The Daily News
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
A new Statistics Canada study showed that 892 hate crimes took place in Canada in 2006, which is 892 too many.
Out of the 220 religiously motivated crimes reported by police, 63% were targeted against Jews, 21% were against Muslims and 6% were Catholics.
The study, which relies mostly on research by the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, which uses police-reported data on the victims of hate crimes, also found 502 hate-motivated incidents were based on race.
Black people were the victims in half of these crimes, while 13% were South Asian and 12% were Arab or West Asian.
These statistics will likely appall many Canadians.
We like to think of ourselves as superior to our southern neighbours who still suffer from the legacy of slavery.
But this report shows that we are still mired in racial stereotypes.
As expected, not everyone agrees with this study.
The leader of the Canadian Islamic Congress told Canwest News Service that this report is flawed.
Mohamed Elmasry said hate crimes against Muslims could be misfiled by police -- skewing the data -- because it's difficult to classify a victim's religion.
"A Somali family who reports a hate crime, they might put it under black when it's supposed to be under Muslim," Elmasry told Canwest News Service.
"That Somali family should be under Muslim and not under black, because the motivation is really because the woman is wearing a hijab. It is easier for the hate crime unit to put the report under black because it's a visible minority."
Elmasry has a valid point.
It is important to understand whether hate crimes are racially or religiously motivated in order to take steps to prevent these incidents from occurring.
But at a base level it doesn't really matter whether a criminal is committing a crime against a black Muslim person because they are black or because they are Muslim.
These crimes shouldn't be occurring, period.
Errol Mendes, a law professor at the University of Ottawa who specializes in human rights, brought up a really important issue.
"Hate crimes normally go up in an atmosphere where propaganda is also on the rise. And apart from a few incidences reported, there hasn't been a spike in that in Canada, so that's very worrying," he told Canwest News Service.
This should be worrying to Canadians.
And we should ask ourselves and our policy-makers if hate laws and limits on free speech are the most effective way to handle this problem.
Aside from the 892 hate crime incidents reported to police, which range from property crimes to violent attacks, there are numerous others that go on unreported.
There are also incidents that are heard in our Human Rights Tribunals that deal expressly with acts of discrimination.
Obviously, these laws and policies are not having the effect we hope they would.
What we need now is an open and honest discourse about racism in Canada.
By cracking down on free speech or arguing about the validity of quasi-judicial bodies like the Human Rights Tribunals, we are missing the point of the whole discussion on racism.
We must all work to make Canada a free and fair place to live for people of all races and religions through education and discussion.
Only then will the number of hate crimes begin to drop to the acceptable number of zero.
------
Comment on this opinion: [email protected]
Source: Nanaimo Daily News, June 10, 2008