I think there's a real divide. To be frank, when we look at police forces who are responding to hate, because police forces in urban areas have more exposure to racialized communities and have more racialized police officers, their ability to understand the impact of what's happening is typically better than it is for those in rural areas.
I can give you the example of a rural police agency where an individual was targeted and was murdered. The police within 24 hours said it wasn't a hate crime. They then went back to say, after listening to the community, that they were going to investigate it as a potential hate crime, but the harm was already done in terms of what the community was told in haste, which was “Look, yes, one person was targeted, and yes, one person was killed, but we don't think it was hateful.” That had real repercussions on that community.
In terms of responses from rural versus urban, I think the urban ones are more developed. Part of the work we're doing with our task force is to create national standards around investigations and help those rural agencies that don't have the resources or hate crimes units. I will give you the example of London, Ontario, where four people were murdered. They today have a one-person hate crime unit. I'm not even sure if that job has been filled yet.
There's a huge divide across Canada in terms of rural and urban responses to hate. I think creating national standards and being able to support the small local police jurisdictions is an important intervention that hopefully our work will contribute towards.