The city of Edmonton saw a rise in reported hate crimes from 36 to 81 between the years 2014 and 2015, an increase of over 100%, according to an analysis of data that Statistics Canada uses to track hate crimes.
While Edmonton saw a major increase in reported hate crimes, other major urban centres in Canada trended in the opposite direction. Toronto, Ottawa and Calgary all reported less hate crimes in 2015 than in 2014.
“I have always had a hard time understanding why someone can harm someone else just based on a certain social characteristic.”
Despite the increase, University of Alberta lecturer and researcher Irfan Chaudhry said it might not necessarily be a cause for concern for Edmontonians.
“It is hard to say what the cause of the increase is, but it could be a case of increased visibility that hate crimes are occurring,” said Chaudhry.
Chaudhry said that it is important not to discount the issue of hate crimes in Edmonton potentially getting worse, but the context of increased awareness of hate crimes in Alberta, as well as outlets to report them, cannot be ignored.
Chaudhry spends the bulk of his professional time as a hate crimes researcher. His latest project, StopHateAB.com, seeks to make the occurrence of Alberta hate crimes more visible and easier to report. Through the site’s web portal, which launched earlier this year, people can document hate incidents or crimes they have seen or been subject to. It is because of sites like StopHateAB and various social media outlets that Chaudhry said it has become easier to not only report hate crimes, but also hate incidents as well.
A hate incident is when an act is hate-motivated, but no crime is committed. An example cited by Chaudhry is if a racial slur is uttered by someone while driving by a minority. It may be a legal grey area as well as difficult for law enforcement to do anything about. The site provides a space to document non-criminal hate incidents that still have an effect on Canadians.
“Hate crimes are the most extreme and observable against inclusive communities, but there are also microcosms that aren’t as overt that still chip away at a strong community,” said Chaudhry.
The site also includes an interactive heat map that show the areas in Alberta that have had the most hate crimes/incidents occur. The areas on the map that stand out the most are the province’s two major cities: Calgary and Edmonton.
Between the Edmonton police and not-for-profit online tools, Chaudhry said that increased visibility of hate crimes and accessibility of support services will be key in helping to stop them from happening. Chaudhry identifies himself as a visible minority (he moved to Canada from Africa when he was five) and said that creating a more inclusive community is a goal of his.
“Improving visibility is a big part of moving towards inclusive communities. I have always had a hard time understanding why someone can harm someone else just based on a certain social characteristic,” said Chaudhry.
The Edmonton Police Serve said that they refuse to speculate on why the number of reported hate crimes escalated so dramatically between the two years. Canadian Metropolitan areas as a whole registered 1362 reported hate crimes in 2015 compared to 1295 the year before.
The number of 2016 reported hate crimes in Canada, broken down by metropolitan areas, has yet to be released by Stats Canada. Although it may seem problematic on the surface, Chaudhry said that a continued increase in reported hate crimes in Edmonton in 2016 might just mean that the issue is being brought to the societal forefront.
“I don’t think there should be alarm if the number continues to rise in the 2016 [Stats Can] release,” said Chaudry. “Overall, I am cautiously optimistic about the situation [improving]”.