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.
Liberal
Anju Dhillon Liberal Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, QC
Is that what you meant in your testimony, that they are perceived as Muslims?
Vice-President, Public Policy and Communications, Alberta Muslim Public Affairs Council
Yes. It is based on physical characteristics. I could be perceived as a Muslim but not be a Muslim, and still be a victim of Islamophobia.
President, Alberta Muslim Public Affairs Council
I second that. I want to bring to your attention an incident in Bashaw, Alberta. A Sikh owned a motel. It was burned down, and a death occurred, just because there was ignorance and no understanding of whether this person was a Muslim or not. He was a Sikh, a turban-wearing Sikh.
Liberal
Anju Dhillon Liberal Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, QC
How do we fight this ignorance, whether it's about religious symbols that Sikhs wear or somebody's skin tone?
President, Alberta Muslim Public Affairs Council
Again, it comes down to education and awareness. It comes down to understanding who we are as people. We are opening up our doors or mosques and welcoming our neighbourhood members to let them understand who we are and what we do. We are just your everyday people who pay their taxes. We are doctors, engineers, technologists, and accountants. We are just normal people. There's nothing different.
The people who commit these jihadi crimes do not define us. We do not associate them with Islam, because, again, they don't belong to a religion.
Liberal
Anju Dhillon Liberal Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, QC
How do we reach out to those people who are committing hate crimes or heinous acts, like putting up hateful posters in a university? Do you reach out to that organization and try to bridge...?
Vice-President, Public Policy and Communications, Alberta Muslim Public Affairs Council
Absolutely. Edmonton just had its municipal election not too long ago. There was a potential candidate who was espousing anti-Islamic, anti-Muslim rhetoric on her Facebook page, and we found it. We didn't react negatively. We called her and said, “Hey, we noticed that this is happening. What do you have to say? Why are you putting this stuff up on your Facebook page”? She apologized. She said, “Well, you know what....” We took her to the mosque and showed her around.
What you have to do is battle ignorance. When this happens, half the time it's people not knowing. It's people relying on what they see on TV.
Vice-President, Public Policy and Communications, Alberta Muslim Public Affairs Council
Exactly. Once they get to know the unknown, you find that they are willing to talk to you and treat you like a normal, everyday person. It's really about battling ignorance. That's what we find. That's what we are trying to do. I alluded to the Andalusian curriculum. The reason we are doing this is not that we have an obsession with Spain, necessarily, but that it was a period in history when Muslims, Christians, and Jews were living together in peaceful coexistence, and that's what we want to promote.
Liberal
Anju Dhillon Liberal Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, QC
Could you please submit the Andalusian curriculum to this committee?
Vice-President, Public Policy and Communications, Alberta Muslim Public Affairs Council
Sure.
Liberal
Anju Dhillon Liberal Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, QC
I'm glad to hear that you have a hotline. I think those help. As soon as somebody has a problem, you just pick up the phone and call. Since the hotline, have you had a lot of people come to your office? Is there somewhere they can come in and get psychological or legal help? We heard throughout the testimony that it's very hard for some people to go and get legal help. They are afraid of their rights. Newly arrived immigrants think they are going to get deported if they go to the police, because of the reality back where they came from.
President, Alberta Muslim Public Affairs Council
Those who answer the calls on our hotline are professional individuals. They are psychologists, lawyers, and whatnot. These calls are strictly confidential, for privacy reasons. Even I don't get the full context of it, because I am not supposed to know what it is. Arrangements are made with the individual in terms of any support that is given: a one-on-one meeting, a discussion over the phone, or further touchpoints they would have throughout the period until they are fully supported, from either law enforcement or mental health perspective.
As I said, whatever arrangements happen, they happen between the individual professional and the victim on that side of it. Individuals within AMPAC are not supposed to be aware of this because of confidentiality reasons. We treat it just like a doctor-patient relationship, and that's where it remains.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
Thank you, Ms. Dhillon and Mr. Suri. I'm sorry, the seven minutes are up.
We've finished our questions.
Yes, David.
November 8th, 2017 / 4:30 p.m.
Conservative
David Anderson Conservative Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK
Madam Chair, one point would be to remind the witnesses that if they want to send in any further recommendations or information, we'd be happy to include that as part of the testimony.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
I was about to say that.
Please do it as quickly as possible. This committee is going to be wrapping up very soon for its report, so if you can send any information you have to the clerk, he will distribute it to the committee so we will all get to read it—but ASAP. Thank you.
I want to thank the witnesses for coming and for spending time explaining their perspectives on this report.
I will now ask to suspend, so that we can get the other group to come in. Thank you.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
If you'll allow, I will now call the meeting to order.
Again, pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), this committee is studying systemic racism and religious discrimination. Today we have Statistics Canada as our witness, Mr. Clermont and Ms. Kong.
I'll just run over the protocols for you. You have 10 minutes between you to present to us, and then of course there will be questions and answers.
To remind the members, we will finish this with 15 minutes for our in-camera session to discuss the committee report.
Mr. Clermont.
Yvan Clermont Director, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, Statistics Canada
Very good. Thank you, Madame Chair.
Good afternoon, everyone.
First, let me thank the committee members for inviting me to present the most recent data on hate crimes reported by Canadians and by Canadian police services.
The most recent statistics we have are police-reported data from the calendar year 2015, which were released last June. In an effort to produce more timely data, the committee should know that the 2016 statistics will be released this November 28.
I'm here today, accompanied by Rebecca Kong, chief of police services program, also from the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics at Statistics Canada. She leads the uniform crime reports survey, from which most data presented today are coming from, among other surveys in the field of policing.
In summary, the results we are going to discuss today show first that Canada is a very diverse society—and will become increasingly diverse in the coming years—and second that hate crimes reported by Canadians represent one criminal incident out of 20, according to the survey on victimization.
Between 2014 and 2015, incidents of hate crimes reported by the police increased from 1,295 to 1,362. Certain groups saw greater increases. For example, in 2015, the number of incidents involving the Arab and West Asian population increased from 69 to 92 incidents and incidents involving the Muslim population increased from 99 to 159 incidents. I am still talking about incidents reported to the police.
To start with, I'd like to present some recent census data which will help contextualize this presentation.
According to the results of the 2016 census, more than one person out of every five in Canada are foreign-born, a total of 7.5 million people, of whom a number have arrived in recent years. More than two million, in fact, have arrived in the last 10 years.
The Philippines is now the top source country of recent immigration in Canada. It is followed by India and China. Of note, people born in Syria are now also part of the top 10 countries of origin of recent immigrants due to the recent influx of Syrian refugees.
The census data highlights the high degree of diversity in Canada. According to our projections, these trends are expected to continue over the next two decades. It is projected that by 2036, three in 10 Canadians will be foreign-born, and the same proportion will have a mother tongue other than French or English. High fertility will contribute to increase the proportion of aboriginal people in the population as well. Aboriginal youth, for example, represent a relatively large proportion of Canadian youth, and this will continue to grow.
Statistics Canada has two sources of data on hate crime: data on self-reported victimization and police-reported information. The first source is the general social survey—victimization, which is collected every five years, and which was last conducted in 2014. This is about self-reported criminal incidents of various natures. The second source of information reported is what is reported by Canadians to the police, then to Statistics Canada by the police themselves. This is done every year through the uniform crime report.
Let us first look at the results of the general social survey on victimization, which is conducted every five years.
For that survey, a sample of Canadians 15 years of age and over is asked whether they have been victims of certain crimes such as sexual assault, robbery, assault, or vandalism. If the respondents indicate they have been victims of those crimes, they are asked whether they believe that the incident was motivated by hate. If so, they are then asked what the reason for that hatred is.
In 2014, Canadians reported 330,000 criminal incidents that they believed to be motivated by hate. This represented 5% of all incidents reported, or one incident of every 20. The data also revealed that two-thirds of those reporting that they had been victims of an incident motivated by hate did not report it to the police.
Now let us go to the incidents reported to the police. First, it is important to define a hate crime. police data use strict legal criteria, as applied to cases that have been confirmed as a result of a police investigation.
Hate crimes include any Criminal Code incidents that involved one of the four specific offences of hate crimes listed in the Criminal Code. These include advocating genocide, public incitement of hatred, willful promotion of hatred, and mischief motivated by hate in relation to religious property. Police-reported hate crime also includes all other incidents where an offence was motivated by hate, as determined by the police.
On slide 8 of your deck now, you can see that the hate crimes rose by 5% in Canada in 2015. This was largely due to an increase in incidents targeting the Muslim population and Arab or west Asian populations. Police reported 1,362 incidents of that nature, which was 67 more than the year before. Of note though, in comparison, there were almost 1.9 million criminal incidents reported to the police in that same year.
On slide 9, the number of police-reported crimes motivated by hatred, race, or ethnicity grew from 611 incidents to 641, an increase of 30 incidents, or 5%. Close to half of all hate crimes reported to the police in 2015 were motivated by hate of a race or ethnicity. Police reported 469 incidents in 2015 that were motivated by hatred of a religion. That was 40 more incidents than the previous year. These incidents accounted for another 35% of hate-motivated crimes in that year. Hate crimes targeting sexual orientation declined by 9%, which was down to 141 incidents. These incidents accounted for another 11% of hate crimes.
On slide 10, hate crime incidents are considered as violent or non-violent. Examples of violent crimes are assaults and uttering threats, which are the most common types of violent offences related to hate. The most common non-violent hate crime was mischief, which includes vandalism and graffiti. This was the most common offence targeting a religion or ethnicity. Incidents motivated by hatred of sexual orientation in 2015 were more likely to be violent, almost 60% of them. This was followed by those incidents motivated by hatred of race or ethnicity, at 55%.
Now I'll move on to slide 11. Since 2010, black populations have been the most targeted group for these incidents. However, the total number of incidents targeting this group has decreased since 2012. Still, in 2015 police-reported incidents motivated by hate against the black population accounted for 35% of racial hate crimes. In contrast, police-reported hate crimes targeting Arab or west Asian populations have been on the rise since 2013. In 2014, there were 69 hate crimes against this group, and that number went to 92 incidents in 2015. Those incidents accounted for 14% of hate crimes motivated by race or ethnicity.
On slide 12, other groups targeted in 2015 include white populations at 6% and aboriginal populations at 5%. There were 35 police-reported hate crimes targeting aboriginal populations in 2015. These incidents have been relatively low.
The increase in the total number of hate crimes in 2015 was attributable in part to an increase in the number of cases targeting Muslims. The number of hate crimes against Muslims reported to the police increased from 99 to 159, an increase of 61%.
At the same time, the number of hate crimes targeting Jews decreased from 213 in 2014 to 178 in 2015. So, hate crimes against the Jewish population is still the largest number, but the number was followed very closely by crimes targeting the Muslim population.
On slide 14, as you can see, there is an interesting pattern to be observed in relation to the age of the accused. In 2015, youths aged 12 to 17 accounted for 22% of all persons accused in police-reported hate crimes. This is consistent with what was reported the previous year. The majority of those accused of committing hate crimes, 87%, were male. Young males under the age of 25 made up more than a third of all persons accused of hate crimes.
We are on slide 15 now. Persons accused of hate-motivated crimes targeting religion were even younger, which is in line with what was observed in previous years. About half of those accused of hate crimes targeting religion were 24 years old or younger.
Finally, in the age profile on slide 16, you can see that persons accused of hate crimes targeting race or ethnicity tended to be older than those targeting religion. In 2015, 63% were aged 25 or older.
Madam Chair, that concludes my presentation today.
I would like to thank all the members of the committee for their attention and their time.
My colleague Ms. Kong and I are available to answer your questions.
Thank you.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
Thank you very much. I want to thank you for coming, because so much of what we heard from witnesses in the past focused on the lack of statistical data, disaggregated data, etc. We thought that having you here to walk us through some of this would be very important.
We are going to go through a seven-minute round, and that includes question and answer. The first questioner is Ms. Dabrusin, for the Liberals.
Liberal
Julie Dabrusin Liberal Toronto—Danforth, ON
Thank you.
It was helpful to work through these slides, but most of my questions are going to come from your last report. When I was looking at it, I had many questions about how we get to the numbers that we just looked at.
If I look at some of the notes in the report.... It says, “Changes in reporting practices [from the police] can have an effect on hate crime statistics.” It also refers to the fact that, given the small number of incidents as a whole, “a few incidents can have a considerable impact” on these statistics.
My first question for you is, how do we set the baselines year to year? When we are looking at, say, the 2016 statistics that are going to come out, how should we interpret the existing statistics we have?
Director, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, Statistics Canada
That's a good question.
Rebecca Kong Chief, Policing Services Program, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, Statistics Canada
We always caution in the report that reporting can vary from year to year. We know that there are a lot of factors that can influence that. These are incidents that are reported by victims to the police, and we know that not all incidents are reported to the police. We have seen in the past—particularly in the earlier days, when police services were setting up hate crime units or doing particular outreach to certain communities—that this could influence whether the numbers go up or down. That's the answer to your first question.
In terms of baseline, it is difficult. The numbers are small. As you saw, in 2015 we had a total of 1,300 hate crimes, compared to over a million total crimes reported by police. We do have to caution that small fluctuations from year to year can turn into large percentage increases.
Often, when we are looking at the characteristics of victims or the accused, we try to pool the data to have a larger number, but essentially these are administrative data. These are the numbers. They are not estimates; they are the numbers that are coming from the police, and it's important to take the context when interpreting them.
Liberal
Julie Dabrusin Liberal Toronto—Danforth, ON
I noticed that even in the 2015 data, there wasn't detailed information available from the municipal police services in Calgary, Quebec, and Saint John.
One recommendation that has come from a number of witnesses is to develop a uniform standard for collecting data. I was wondering if you had any suggestions as to how that might look and how that might work.
Chief, Policing Services Program, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, Statistics Canada
The data that are reported in Juristat are based on the uniform crime reporting survey. The collection of data on hate-motivated crime was developed in order to collect standard information, in terms of what police determine as an incident, how they count an incident, and what information they are to take into consideration when classifying a hate crime. The categories and the definition of a hate crime that we use are standard across all police services. Where we note that police services are not reporting, it is because they haven't transitioned to the newest version of the survey, which has the module on hate crime. That is why they don't provide detailed information.