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A plurality of Canadians believe that the Jewish community is the number one target of hate crimes in Canada, as compared to other groups, according to a new national poll.
The recent survey, conducted by Leger for the Association for Canadian Studies, found that 23 per cent of respondents identified the Jewish community as the most victimized group in the country, while 10 per cent of Canadians said Muslims. This was trailed by smaller segments for the LGBTQ community, Black people, Indian people/East Indians, all with four per cent, and Indigenous people, immigrants and minorities, with three per cent each. More than a quarter (26 per cent) said they do not know.
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“The survey confirms a continued increase in the extent to which Canadians see Jews as the most likely target of hate,” Jack Jedwab, the chief executive of the Association for Canadian Studies, said in an email to National Post. However, he pointed out that “students are by far the least likely to share this observation as relatively few see Jews as the main victims of hate.”
Among students, only 4.9 per cent thought Jews were the most targeted group, compared to almost twice as many (8.6 per cent) for Muslims. The vast majority (70 per cent) said they don’t know. Almost one fifth (18.7 per cent) of people working full time thought Jews are the primary target, 9.3 per cent said Muslims and 57.6 per cent said they do not know.
According to data released by Statistics Canada, reports of hate crimes increased from 3,612 incidents in 2022 to 4,777 in 2023 and the number has more than doubled since 2019. Jewish people were most often the target, accounting for 900 police reports (an increase of 71 per cent from 2022). In Toronto, police have seen a 69 per cent increase in hate crimes against Jewish people since the beginning of 2024.
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“Police officials across Canada are reporting a rise in hate crimes in 2024. Name the group that you think is the one that has been most targeted,” the poll asked.
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There were notable differences among the provinces. Over a quarter (26 per cent) of respondents in Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan ranked the Jewish community as the leading recipient of intolerance in 2024. Meanwhile, in the Atlantic provinces and Quebec, only 18 per cent of residents agreed that the Jewish community was the leading target of hate, but it was still the most popular answer. In British Columbia, 23 per cent said Jews are the most targeted and in Alberta it was 22 per cent.
Political leaning significantly influenced one’s perception of marginalized groups and hate crimes in the past year. Canadians across the political divide — from left-of-centre to right — named the Jewish community as the most targeted group in the country. However, those who identified themselves as being on the left supported that statement at the lowest level (13 per cent) of all political affiliations measured and were the only group sampled to say Muslims (17.1 per cent) were the most targeted group in the country.
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The poll found that respondents who believed themselves to be knowledgeable about the Israel-Hamas conflict were more likely to view the Jewish community as the most vulnerable of all minorities. Those with a self-described “very good understanding” of the war saw Jews as the leading victims of hate crimes (39.6 per cent) compared with Muslims (9.7 per cent). By comparison, those with “no understanding” saw the reverse, with Muslims (9.6 per cent) as the most victimized group, followed by Jews (8.8 per cent).
Though the rise in hate crimes since the October 7 attacks by Hamas has unleashed a torrent of intolerant rhetoric online, the report found, increasingly, Canadians are less concerned about such sentiments.
“For many Canadians, the degree of hate expression online is so pervasive that it becomes somewhat banal to Canadians. Hence, some 60 per cent of Canadians ignore the expression of hate when they see it online,” the report says.
This is a cause for growing concern, Jebwab told the Post.
“The result of doing this is to heighten desensitization to online hate and risks a normalization of hate expression. It’s a serious issue that needs considerably greater attention from policymakers and civil society. All groups that are the target of hate online risk being victim of growing societal inaction,” he said.
The poll was conducted between Sept. 20 and Sept. 22, 2024, with an online sample of 1,612 Canadians. A margin of error cannot be associated with a non-probability sample in a panel survey for comparison purposes. A probability sample of the same number of respondents would have a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 per cent, 19 times out of 20.
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