"Hate crimes rose by 5% in Canada in 2015, largely due to an increase in incidents targeting certain religious and ethno-cultural groups, specifically the Muslim population and Arabs or West Asians", reads a summary of the Stats Can report. "It has been an unfortunate reality with reported incidents on the streets, at the workplace or in a shopping mall", said Farhat Rehman of the Canadian Council of Muslim Women (CCMW).
The spike is the largest increase among provinces in Canada, which nationally saw a five per cent increase in hate crimes in 2015 compared with the year before.
Saskatchewan, Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island and Manitoba were the only provinces where those incidents did not increase. The most common types of violent hate-based crimes were assaults, which jumped13 per cent from the year before, and uttering threats, up 22 per cent.
"The number of hate crimes presented in this release likely undercounts the true extent of hate crime in Canada, as not all crimes are reported to police", Statistics Canada said in a note accompanying Tuesday's data release. Vancouver reported the same number of incidents in 2015 as in 2014.
Part of this work will involve police services across Canada to reporting annually on hate crimes and incidents, said Elghawaby. "Something as simple as a rock through a window is now being reported as a hate crime when before it was simply vandalism". The number of hate crimes in Montréal was attributable to 33 more reported incidents targeting a religion.
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Aurangzeb Qureshi, spokesperson for the Alberta Muslim Public Affairs Council, says the group started its Islamaphobia hotline as a direct response to a 2015 incident in Cold Lake where a mosque had the words "Go Home" scrawled across its wall. Jews remained the most targeted religious group with 178 incidents across Canada, down from 213. The increase in female victims of religious hate crimes is attributed to an increase in female victims for Jewish and Muslim hate crimes from 2014 to 2015.
Edmonton Mayor Don Iveson called the rise in hate crimes in 2015 "double-edged". This compares with 45% of anti-race or ethnicity offences, and 24% of anti-religion hate crimes.
"It is up to all levels of governments to ensure that perpetrators of hate crimes in Canada are held to account and that victims and communities are empowered to confront hatred regardless of who it targets or its motivation", said Elgazzar.
"Year after year, as a member of the black community, we're the highest targeted group and yet you're not seeing much of a narrative about blacks being a targeted group for hate crimes", Daigle said.
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