Missing People in Dawson Creek, BC: Review of The Fifth Estate's Episode

By: Shane Lambert
Original time of writing: February 3rd, 2025

The Fifth Estate, the legendary Canadian television show, published an interesting episode on YouTube not too long ago on the topic of missing people. Titled "Why are people vanishing in Dawson Creek, BC?" the episode was uploaded to YouTube on October 11th, 2024. It covers a spat of crime, which includes seemingly clandestine disappearances, in the small city (big town?) of Dawson Creek, British Columbia.

The documentary-style television program touches on a range of issues related to missing people. In the case of Dawson Creek, there was the suggestion that the town seeing a spike in economic activity is a factor in the increase in crime in the area.

I had a lot of thoughts on this. Firstly, I don't think that a strong economy necessarily increases crime.  I think impoverished communities have tons of crimes occurring, crimes that simply never enter official statistics. Along these lines, I do think a strong economy could lead to better detection of crime in that same community. Mainly, I think if an area sees an improved economy, there will then be increased budgets for policing in the area, as taxation fuels these services.

But I also think that the bigger the 'clean' economy is then the bigger the local black market is. From this perspective, you could see how crimes related to illicit activities would increase in correlation to the strength of the local economy.

What has reportedly happened, as told by The Fifth Estate, is that Dawson Creek has seen economic growth due to the oil and gas industry. This has spawned a "deadly turf war over drugs" which has led to murders, missing people, police investigations (or lack thereof), vigilantism, and public outcry.

I didn't mind this episode and liked that it connected economic growth to violence. It's a reminder that money isn't everything and that Canada is a society overrun with social problems that even people who are gainfully employed are affected by.

I felt that the police got off a little easy in the episode. I also thought that they could have explored the notions of "worthy" and "unworthy" victims a bit more. It seems that some members of Canadian society are more likely to have their missing person cases examined than others. This need not come down to issues of race or class in all cases: I think if you are hanging around with clandestine individuals, then you will be lower on the priority list if you go missing than someone who avoids a high-risk lifestyle.

But I do think the episode is worth watching. You should be able to glean a lot of risk factors about missing people and what happens in the aftermath. It is embedded below with an exit link here if the embedding should glitch or fail in the future: exits to YouTube's channel for The Fifth Estate.