JNS
“Perpetrators feel increasingly emboldened to act openly, publicly,” Jaime Kirzner-Roberts, of the Canadian Friends of Simon Wiesenthal, told JNS.
Official reports of hate crimes in Toronto are down 47% this year, but 84% more people were charged with hate crimes in 2024 (115), compared to the prior year (63), and there was a 19% increase in reported hate crimes in 2024 (443) compared to 2023 (372).
That’s according to the Toronto Police Service’s 2024 annual report on hate crime data, which it presented to its board on Wednesday.
The 19% increase in 2024 was, the Toronto Police Service noted, a lower rate of increase of reported hate crimes than the prior year’s 46%, with 372 reports in 2023 compared to 246 in 2022.
Two of the things that the police department stated were “of note” in 2024 were that “religion was the leading motivating factor in 2024, followed by sexual orientation and race/ethnicity” and that “the most frequently targeted communities were the Jewish, 2SLGBTQ+, black and Muslim communities.”
The department’s press release didn’t note that 40% of all hate crimes in Toronto last year and 81% of all such religiously motivated hate crimes targeted Jews, though some 3.6% of Torontonians self-identify as Jews, per official stats.
Jewish leaders told JNS that those official statistics are troubling.
“I’d say a ‘problem’ is probably an understatement,” Jaime Kirzner-Roberts, senior director of policy and advocacy at Canadian Friends of Simon Wiesenthal, told JNS. “This is a crisis.”
“The statistics confirm what the community has known, and what we feel every day on the ground, which is that there is a deep and rising threat and a growing sense of fear and unease,” Kirzner-Roberts said.
One of the findings of the report that most surprised Kirzner-Roberts is that almost half of the antisemitic hate crimes took place in public.
“In broad daylight, on the street in full view of the public,” she told JNS. “Unfortunately, this suggests that perpetrators feel increasingly emboldened to act openly, to act publicly.”
“This reflects a disturbing trend towards normalization of antisemitism in our city, and this reflects the fact that perpetrators are not feeling deterred, not feeling that our justice system is deterring,” she added.
Michelle Stock, vice president for Ontario at the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, the advocacy arm of the Jewish Federations of Canada-UIA, said that “these numbers reflect a disturbing reality. Antisemitism in our city is growing more aggressive, more visible, and more tolerated.”
“We’re grateful to the Toronto Police Service for their commitment to addressing this disturbing trend, but this is not the responsibility of law enforcement alone,” Stock stated. “A coordinated, cross-government response is essential. That means increased investment in hate crime units, enhanced training for Crown prosecutors and thoughtful updates to the criminal code to close legal gaps that have allowed extremists and hate groups to operate without meaningful repercussions.”
Stock added that “Jewish Canadians—like all Canadians—deserve to feel safe,” and “it’s time for governments to match words with action.”
‘Rhetorical cover’
Robert Walker, assistant director of HonestReporting Canada, told JNS that journalists are increasingly stoking the flames of hatred.
“When the news media gives an uncritical platform to the ‘genocide’ libel, it gives rhetorical cover to those who seek to target Jews or their allies,” he told JNS. “While fortunately, virtually all of these anti-Jewish crimes have been minor in nature, which is not always the case in other cities, the media bears large responsibility and must do its job right.”
What the report called “mischief,” including vandalism and graffiti, made up the most common category of hate crime. Within that category, 61% of all incidents involved Jew-hatred, per the report.
The Toronto Police Service expanded its hate crime unit and began requiring training for officers on Judaism, Jew-hatred, Islam and Islamophobia after Oct. 7, per the report.
“There’s not a single day that goes by that I don’t receive calls by people saying that their business has been vandalized with swastikas and anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian messaging,” Kirzner-Roberts told JNS.
“These are just random Jewish families with random businesses being targeted,” she said. “Students in schools being harassed, bearing the brunt of these incidents. We hope these new numbers are a wake-up call.”
“If this continues, there’s going to be Jews that don’t want to live here anymore,” she said. “I mean, people are going to get really hurt.”
