A 1995 review of hate crimes in Canada had listed 20 recommendations to imrpove the effectiveness of our laws against hate crimes and their conclusion follows:
5.2 Conclusion
"An effective criminal justice response to hate crimes involves a number of
important elements: close police-community relations, public confidence in the
effectiveness of the police response to reports of hate crimes as well as appropriate
processing of those reports by the courts. The quality of the police response to hate
crimes is critical, as is the public perception of that response. If people feel that the
criminal justice system is not responding appropriately and vigorously to the problem of
hate crimes, these incidents will remain unreported. However, nothing is more critical
than having an accurate idea of the true nature and full extent of the problem. This can
only come about if a greater effort is made to collect comprehensive hate crime statistics.
At the present, Canada lags behind other western nations in this regard. The present
report represents the first, small step towards documenting the incidence of this
pernicious form of criminal activity, which, by its very nature, strikes at the heart of a
multicultural society." (page 87: Roberts, Department of Criminology, University of Ottawa)
That was 28 years ago!!!!! It's time to act!
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