Police-reported hate crimes hit record highs in 2020: Statistics Canada

Statistics Canada has released long-awaited data on police-reported hate crimes in the country, and there’s been a significant increase.

In one year alone, between 2019 and 2020, police-reported hate crimes rose by 37%. Hate crimes reported to police that were motivated by race or ethnicity rose by 80%. Most of these hate crimes were committed against Black and East or Southeast Asian, Indigenous, and South Asian people.

Hate crimes of both physically violent and non-violent nature increased. StatsCan said that non-violent hate crimes were most common.

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“This marks the largest number of police-reported hate crimes since the police started collecting hate crimes data. Most troubling is that in 2020, police-reported hate crimes that were motivated by race or ethnicity almost doubled (+80%) compared with 2019,” Doris Mah, co-founder of the Stand with Asians Coalition, said in a news release.

Statistics Canada

The data was released by StatsCan on the one-year anniversary of the spa shooting in Atlanta that claimed the lives of six Asian women. The shooting was one of a number of violent and deadly attacks on Asian people in North America and fear was felt widely among the Asian community in Canada.

While the data shows that hate crimes motivated by religion have declined for most religions, there was a rise in reported hate crimes against Jewish people. Hate crimes against Black and Jewish people were the most commonly reported.

StatsCan data indicates that hate crimes committed against Black people or because of religion were more often non-violent. Hate crimes targeting sexual orientation, South Asian people, Arab or West Asian people, and East and Southeast Asian people were more often violent.

Statistics Canada

Those who were targeted for their Indigenous identity or sexual orientation tended to be the youngest of the victims of violent hate crimes, according to StatsCan’s analysis of all police-reported hate crimes between 2011 and 2020.

Statistics Canada

Hate crimes targeting Indigenous and Muslim people were more often committed against women, according to StatsCan. Across the board, 66% of victims of hate crimes were men, while 34% were women. When looking at hate crimes targeting Muslim people, 47% of the victims were women or girls. Similarly, 44% of Indigenous hate crime victims were women or girls.

The provinces that reported the biggest increases in hate crimes were Ontario, BC, Quebec, and Alberta. New Brunswick, Northwest Territories, and PEI had slight decreases. Manitoba saw no change in reported hate crimes.

Statistics Canada

The data also shows that hate crimes are less often solved, or “cleared,” than non-hate-motivated crimes. According to StatsCan, 30% of hate-motivated crimes are solved, whereas 37% non-hate-motivated crimes.

When it comes to non-violent, hate-motivated mischief, only 9% of cases were solved. To compare, 25% of non-hate-motivated mischief cases are solved. The same pattern appears with hate-motivated assaults, with 58% solved compared to 65% of non-hate-motivated assaults solved.

The vast majority of hate crimes were committed by men under the age of 50. Data from 2011 to 2020 shows that 89% of people accused of hate crimes targeting religion or sexual orientation were men. Similarly, 84% of people accused of committing hate crimes targeting race and ethnicity were men.

Statistics Canada

It is important to note that many marginalized communities have negative experiences with police. This can lead to underreporting crimes in an effort to avoid police contact.