three numbers, three samples, three definitions. Canada has one.
Three practical moves for the next 90 days
Calculate your own reporting rate. Incidents logged internally versus incidents reported to police, by region, by quarter. If your reporting rate moved, your local police trend moved with it, and you need to know that before you cite it.
For Canadian operations, write the resale and return intent into the file. The C-14 aggravating factor only works if the evidence exists at sentencing. Marketplace listings, return attempts, bulk quantities, and prior refund history belong in the case package from day one.
For US operations, ask your state for NIBRS 23C. Request the shoplifting series for your state and your top metro areas. One definition, applied the same way every year, beats any survey you are currently quoting.
Closing note
Canada did not solve retail theft. Its own data says the opposite, five years running. What it solved is the argument about whether the problem is real, separate from the rest of crime, and growing.
That is a lot more than the US industry has right now.
If you run operations in Canada and track your police reporting rate, I would like to know whether it moved alongside the national series. Reply with anything you can share, anonymized always.
Forward this to one LP or AP leader who should be reading it.
— Gabriel
Sources: Statistics Canada, Police-reported crime statistics in Canada, 2025 (The Daily, July 22, 2026) · Department of Justice Canada, Bill C-14 release (June 22, 2026) · Retail Insider, New Retail-Theft Sentencing Rules Take Effect in Canada July 15 (July 13, 2026) · NRF, The Impact of Retail Theft & Violence 2026 (July 30, 2026) · Council on Criminal Justice, Crime Trends in U.S. Cities: Mid-Year 2026 Update (July 22, 2026).
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