Content area
Full text
Police-reported hate crime in Canada, 2020: Highlights
* In 2020, Canadian police reported 2,669 criminal incidents that were motivated by hate. This was the largest number recorded since comparable data became available in 2009. The first year of the pandemic saw the number of policereported hate crimes increase by 37%, or 718 more incidents, compared with the previous year.
* Between 2019 and 2020, the number of police-reported crimes motivated by hatred of a race or ethnicity increased 80%, from 884 to 1,594. Much of this increase was a result of more police-reported hate crimes targeting the Black population (+318 incidents), East or Southeast Asian population (+202 incidents), the Indigenous population (+44 incidents) and the South Asian population (+38 incidents).
* Police reported fewer hate crimes targeting religion for the third consecutive year, after peaking in 2017. Police-reported hate crimes targeting religion declined 16% from 613 incidents in 2019 to 515 incidents in 2020. This decrease was primarily due to fewer hate crimes targeting the Muslim population, which declined from 182 to 82 incidents in 2020 (-55%). Hate crimes against the Jewish population rose slightly in 2020, from 306 to 321 incidents (+5%).
* Hate crimes targeting the Black and Jewish populations remained the most common types of hate crimes reported by police, representing 26% and 13% of all hate crimes, respectively. These were followed by hate crimes targeting the East or Southeast Asian population (11%) and those targeting a sexual orientation (10%).
* In 2020, the largest increases in the number of hate crimes were reported in Ontario (+316 incidents), British Columbia (+198 incidents), Quebec (+86 incidents), and Alberta (+84 incidents). The majority of the provinces and two territories reported increases, with the exceptions of New Brunswick (-11 incidents), Northwest Territories (-2 incidents), Prince Edward Island (-1 incident) and Manitoba (no change). When accounting for population size among the provinces, rates of hate crimes per 100,000 population increased the most in Nova Scotia (+70%), British Columbia (+60%), Saskatchewan (+60%), Alberta (+39%) and Ontario (+35%).
* Among census metropolitan areas (CMAs), police reported more hate crime incidents in 22 of 35 CMAs. The largest volume increases were generally reported in the more populous CMAs (Vancouver, Toronto, Montréal, Ottawa and Calgary). When accounting for population size...