Hate Crime Canada: Statistics by Motivation and Law (2025 Data)

Police in Canada reported 4,708 hate crimes in 2025. That is down 2.7% from the record of 4,841 in 2024, but more than three times the 1,362 reported in 2015. About half (2,391) were motivated by hatred of a race or ethnicity, nearly a quarter (1,115) by religion, and 534 by sexual orientation.

These are the latest police-reported figures from Statistics Canada. They cover 2025 and were released in summer 2026. The national total works out to roughly 11.3 hate crimes per 100,000 people, using our estimate explained below.

How many hate crimes are there in Canada?

In 2025, police services across Canada recorded 4,708 criminal incidents that they found to be motivated by hatred. The 2025 count is the third year in a row above 4,700:

• 2023: 4,828
• 2024: 4,841 (the highest on record in this series)
• 2025: 4,708

Hate crimes are a small share of all police-reported crime. Police recorded 2,525,970 criminal incidents of all kinds in Canada in 2025, so hate crimes made up fewer than 2 in every 1,000 incidents. The impact is larger than the count suggests. A hate crime targets a person for who they are, and it can make a whole community feel unsafe.

A hate crime is not one single offence. Most are ordinary crimes, such as mischief (vandalism), assault or uttering threats, where police find the offence was motivated by hatred of a group. A few are specific hate propaganda offences in the Criminal Code. The law section below covers both.

Hate crime in Canada by motivation

The table below shows police-reported hate crimes in Canada by main type of motivation in 2025, with 2024 for comparison. Each incident is counted under one main motivation. Incidents with more than two motivations have their own line.

Hate crimes targeting race or ethnicity

Race or ethnicity was the leading motivation in 2025, with 2,391 incidents. That is almost the same as 2024 (2,392). The largest groups targeted in 2025 were:

• Black populations: 858 incidents (890 in 2024). Black people were the single most targeted group in Canada's hate crime data. They accounted for about 36% of race-based hate crimes and 18% of all hate crimes.
• Other race or ethnicity (not specified): 406
• Arab (West Asian, Middle Eastern and North African origins): 279 (312 in 2024)
• India, Pakistan or South Asian: 278, up from 88 in 2024 and 38 in 2023
• South Asian: 204 (232 in 2024)
• White: 98
• East or Southeast Asian: 63, plus 62 listed separately as Chinese
• Indigenous: 54
• Multiple races or ethnicities: 49

Statistics Canada reports the two South Asian categories separately. Taken together, they reached 482 incidents in 2025.

Hate crimes against East and Southeast Asian people jumped from 67 in 2019 to 263 in 2020 and 312 in 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic. That category has since fallen to 63 in 2025. The more detailed categories, such as Chinese, Korean and Filipino, only start in 2023, so they are not fully comparable with earlier years.

Hate crimes targeting religion

Police reported 1,115 religion-motivated hate crimes in 2025, down from 1,357 in 2024. By group:

• Jewish: 788 incidents (943 in 2024; 959 in 2023)
• Muslim: 204 (230 in 2024)
• Other religion: 55
• Catholic: 36
• Other Christian religion: 12
• Sikh: 8
• Christian Orthodox: 6
• Hindu: 3

Jewish people were the most targeted religious group by a wide margin. They accounted for about 71% of religion-based hate crimes and 17% of all hate crimes in 2025. Antisemitic hate crimes fell 16% from 2024 but remain far above earlier years. There were 178 in 2015 and 527 in 2022, before the count rose to 959 in 2023.

Hate crimes against Muslims peaked at 349 in 2017, the year of the Québec City mosque attack. The count stood at 204 in 2025.

