Alberta's rate of gang-related homicides more than tripled last year, with killings in the Calgary and Edmonton areas accounting for the majority of the increase.
That's according to the latest Statistics Canada data, which breaks down homicide rates by province, by gang involvement and by the Indigenous or non-Indigenous identity of victims.
Indigenous people continue to be far more likely to be killed than non-Indigenous people in Canada, with a homicide rate 6.7 times higher than the non-Indigenous population.
The three prairie provinces led the country in overall homicide rates.
Alberta's rate was the highest — by a substantial margin over second-place British Columbia — when it comes to non-Indigenous victims, specifically.
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Prince Edward Island held the title for highest non-Indigenous homicide rate in 2014 but that was because there happened to be three killings among of the province's relatively small population of about 150,000.
With just one homicide in 2015, the P.E.I. rate dropped back down, while Alberta's increased by about 25 per cent to reach 2.40 homicides per 100,000 non-Indigenous people.
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The crime statistics released this week show Alberta led the country in gang-related homicides last year, with a rate 0.67 killings related to organized crime per 100,000 people.
That marks a 205 per cent increase over 2014, and a 138 per cent increase over Alberta's previous five-year average.
In Calgary, specifically, in 2015 there was an uptick in gang-related crime in general, as turf wars emerged between competing criminal organizations whose members are often linked by family ties.
