Canadians reported fewer hate crimes to police in 2010, according to a report released by Statistics Canada on Thursday.
Police found 1,401 crimes were motivated by hate toward an identifiable group, based on race or sexual orientation, for example. That number was down 18 per cent from 2009 and followed two years of increases.
More than half of all hate crimes reported to police in 2010 were motivated by race. About four in 10 racially motivated crimes were against black people.
About one in three hate crimes was violent, a drop from 2009. Hate crimes motivated by sexual orientation were the most likely to be violent in 2010, Statistics Canada said. Of the 218 crimes, two-thirds were violent.
Ontario had the highest rate of police-reported hate crimes, while Newfoundland and Labrador had the lowest. Toronto, Vancouver and the Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo region all saw drops in police-reported hate crimes in 2010.
The report cautioned that it likely does not reflect the “true extent of hate crime in Canada” because not all hate crimes are reported to police.
