While the pandemic may have had a big impact on bringing violent crime down across the country, it did nothing to keep hate crime at bay.
While considered low in the Barrie Census Metropolitan Area (CMA), which also includes Springwater Township and Innisfil, the incidence of hate crime increased 50 per cent to 12 incidents in 2020, up from eight in 2019.
The Barrie experience was compared against cities of similar size in a report presented to the Barrie police services board this week based upon Statistics Canada’s national analysis of police-reported crime data on cybercrime, hate crime and organized crime.
Police services in Kingston, Guelph and Peterborough all reported higher hate-crime numbers in 2020 with 18, 22 and 25, respectively. Belleville and Greater Sudbury reported lower numbers with one and three respectively.
Nicole Lees, manager of records and information management services for Barrie Police Service, said although the number of incidents have gone up in Barrie, they are considered on the low side. She pointed out that the list of offences now considered hate crime has grown, which could impact the numbers as well.
The incidents in Barrie are considered on the lower end of the offence scale, such as graffiti.
“Hate crime and organized crime are not numbers that we have large amounts of in Barrie,” Lees told BarrieToday.
Nationally, hate crime increased by 37 per cent to 2,669 criminal incidents in 2020, marking the largest number of police-reported hate crimes since comparable data became available in 2009.
In its analysis, StatsCan found that the targets of hate crime — defined as a criminal violation against a person or property motivated by hate, based on race, national or ethnic origin, language, colour, religion, sex, age, mental or physical disability, sexual orientation or gender identity or expression — has changed.
StatsCan noted a national increase in the number of people in the Chinese, Korean and Southeast Asian communities targeted in hate crime, moving away from a focus on the Jewish community.
Cybercrime also saw a noticeable jump in the Barrie area with 279 incidents reported in 2020, up from 190 in 2019.
With 81 incidents, Belleville reported lower numbers while Peterborough, Guelph, Kingston and Greater Sudbury all reported higher numbers — 300, 365, 431 and 615 respectively.
Cybercrime is defined as a criminal offence involving a computer as the object of the crime or tool.
Nationally, there were a total of 63,523 police-reported cybercrime incidents in Canada in 2020. The top violations in Canada were fraud, child pornography, indecent and harassing communications, and uttering threats.
No local numbers were reported for organized crime, defined as a group of three or more who plan crimes for their own gain.
Across Canada, there were a total of 10,892 police-reported violations that were related to organized crime in 2020. The top violations that contributed to this number were fraud and drug trafficking.