Hate crimes targeting sexual orientation

Police reported 534 hate crimes motivated by sexual orientation in 2025. That is down 19% from 659 in 2024 and well below the peak of 889 in 2023, but still almost four times the 141 recorded in 2015. The 2025 total breaks down as:

• Other sexual orientation: 163
• 2SLGBTQI+: 140
• Homosexual (lesbian or gay): 114
• Gay: 102
• Lesbian: 9
• Bisexual: 3
• Heterosexual: 3

Sex and gender, language, newcomers and other motivations

Hate crimes motivated by sex and gender totalled 135 in 2025, up from 12 in 2015. These included:

• 31 targeting women and 8 targeting men
• 51 targeting transgender people: 25 unspecified, 17 transgender women and 9 transgender men
• 5 targeting non-binary people
• 40 in other sex or gender categories

Hate crimes targeting immigrants and newcomers to Canada rose sharply, from 14 in 2023 to 49 in 2024 and 136 in 2025. Language-motivated hate crimes numbered 58: 46 targeting English speakers, 1 targeting French speakers and 11 targeting other languages. Disability accounted for 15 incidents and age for 11.

Is hate crime rising in Canada?

Over the past decade, yes, sharply, although the count levelled off and dipped slightly in 2025. The table below shows police-reported hate crimes in Canada from 2015 to 2025, with the three main motivations and the two most targeted groups.

A few things stand out:

• The total rose about 246% from 2015 to 2025, from 1,362 to 4,708 incidents. Total police-reported crime in Canada grew much more slowly over the same years, from 2,118,681 to 2,525,970 incidents.
• Race-based hate crimes almost doubled from 2019 to 2020, from 884 to 1,619. That jump was driven by incidents targeting Black and East or Southeast Asian people.
• Religion-based and sexual orientation hate crimes surged in 2023. Antisemitic incidents rose from 527 to 959, and sexual orientation incidents from 509 to 889.
• 2025 brought a small decline, mainly from fewer religion and sexual orientation incidents. Race-based hate crimes stayed flat, and incidents targeting South Asian people and newcomers rose.

Part of the long-term rise may reflect more reporting by victims and better recording by police, not only more hate. The data cannot separate the two.

Which province has the most hate crimes?

By count, Ontario had the most police-reported hate crimes in 2025 (2,131), followed by British Columbia (881) and Quebec (695). Counts mostly reflect population size, though, so it is fairer to compare by rate per 100,000 people.

Statistics Canada's hate crime figures in our data are counts only. To compare places fairly, Crime Canada estimated each province's population from its 2025 total crime count and rate, then calculated hate crimes per 100,000 people. Treat these rates as approximate. The table shows 2025 police-reported hate crimes by province and territory, ranked by our estimated rate.

Nova Scotia and British Columbia had the highest estimated hate crime rates among the provinces in 2025. Newfoundland and Labrador and Quebec had the lowest.

Hate crime does not follow the pattern of overall crime. Saskatchewan and Manitoba have the highest overall crime rates among the provinces, yet their hate crime rates are near or below the national level.

Be careful with the territories and smaller provinces. Nunavut's rate rests on just 6 incidents and the Northwest Territories' on 5, so one or two incidents can swing the rate a lot from year to year.

Changes from 2024 to 2025 were large in some places:

• Ontario: down 18%, from 2,593 to 2,131 incidents
• British Columbia: up 26%, from 699 to 881
• Manitoba: nearly doubled, from 80 to 156

Which cities have the most hate crimes in Canada?

The table below lists police-reported hate crimes in 2025 for the census metropolitan areas (CMAs) with the most incidents. A CMA covers a central city and its surrounding suburbs, not only the city's own police service area. Population-based rates for CMAs are not part of our data, so these are counts. Larger metro areas will naturally have more incidents.

The Toronto metropolitan area alone accounted for about 22% of all police-reported hate crimes in Canada in 2025. Its count fell by 251 incidents from 2024.

Winnipeg's count more than doubled, from 49 to 117. Vancouver, Victoria and Québec also rose. Hamilton and London fell noticeably.

The Quebec part of Ottawa-Gatineau is reported separately, with 37 incidents in 2025.

Smaller metro areas can change sharply on small numbers. Kelowna went from 10 to 29 incidents and St. John's from 4 to 16.

