(AlbertaIndex, June 12, Thursday) --- Calgary is Canada’s hate crimes capital, according to a study by the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics based on 2006 police data.

       “Hate crime in Canada,” released by Statistics Canada showed that five census metropolitan areas had police-reported rates of hate-motivated crime that were well above the national average of 3.1 per 100,000 population.

Calgary led with a rate of 9.1 incidents for every 100,000 population, followed by Kingston (8.5), Ottawa (6.6), London (5.9) and Toronto (5.5).

The rate in Ontario was highest at 4.1 incidents per 100,000 population, followed by British Columbia (2.5) and Quebec (1.4).

Overall, in 2006, police services covering 87% of Canada's population reported 892 hate-motivated crimes, of which 6 in 10 were motivated by race and ethnicity. Another 25% of hate crimes were motivated by religion while one in 10 had sexual orientation.

As a whole, however, hate crimes accounted for less than 1% of all criminal incidents reported by police.

The study reported that half of all hate-motivated crimes reported by police were property-related offences, usually mischief, while one-third were violent offences such as assault.

Another measure of hate-motivated crime comes from the General Social Survey (GSS), which asks Canadians about their personal experiences of victimization and includes incidents not reported to police.

The most recent GSS data for 2004 showed that 3% of all self-reported incidents were believed to be motivated by hate. The GSS data also showed that race/ethnicity was the most common motivation for these crimes.

Research has shown that hate-motivated crimes can have effects on victims beyond those associated with non-hate crimes. Hate crimes often target a person's core sense of identity and can result in more severe psychological consequences and longer recovery periods

According to the GSS, in 4 out of 10 hate crime incidents, victims indicated that they found it difficult or impossible to carry out their daily activities compared with 23% of incidents involving victims of non-hate crimes. Violent hate crime incidents were also more likely to result in victims feeling fearful.

Black people were found to be the most common racial group targeted by a hate crime.

Among the 502 incidents motivated by race and ethnicity in 2006, half were targeted at black people, 13% at South Asians and 12% at Arabs or West Asians.

Among the 220 hate crimes reported by police to be motivated by religion, offences against the Jewish faith were the most common, accounting for almost two-thirds (63%) of religion-based incidents. Another 21% were against Muslims (Islam) and 6% against Catholics.

The vast majority of the 80 incidents motivated by sexual orientation were committed against homosexuals.

More than one-half (56%) of those incidents driven by hatred towards a particular sexual orientation were violent, higher than the proportion of incidents motivated by race/ethnicity (38%) or religion (26%). Common assault was the most frequent type of violent offence.

As a result, incidents motivated by sexual orientation were more likely than other types of hate crime incidents to result in physical injury to victims.

Young people aged 12 to 17 were more likely than older age groups to be accused of a hate crime according to police-reported data. The rate of accused persons peaked among 12 to 17 year olds and gradually declined with age.

The 120 youth accused in 2006 accounted for more than one-third (38%) of all persons accused of committing a hate crime. This was double the proportion of youth accused of committing non-hate crimes (18%).

Police-reported data show that, for youth and adults combined, males were two and a half times more likely than females to be victims of violent hate-motivated incidents. The rate for males was 1.8 per 100,000 population compared with 0.7 for females. These findings differ from overall violent crime for which males and females are victimized almost equally.

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