The Homicide Survey has been the primary mechanism for the collection of national statistics on homicide in Canada since 1961. Information on the number and rates of homicide, types and circumstances of homicide offences as well as the characteristics of victims and accused involved is provided by all police forces in whose jurisdiction a homicide occurs. Information related to homicide is available by respondent, by census metropolitan area, by province/territory and for all of Canada. This information is used to examine trends in homicides as well as characteristics of homicide incidents, such as age and gender of accused and victims, accused-victim relationships, and types of weapons.

UCR data reflect reported crime that has been substantiated by police. Information collected by the survey includes the number of criminal incidents, the clearance status of those incidents and persons-charged information. The UCR Survey produces a continuous historical record of crime and traffic statistics reported by every police agency in Canada since 1962. In 1988, a new version of the survey was created, UCR2, and is since referred to as the "incident-based" survey, in which microdata on characteristics of incidents, victims and accused are captured.

There are two versions of the UCR collection instrument that are operating simultaneously: UCR Aggregate (UCR1.0) Survey and the UCR2 Incident-based Survey, which is comprised of three versions, UCR2.0, UCR2.1, and UCR2.2.

The UCR Aggregate Survey (UCR1.0) collects summary data for nearly 100 separate criminal offences and has been in place since 1962.

In order to collect more detailed information on each incident, victims and accused persons, the UCR2 Survey was developed in the mid-1980's. This alternative method of data collection in which a separate statistical record is created for each criminal incident is known as an "incident-based" reporting system. The first respondent reported incident-based data in 1988.

A revised version of the UCR2 survey known as UCR2.1 was introduced in 1998. This survey introduced certain efficiencies for police services and lowered response burden by eliminating or simplifying UCR2 variables. Then, in 2005, another version named UCR 2.2 was introduced to take into account new violations/variables (not processed separately in the past) such as organized crime, cyber crime, hate crime and geocode information.

The annual report on crime statistics presents an analysis of the police-reported data. These data are presented within the context of both short and long term trends. Data are examined at the national, provincial and territorial levels, as well as for major metropolitan areas by type of crime. The report distinguishes between violent crime, property crime, other Criminal Code offences, impaired driving, drug offences and youth crime.

Note: due to a change in methodology, some crime statistics for 1998 and later are included in the incident-based data files Aggregate Response and Aggregate Clearance in the Uniform Crime Reporting section above.