The number of hate crimes continued to increase in 2022 across the country while recording a slight decrease in Quebec, where these offenses remain much less common than in Ontario.
An outbreak since 2019
Police forces in Canada reported 3,576 hate crimes in 2022, an increase of 7% compared to the previous year when 3,355 misdeeds of this type were recorded, according to figures published by Statistics Canada on Wednesday. This increase is part of an 83% surge in the number of hate crimes reported to police forces between 2019 and 2022, while the overall crime rate decreased by 5% in the country. If tensions linked to certain current issues and the pandemic can explain this phenomenon, raising awareness among targeted communities of the importance of filing a complaint also has a lot to do with it, believes the scientific and strategic director of the Center for the Prevention of Radicalization leading to violence, Louis Audet Gosselin.
What is a hate crime?
Hate crimes target integral or visible parts of a person’s identity such as race, color, national or ethnic origin, Statistics Canada indicates on its website. The data presented Wednesday is taken from the Uniform Crime Reporting Survey (UCR), a census of all criminal incidents known to police services in Canada. They must therefore first be reported to the police, which depends on many factors, including the awareness of the community where they occur. “Hateful acts are very linked to current events. When a debate affects a specific community, we will see an increase,” notes Louis Audet Gosselin.
Ethnic origin and sexual orientation targeted
The increase in the number of hate crimes observed in 2022 is largely explained by a marked increase in two more specific categories, namely those targeting race or ethnic origin (+12% for 1950 cases), particularly blacks (+ 28% for an increase of 182 cases) which represents more than half of the people targeted, and those targeting sexual orientation (+12% for 491 cases).
Religion less targeted
After reaching a peak in 2021, a 15% decrease was noted in 2022 in hate crimes targeting religion in Canada, although their number remains higher than those recorded during the period from 2018 to 2020. However, these Figures exclude hate crimes linked to the conflict between Hamas and Israel, the outbreak of which in October 2023 had the effect of fueling tensions almost everywhere on the planet, including in Montreal. “When we see the figures for October [2023]we will see a significant increase in the number of Islamophobic and anti-Semitic hateful acts,” predicts Louis Audet Gosselin.
Quebec at the back of the pack
All things considered, Quebec is at the bottom of the pack among Canadian provinces in terms of the number of hate crimes recorded there with 5.1 incidents per 100,000 inhabitants. Only Manitoba (3.9 cases) and Newfoundland and Labrador (3 cases) do better. At the other end of the spectrum, Ontario (12.7 incidents), Nova Scotia (11.1 incidents) and British Columbia (10.2 incidents) all have a worse record than the Canadian average (9 ,2 cases). However, these regional variations do not necessarily indicate “that one province is more hateful than another”, estimates Louis Audet Gosselin, but rather that the awareness of certain communities to the reality of hate crimes may be more or less strong there. .
Men and boys targeted
A majority of the approximately 5,946 victims targeted by hate crimes between 2018 and 2022 are male (63%), a proportion which increases even for categories of hate crimes targeting sexual orientation (73%). As in the case of crimes in general, Statistics Canada points out, the alleged perpetrators of hate crimes tend to be young men or boys (86%) whose median age was 33 years.
A majority of crimes without violence
Even though they are both on the rise, the proportion of violent hate crimes (46%) and non-violent hate crimes (54%) reported in 2022 was comparable to that of previous years, indicates Statistics Canada. A phenomenon which may contribute to the fact that barely 29% of these misdeeds are resolved by the police, compared to 34% for all other criminal cases, explains Louis Audet Gosselin. “In some cases, not all crimes are very violent and can lead to convictions, which tends to cause a lot of frustration among the targeted communities because it is not the seriousness of the act which is the most damaging, but its impact on the community”.