What Vancouver Police Didn’t Reveal about Rise in Hate Crimes

In January, Vancouver police issued a widely reported news release headlined “Israel-Hamas war fuels increase in hate crimes, protests in 2023.”

The release focused on the conflict, related crimes and the cost of policing protests.

“In total, Vancouver Police investigated 265 hate crime reports across all communities in 2023, a 31-per-cent increase from the previous year,” the release said. “Increased reporting from the 2SLGBTQ+, South Asian and Jewish communities — fuelled largely by geo-political tensions — were all major factors.”

This statement included statistics on hate crime reports linked to antisemitism, saying they had risen by 62 per cent. “The attacks on Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza were the single biggest reason for the increases” in both hate crimes and protests, it said.

But data obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and shared with The Tyee reveals a number of other groups had even higher percentage increases in hate crime reports last year.

Compared to 2022, the number of hate crime reports in 2023 from Arab/West Asian people rose by 100 per cent; transgender, non-binary, intersex and agender people by 83 per cent; gay and lesbian people by 68 per cent; Indigenous people by 67 per cent; and South Asian people by 67 per cent.

However none of the statistics from other marginalized groups were included in the Vancouver Police Department’s January press release, which was reported by multiple media outlets with headlines attributing the overall increase in Vancouver hate crimes to the Israel-Hamas war.

Vancouver Police declined an interview request and has not answered any of The Tyee’s emailed questions on the subject.

The Port Moody resident and person of colour who filed the FOI to find the source of VPD’s data asked to remain anonymous because of a fear of reprisals.

“There’s some patterns that we see that if you’re standing up for Palestinian rights… you’re more susceptible to be labelled as antisemitic when you’re doing things like… waving the Palestinian flag and saying, ‘Ceasefire now’ or ‘Stop bombing children,'” they said. “Boom, all of sudden, you’re a terrorist supporter.”

It’s unclear from the data if hate crime reports were linked directly to Palestine solidarity protests.

The department’s FOI response includes caveats that were not included in the January release, like the acknowledgement that hate crime reviews can be prejudiced.

“Reviews are subjective and therefore statistics can be impacted by a subjective review,” reads VPD’s FOI response.

“For example, where one group may perceive a message as hateful, another may interpret this as a passionate support of their cause. The interpretations of history, phrases and past events are different from different angles.”

‘Reluctance to report’

The department, in its FOI release, also noted many people do not report alleged hate crimes to police in the first place.

“Reluctance to report impacts certain communities more than others and therefore hate crimes data is never completely reflective of what a given community may be experiencing on a day-to-day basis.”

Evan Balgord, executive director of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network — an organization that researches hate groups and hate crimes — pointed to research that found police only reported about one per cent of hate crimes in 2019, compared to hate crimes captured by Statistics Canada data.

“Antisemitism has been the most reported hate crime on a per capita basis as far back as I can remember, according to the police-reported hate crime numbers,” Balgord told The Tyee.

“There are many factors that may be contributing to those numbers, including having well-established organizations that help people come forward, but I don’t think that tells the whole story either…. Our job is to monitor the far-right, so we see antisemitism, as well as many other forms of racism and hate, on a daily basis.”

According to the VPD’s statement in January, 33 out of the 47 antisemitic hate crimes in 2023 were reported after Oct. 7.

The department’s data shows Jewish people also reported 29 hate crimes in 2022 — the second highest number of reports in Vancouver that year, after East and Southeast Asian people.

According to Balgord, data suggests some groups, like new immigrants, are less likely to report hate crimes for various reasons, like language barriers, not being aware of hate crime law and not wanting to appear ungrateful to a new host country.

“There has been a prevailing focus on antisemitism by law enforcement and news media over the past year,” Balgord said. “The National Council of Canadian Muslims and Amira Elghawaby, Canada’s Special Representative on Combating Islamophobia, have been raising the issue of Islamophobia spiking over the same time period.”

He also noted a rise in far-right hate towards South Asian communities this year, “which has not been sufficiently highlighted in news media.”