Ottawa residents can feel a little extra good about calling the capital home this week. A new national polling survey from Liaison Strategies has ranked Ottawa as the safest city in Canada, while Winnipeg landed at the opposite end of the list as the country's least safe city in the eyes of those polled.
What the poll found
The survey asked Canadians across major cities how safe they feel where they live, and the results showed a clear divide. More than half of respondents said they perceive Winnipeg to be very or somewhat unsafe, a striking figure that puts the Manitoba capital well ahead of other cities on the list. Ottawa, by contrast, topped the rankings as the city Canadians see as safest, a title that will likely be welcome news for locals and for the city's reputation as a calmer alternative to Canada's biggest urban centres.
Why this matters for Ottawa
For a city that sometimes gets overshadowed by Toronto and Montreal when it comes to national attention, this kind of ranking is a genuine point of pride. Ottawa has spent years building a reputation as a livable, family-friendly capital, from its network of parks and the Rideau Canal to its relatively low-key downtown core compared to bigger metros. A perception of safety plays into everything from where people choose to raise families to where businesses decide to set up shop, and rankings like this one feed directly into that narrative.
It is worth noting that this is a perception-based poll rather than a hard statistical crime analysis, meaning it reflects how residents feel rather than a strict tally of incident rates. Still, perception matters. It shapes how people move through their city at night, how comfortable they feel using transit, and how visitors and newcomers decide where to settle. For a city that has weathered its share of headlines around downtown safety and transit concerns in recent years, especially around the LRT and parts of the ByWard Market, a top ranking like this is a notable counterpoint.
How Ottawa compares
While the full breakdown of every city surveyed was not detailed, the contrast between Ottawa and Winnipeg stands out. Winnipeg has faced ongoing public conversations about crime rates and safety in its downtown core, and more than half of poll respondents there reported feeling unsafe. Ottawa's position at the top suggests residents here feel notably more secure in their day to day lives, whether that is walking home in Centretown, taking the O-Train, or spending an evening out in the Glebe or Westboro.
Rankings like these tend to spark local pride, but they are also a useful reminder for city officials and residents alike to keep pushing on the things that reinforce that sense of safety, from lighting and street design to community policing and transit reliability. For now, though, Ottawans have bragging rights as residents of the country's safest city, according to the people who live there.
Source: Global News Ottawa
