Data on prosecuted and sentenced cases covers the 2023/2024 fiscal year (April 1 to March 30).
Police-reported data are collected as criminal incidents. One incident can involve multiple violations. Counts are presented based on the most serious violation in the incident. Due to this approach, hate speech offences have not been excluded from the below breakdown, as they could have been committed in conjunction with additional bias-motivated offences.
Given the ODIHR-reported categories, the below disaggregation does not include hate crime incidents motivated by age, other factors, and unknown motivations collected through the Uniform Crime Reporting Survey, but are included in the total police-recorded figure above.
Advocating genocide and public incitement of hatred, although typically hate speech offences, are also presented here for reasons stated above.
Finally, this category includes those crimes which could not be presented separately due to their low number and the resulting violation of statistical confidentiality rules had they been presented.
Spearheaded by Canada's Anti-Racism Strategy 2024-2028, the Government of Canada launched Canada’s Action Plan on Combatting Hate in 2024. This plan is intended to empower communities with the resources they need to identify and prevent hate, increase supports to victims and survivors, and create a coordinated approach across government to protect Canadians. This includes more co-ordination between law enforcement and at-risk communities, enhanced readiness, and increased collaboration with provincial and territorial governments.
This category includes hate crimes motivated by bias on the following grounds: Indigenous, Arab and West Asian (West Asian, Middle Eastern and North African), Black, White, East and Southeast Asian, Chinese, Filipino, Korean, Japanese, other East and Southeast Asian, South Asian, Indian, Pakistani, other South Asian, Latin American, Roma or Sinti, Polynesian or Pacific Islander, multiple races or ethnicities, other race or ethnicity, unknown race or ethnicity; bias against Language, including English, French, other language, and unknown language; and bias against immigrants / newcomers to Canada.
This category includes hate crimes targeting Catholic, Christian Orthodox, Mennonite or Amish, Seventh Day Adventist – Jehovah's Witness, and other Christian religions.
This category captures hate crimes motivated by bias against members of the following religions: Buddhist, Hindu, Sikh, Traditional Indigenous Spirituality, other religion, and unknown religion.
Includes hate crimes motivated by bias against male, female and unknown sex or gender.
This category includes 658 hate crimes committed with motivation based on bias against sexual orientation (including homosexual, bisexual, heterosexual, lesbian, gay, 2SLGBTQI+, asexual, pansexual, other and unknown sexual orientation); and 56 hate crimes motivated by bias on the grounds of gender identity (including transgender man, transgender woman, transgender target not specified, gender diverse, non-binary, and other sex or gender, including intersex, agender, and unknown sex or gender).
This category includes hate crimes motivated by bias on the grounds of disability (including mental, physical, mental and physical, other disability, and unknown disability).
This category includes hate crimes motivated by bias on the grounds of disability (including mental, physical, mental and physical, other disability, and unknown disability).
ODIHR recognizes Canada's efforts to enhance their policy and co-ordination framework to address hate crime, including by adopting the Action Plan on Combatting Hate. ODIHR observes that Canada has met most of its OSCE commitments on hate crime.
ODIHR recalls that in Ministerial Council Decision 9/09, OSCE participating States committed to collecting reliable data and statistics in sufficient detail on hate crimes, and to reporting these periodically to ODIHR. Furthermore, in Ministerial Council Decisions 9/09 and 13/06, participating States committed to ensuring a comprehensive approach to hate crimes.
For 2024, ODIHR received reports of hate incidents in Canada from the following civil society organizations:
Intercommunity Co-ordination against Anti-Semitism and Defamation (CICAD)
National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM)
To learn more about these organizations, visit the Contributors page.
In addition, some incidents were recorded as part of ODIHR’s ongoing monitoring across the OSCE region.
All incidents submitted by the above organizations have been analysed by ODIHR. Those that were broadly considered to be hate crimes within the OSCE definition (criminal offence committed with a bias motive) are listed in the tables below according to the bias motivation category. Some incidents involved multiple biases and may be listed in multiple categories.
ODIHR’s insightsFor 2024, ODIHR received reports of 71 hate incidents that took place in Canada in the following bias motivation categories: anti-Muslim, anti-Semitic, disability, gender-based, and racist and xenophobic. In addition, several incidents involved multiple bias motivations, such as anti-Muslim and anti-LGBTI, racist and xenophobic and anti-Muslim, racist and xenophobic and anti-Muslim and gender-based, racist and xenophobic and anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim, and racist and xenophobic and disability. ODIHR observes that a significant number of incidents in Canada were reported with both a racist and xenophobic and anti-Muslim bias motivation. In many cases these incidents had an anti-Palestinian and anti-Muslim bias. The victims included students, activists, restaurant owners and others with known links to related communities or with visible indicators of their affiliation. Many of these incidents involved threatening or harassing behaviour and some were physical assaults. Additionally, ODIHR also observed a significant number of incidents of threats and harassment targeting visibly Muslim women who wore the hijab and other types of Muslim dress. A small number of incidents involved the targeting of visibly Muslim women wearing the hijab after they were heard speaking Farsi. It should be noted that ODIHR only received a low level of or no reporting relating to anti-Semitic, anti-Christian, anti-LGBTI, anti-Roma, disability hate incidents, and other hate incidents based on religion or belief in Canada. This indicates potential gaps in the information reported here. |
Please note that incidents reported here are based on voluntary civil society submissions and as such might not reflect the actual number of incidents or the most targeted communities in Canada.
To address under-reporting, ODIHR encourages any civil society organizations or groups that monitor hate incidents to report these to ODIHR at hatecrimereport@odihr.pl.
To export an Excel sheet with summaries of all incidents from Canada click here and search by year and country.