Evidence of meeting #85 for Canadian Heritage in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was data.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Director, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, Statistics Canada
It could be on both sides. This would be one means that could be explored. I don't have a definite answer to that, but this could be an avenue to explore.
Conservative
David Anderson Conservative Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK
Is that how you've done the self-reported numbers that you have, through the self-surveys? I just want to read this, because it caught my attention: In 2014, we had almost 1,000 criminal incidents per day where people believed something happened to them that was motivated by hate. Is that correct?
Conservative
David Anderson Conservative Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK
That's 20% of all criminal incidents, so we have 6.5 million criminal incidents per year in Canada, approximately. Is that what you are saying?
Director, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, Statistics Canada
Well, this is what the respondents have been reporting.
Conservative
Conservative
David Anderson Conservative Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK
Out of that 1,000 per day, we end up with 1,300 for the entire year that are carried through at the legal level of police reporting hate crimes and, I assume, taking them into the justice system.
Director, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, Statistics Canada
You could interpret that as such.
Conservative
David Anderson Conservative Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK
How else would you interpret it? I am asking you, because it's your numbers. Out of the 330,000 incidents that people feel were motivated by hate last year, 1,362 were actually acted on.
Conservative
Director, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, Statistics Canada
Of those 330,000 cases where people said they believed that hate was a motive for the crime—there could have been other motives as well, but hate was one of the motives they could have chosen—two-thirds never made it to the police. Of the one third, we don't know what happened to those cases, because we didn't follow them up expressly. The only thing we know is that, when we look at the measure of what is being reported to the police, we get only 1,300 cases from the police.
Conservative
David Anderson Conservative Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK
Are you suggesting that 110,000 are reported to the police but only 1,300 end up being reported from them?
Director, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, Statistics Canada
I wouldn't go as far as making that conclusion.
Only 1,300 get substantiated by the police as being hate crimes, but that is a different source. These are two different things.
Conservative
David Anderson Conservative Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK
One source is the person's individual opinion. The other source is the police.
Director, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, Statistics Canada
Yes. It is what gets reported to the police and what gets substantiated by the police after an investigation.
Conservative
David Anderson Conservative Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK
This is similar to Mr. Sweet's question. When you see a straight line—from 1,482 in 2009, it goes down to 1,332, then up to 1,414, and ends at 1,362—do you see that as an increasing rate, when the population has gone up by almost two million?
Director, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, Statistics Canada
There was a 5% increase in the numbers from 2014 to 2015. There hasn't been a 5% increase in the population in one year, so it's a 5% increase in the number of incidents.
Conservative
David Anderson Conservative Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK
Actually, I think you're wrong, because from 2013 to 2014 it went up that much, and from 2012 to 2013 it went down more than that. You're the statistician here, but it went from 1,414 in 2012 to 1,167 in 2013. That drop is far greater than when it went up. I'm not arguing about it. I'm just—
Director, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, Statistics Canada
Are you talking about the...?
Conservative
David Anderson Conservative Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK
This is slide 8. We are in the same range as in 2009. We are actually still below 2009 and 2010. We are just above 2011, but below 2012.
Conservative
David Anderson Conservative Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK
Is that an increase? There are two million more people.
