Police-reported hate crime

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Police services in Canada reported 785 crimes that were motivated by hate in 2007, down from 892 in 2006. Race or ethnicity continues to be the most common motivation for reported hate crimes.

The vast majority of police-reported hate crimes resulted from one of three primary motivations: race or ethnicity, religion and sexual orientation.

Race or ethnicity was the most common motivation, accounting for almost two-thirds (64%) of the total number of police-reported hate crimes in 2007. Religion was the motivation for 24% and sexual orientation for a further 10%. These proportions were similar to those reported by police in 2006.

Among racially-motivated hate crimes, Blacks continued to be targeted most often (33%), although the number of such incidents declined from 238 in 2006 to 154 in 2007.

There was also a notable decline in incidents against Arabs and West Asians. However, increases were seen in racially-motivated hate crimes against East-Southeast Asians and Caucasians.

There were 185 religiously-motivated incidents in 2007, down from 220 in 2006. There were fewer incidents targeting people of both Jewish and Muslim faiths.

Incidents against the Jewish faith continued to account for about two-thirds of all hate crimes motivated by religion.

Some 79 hate crimes were motivated by sexual orientation in 2007, virtually the same as in 2006.

Fewer police-reported hate crimes in Montréal and Toronto

The census metropolitan area of Montréal recorded 43 fewer hate-motivated crimes in 2007, a drop of about 50%. Toronto also experienced a decline, with 252 hate-motivated crimes in 2007, 19 fewer than in 2006.

In contrast, increases were reported by police in Edmonton, up 17 hate crimes over 2006, and in Hamilton, up 13.

Accounting for population, Calgary had the highest rate of reported hate crime in both years, even though the number of incidents fell from 92 in 2006 to 83 in 2007.

The number of hate crimes reported by police in any given area may be influenced by the presence or absence of specialized hate crime programs or initiatives. These can vary from police service to police service and from one year to the next.

Mischief accounted for half of all reported hate-motivated crimes

Information on the type of offence and persons accused of committing a hate crime were based on a smaller sub-set of police services in 2007, covering 22% of the population. However, the results were very similar to those seen in 2006 when survey coverage was 87%.

In both 2006 and 2007, mischief offences, such as acts of graffiti on public property, accounted for about half of all police-reported incidents of hate crime. Overall, 3 in 10 hate crimes involved violence, usually minor assault or uttering threats, in which the victim suffered little or no physical harm.

One-third (32%) of persons accused of committing a hate-motivated crime in 2007 were youth 12 to 17 years of age. This was almost double the proportion of youth accused of committing crimes in general (17%).

Definitions, data sources and methods: survey numbers, including related surveys, 3302 and 4504.

The Juristat article "Police-reported hate crime in Canada, 2007," Vol. 29, no. 2 (85-002-X, free), is now available. From the By subject module of our website choose Crime and Justice.

Data for 2007 on hate-motivated crime, street gang crime and cyber crime are now available for a sub-set of police services across Canada reporting to the newest version of the Uniform Crime Reporting Survey (UCR2.2).

These new data elements were developed by Statistics Canada with the financial assistance of the Multiculturalism Program at Canadian Heritage as well as Public Safety Canada.

Data are available upon request only. For more information, or to enquire about concepts, methods or data quality of this release, contact Information and Client Services (toll-free 1-800-387-2231: 613-951-9023), Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics.