Canadian Heritage Committee on Nov. 8th, 2017

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Okay. I wonder if the committee could get that information as well.

I'm sorry. I'm getting down to this level of detail because it would paint a picture for us to see what that situation looks like. If we are going to try to come up with solutions for getting people to report, then we have to be sensitive to that information. Hopefully that will inform us accordingly.

Actually, Madam Chair, these are all the questions I have in terms of the level of detail that I am looking for to help me better understand what these statistics mean.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you, Ms. Kwan.

Now we go to Mr. Vandal, for the Liberals.

[Dan Vandal, Liberal, Saint Boniface—Saint Vital, MB]

Thank you very much for your presentation.

I am trying to unpack some of the numbers I've heard here, so please bear with me.

Before I get there, do you collect any data on hate crime from other sectors of the criminal justice system, whether it's the courts system or the corrections system?

[Yvan Clermont]

For the four offences in the Criminal Code, we do have that information in the court data.

[Dan Vandal, Liberal, Saint Boniface—Saint Vital, MB]

What sort of data would you collect?

[Yvan Clermont]

We would collect information about the characteristics of the accused, about the time it took to process the case in court, and about the decision of the trial, just to name a few types of information that we could have on that.

[Dan Vandal, Liberal, Saint Boniface—Saint Vital, MB]

I am looking at page 5 of your presentation. There are two ways of collecting hate crime data. One is through the household survey, which is self-reported. The other is through police-reported stats.

Obviously, it is not necessary for a charge to be laid by the police department in order to collect the data you are looking for. Are you following me?

[Yvan Clermont]

I'm not sure I understood the question, sorry.

[Dan Vandal, Liberal, Saint Boniface—Saint Vital, MB]

It's a household survey. It could be that somebody was threatened; it could be that it was a real threat but a charge was not laid. Would that still qualify as a hate crime stat?

[Yvan Clermont]

If the respondent said so, yes, it would.

[Dan Vandal, Liberal, Saint Boniface—Saint Vital, MB]

As opposed to police-reported statistics, where I'm assuming a charge is laid....

[Yvan Clermont]

They receive a complaint, and then they lay a charge.

[Dan Vandal, Liberal, Saint Boniface—Saint Vital, MB]

The police investigate, and there is a charge.

[Rebecca Kong]

Just to correct that, they may not lay a charge if they haven't found someone to charge, but the police data represent substantiated incidents that have been investigated.

[Dan Vandal, Liberal, Saint Boniface—Saint Vital, MB]

What is the difference between your uniform crime reporting survey and the integrated criminal court survey?

[Yvan Clermont]

The integrated criminal court survey is an administrative database or data gathering from all provincial courts and superior courts in the country—only about the characteristics of the case and of the accused, and the decision being rendered at the end, when the case is completed.

[Dan Vandal, Liberal, Saint Boniface—Saint Vital, MB]

Okay, and the uniform crime reporting survey is what we have here, essentially.

[Yvan Clermont]

Yes.

[Rebecca Kong]

It's the police-level data, so it's everything the police respond to and it is substantiated by the police, regardless of whether or not they've found someone to charge, and regardless of whether or not it goes to court.

[Dan Vandal, Liberal, Saint Boniface—Saint Vital, MB]

What can we do to improve the data system you're working with now? Do you have any suggestions for us as a government as to what we can do better?

[Rebecca Kong]

I think this picks up on the other committee member's comment. Monsieur Clermont already commented a bit on what we do to validate the police-reported data. In terms of training police, we have online training for them to be able to understand how to correctly score the data, etc., and as we see from these numbers, a lot of the information is based on the willingness of people to come forward and report to police. We have seen in the past that when there are community outreach programs, numbers tend to go up.

I think in terms of working with police, continuing to sensitize them to the importance of the data, and training them, we find that it makes a big difference when a police service has a hate crime unit and has strong relationships with communities in terms of the willingness of victims to come forward. That's where we'll get information on the numbers.

The other aspect in which maybe there is a gap is that we know a lot about victims from the victimization survey, but we don't know a lot about offenders and what motivates them to commit these crimes. There is a gap in information in that respect, of understanding the thinking behind offenders' behaviour and why they may commit the crimes that they commit.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

You have two minutes.

[Dan Vandal, Liberal, Saint Boniface—Saint Vital, MB]

I believe Julie Dzerowicz has some questions.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Thank you. I'm just going to continue—

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Keep it to two minutes though, Julie, or I'll cut you off.