Half of Alberta’s small businesses experienced increased crime in 2025, CFIB says

A new report from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business shows just how concerned business owners in Alberta are about the impact of crime on their business, their staff and their customers.

The report, titled, How crime and disorder are reshaping daily life for Canada’s small businesses, says half of small business owners in the province report that crime has increased in their community over the past year, while only five per cent said it declined.

The finding are included in the results of a survey with small business owners in all 10 provinces.

“When we look at the Alberta data, roughly 57 per cent say they’re concerned for their own personal safety and the safety of their staff and customers,” said CFIB senior policy analyst Kayode Southwood. “So it’s definitely alarming to see that kind of data coming from small businesses.”

In Alberta, 17 per cent of small business owners said crime has “significantly increased,” while 32 per cent said it has “somewhat increased” and only five per cent claim it has declined.

Combined, the 49 per cent who say it has increased represent the seventh highest in Canada.

Concern in Newfoundland was highest, with 69 per cent of small business owners claiming crime had “significantly” or “somewhat” increased over the past year.

It was lowest in Quebec, where 28 per cent shared those concerns.

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“They are concerns that Greg Jarmula, manager of Walls Alive, can relate to first-hand.

“We’ve been seeing a steady increase in somewhat criminal activity, vagrants and that park themselves in front of our store, start fires, graffiti is kind of an ongoing sort of problem in this area. Our front door was smashed, the store was vandalized. So with that, I mean, we all seem to be a bit on edge,” said Jarmula.

“We try to be vigilant. At the same time, we try to serve our clients the best we can. We want to come to work and work at ease and yet we have to look over our shoulders and make sure whoever is in the store is truly our clientele and not some people that are trying to cause some problems.”

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“We recently had to invest in our front gate, which until recently was not necessary, but with the fire started in front of our front door, our building was in some danger of being burned or in some way damaged, so we just decided to be proactive. And unfortunately, some of our budget needs to be directed towards those causes,” said Jarmula.

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The CFIB said the findings of its report align with police-reported crime statistics — and it points to what it says was a 66 per cent increase in shoplifting between 2014 and 2024.

In 2024 alone, the CFIB says there was a 14 per cent increase in cases of theft under $5,000, compared to 2023.

“We have seen a rise in retail crime across the board,” said Sgt. Nick Wilsher of the Calgary Police Crime unit. “All different stores, ranging from your large corporation stores all the way down to small businesses convenience stores and the like. We are seeing a steady increase.”

“So many different kind of feeders into that depending on on what you’re going out to steal,” said Wilsher. “With the larger chain stores, that’s where people are actually going out, stealing the merchandise and then reselling it on places like Facebook Marketplace or Kijiji.  (With) smaller stores sometimes it’s that kid stealing a candy bar. But then we also see that they are taking sometimes more than that, and are they using it to trade for other items that they need. So, lots of different social factors that feed into that.”

In response to the findings of the report, the CFIB is calling on all levels of government to take steps to combat crime, including:

• Make changes to the Criminal Code to better address repeat and organized crime,
• Set standards for law enforcement response time when crimes are reported, along with streamlined police reporting processes and better follow up,
• Offer incentives such as security rebates, to help small businesses prevent and recover from incidents of crime, and
• Ensure small businesses are given a role in helping to develop effective policies to combat crime.

“We know that there are changes to the Criminal Code coming through on the federal side. I think time will tell to see if those changes are enough to combat some of the issues that small businesses are seeing on the street,” said Southwood.

But he said municipalities have a role to play, too.

“What we hear from a lot of business owners is that, you know, they might spend hours on the line trying to get through to someone on … the police non-emergency line to report a crime. And in a lot of cases, small businesses might just not report that crime because of the process.”

However, CPS says business owners can also make a police report online, no matter how big or small, and indicate if they have CCTV footage, which can prompt police to get to the store sooner and start the process of trying to identify the offenders.

“The more people report, it helps us get a clearer picture of what is being targeted and what the offenders are going for and what areas are facing a lot of the problems,” said Wilsher.

“If a small store doesn’t call us in because, well, it’s only a few things that have gone missing, we can’t plan out our patrolling areas to those hotspot locations.”

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