Top 10 big Canadian cities for pot busts

[Mount Niblock, perched above Lake Louise. George Rose/Getty Images]

The tiny hamlet of Lake Louise and the small town of Jasper, in Alberta’s Rocky Mountains, are the top two jurisdictions for pot possession incidents by capita, the Calgary Herald reports.

In 2014, Lake Louise saw 7,938 possession incidents per 100,000 people and 3,675 in 2015.

The easy explanation is that RCMP have stepped up their patrols in recent years of the Trans-Canada Highway, calling it a corridor for drug trafficking.

“When you think about the volume of vehicles going through Alberta, we’re probably getting a small percentage of what’s actually moving through it,” RCMP Sgt. Jack Poitras told The Calgary Herald.

The news got us at Yahoo Canada News thinking, how do the numbers stack up to other Canadian cities. So we examined the available Statistics Canada data on marijuana incidents in 2015 (the latest stats available).

The Stats Can data shows a declining number of pot possession incidents nationwide – down 15 per cent in 2015 from 2014. And the total number of pot possession incidents in Canada was 49,577, with a rate of 138.28 per 100,000 people.

Kelowna has the dubious honour of leading the pack among large Canadian cities for pot incidents and charges, which police chalk up to hard work, according to a CBC report.

“We are very proactive and tenacious in our enforcement,” RCMP Supt. Nick Romanchuk told the broadcaster.

The top 10 rates of marijuana incidents* in Canada’s largest cities (per 100,000 people):

1.  Kelowna, B.C.: 290

2.  Ottawa-Gatineau: 220

3.  Vancouver, B.C.:  220

4.  Victoria, B.C.: 187

5.  Sherbrooke, Que.: 176

6.  Halifax, N.S.: 161

7.  Kitchener-Waterloo, Ont.: 157

8.  Trois-Rivieres, Que.: 145

9.  Saguenay, Que.: 139

10.  Hamilton, Ont.: 133

Of the 34 municipal regions Stats Can compiled data for, the place with the lowest rate was Kingston, Ont. at 16.

*Note: Not all incidents result in charges.