Invest to stop hate crimes

In a country that prides itself on diversity and acceptance, the hatecrime numbers released by Statistics Canada last week are particularly alarming.

While the solutions are far from clear, the two-year-old statistics do point to at least one thing government can do to combat the troubling rise of such incidents: provide more up-to-date numbers.

The stats, from 2015, paint a bleak picture. Hate crimes were up 5 per cent that year over 2014, to 1,362 incidents. Particularly worrying is the rise in crimes directed at Muslims. These were up 61 per cent over 2014, accounting for 12 per cent of all hate crimes.

Still, Muslims were not the most targeted religious group. Though incidents directed at the Jewish population declined to178 from 213, they still accounted for the largest number of religious hate crimes at 13 per cent.

Racism remains the biggest driver of such incidents. Crimes directed at people based on their race or ethnicity comprised nearly half the total, with Black populations the most highly targeted at 17 per cent.

Another 11 per cent were motivated by sexual orientation.

Sadly, these distressing numbers don’t even begin to tell the full story of the state of hate crime in this country.

As Statistics Canada acknowledges, most crimes targeted at religious, racial or LGBT groups are not reported to police for various reasons, including embarrassment.

Indeed, the Jewish group B’nai Brith reports that the number is likely much higher than StatsCan suggests. That organization’s Annual Audit of Anti-Semitic Incidents, which includes abhorrent acts that might not meet the threshold of a crime, listed 1,277 incidents in 2015.

But what really clouds the picture is that these statistics are two years out of date.

A clear and current accounting of the prevalence of hate crimes is key for policy-makers and police as they attempt to understand the roots of such crime and prevent it. As advocates in the Jewish and Muslim communities have long argued, Statistics Canada should be given the mandate and resources to publish more up-to-date reports on hate crimes so politicians and police can respond to the current state of affairs.

For example, the National Council of Canadian Muslims says it has received an increase in complaints about anti-Muslim incidents this year, but the country won’t see that picture until 2019.

“You can’t build a case without evidence, and the evidence we have is stale,” the council’s vice-chairman, Khalid Elgazzar, told the Globe and Mail. “I’ll tell you we’re having a pretty rough year. But we’re only going to hear about it in 2019.”

The Muslim council attributed the uptick in hate crimes against its community in 2015 to divisive rhetoric from the Harper government during the last election campaign. The Tories’ focus on face coverings at citizenship ceremonies and “snitch lines” for so-called barbaric cultural practices fomented fear and division, the organization says.

To see evidence of such a correlation as it occurs would help, for instance, to hold to account those who engage in this sort of dangerous politics.

Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale promised last week to look into the concern about the timing of the release of Statistics Canada data on hate crimes. “I would certainly want to rectify any such deficiency,” he noted.

That is most welcome. Up-to-date numbers on hate crimes could be a powerful tool for politicians and police forces fighting to stop them.

Statistics Canada reports hate crimes in Canada increased by 5 per cent in 2015. But what about 2016? We need more up-to-date figures to get a true picture of the face of hate in Canada