Why police numbers undercount hate crime

These figures include only incidents that were reported to police and that police classified as hate-motivated. Many hate incidents are never reported, because victims may fear retaliation, distrust police, or feel nothing will be done.

Some hateful acts, such as slurs that do not involve a threat, are also not crimes at all, so they are not counted. The true number of hate-motivated crimes in Canada is almost certainly higher than police records show.

Changes in police counts can also reflect awareness campaigns, new police hate crime units, or changes in how incidents are recorded. A rise in the numbers does not always mean more hate, and a drop does not always mean less.

Canada hate crime laws: what the Criminal Code says

Canada's hate crime law works in two ways. First, the Criminal Code sets out specific hate propaganda offences. Second, it lets judges give tougher sentences for any crime motivated by hate. In the hate propaganda sections, an "identifiable group" means any section of the public distinguished by colour, race, religion, national or ethnic origin, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or mental or physical disability.

Section 318: advocating genocide

It is an offence to advocate or promote genocide against an identifiable group. The offence is indictable and can carry up to five years in prison. A prosecution needs the consent of the Attorney General.

Section 319: public incitement and wilful promotion of hatred

Section 319 covers three offences:

• Public incitement of hatred (319(1)): making statements in a public place that incite hatred against an identifiable group, where this is likely to lead to a breach of the peace.
• Wilful promotion of hatred (319(2)): communicating statements, other than in private conversation, that wilfully promote hatred against an identifiable group.
• Wilful promotion of antisemitism (319(2.1)): wilfully promoting antisemitism by condoning, denying or downplaying the Holocaust, other than in private conversation.

These offences can be prosecuted by indictment, with up to two years in prison, or by summary conviction. The Code provides defences for wilful promotion, such as statements that are true, or good-faith opinions on a religious subject.

Sections 320 and 320.1: seizing hate propaganda

Section 320 lets a judge issue a warrant to seize copies of hate propaganda kept for sale or distribution. Section 320.1 lets a judge order hate propaganda removed from a computer system, such as a website, in Canada.

Mischief motivated by hate

Under section 430(4.1), mischief against certain property can be punished more severely when it is motivated by bias, prejudice or hate. This covers property such as places of worship, schools and community centres used mainly by an identifiable group. When prosecuted by indictment, it can carry up to 10 years in prison.

Section 718.2(a)(i): hate as an aggravating factor in sentencing

Most police-reported hate crimes are charged as ordinary offences, such as assault, threats or mischief. At sentencing, section 718.2(a)(i) requires the judge to treat evidence that the offence was motivated by bias, prejudice or hate as an aggravating circumstance. The listed grounds include race, national or ethnic origin, language, colour, religion, sex, age, mental or physical disability, sexual orientation, and gender identity or expression. This can lead to a longer sentence than the same crime would otherwise bring.

This is general information, not legal advice. Whether a particular act is a crime depends on the facts, and only a court can decide.

About the data

All figures come from Statistics Canada's Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Survey, which collects data from every police service in Canada.

• Hate crime counts by motivation, province and census metropolitan area come from Statistics Canada's police-reported hate crime table (35-10-0066).
• Total crime counts and rates come from table 35-10-0177.
• 2025 is the latest year of police-reported data, released in summer 2026.

Hate crime figures are numbers of incidents. Each incident is assigned one main motivation.

How we calculated the provincial rates: we divided each province's or territory's 2025 total crime count by its total crime rate per 100,000 to estimate its population. We then divided its hate crime count by that estimate and multiplied by 100,000. Rates are rounded to one decimal and should be read as approximate.

Percentages and changes from year to year are Crime Canada calculations from the Statistics Canada counts. You can explore crime numbers for your own city, province or police service on statistics.crimecanada.ca.

People facing a hate-related charge, and victims of hate crime, can request a free, confidential first consultation through Crime Canada with an independent criminal lawyer at /free-consultation/.

Frequently asked questions

How many hate crimes were there in Canada in 2025?

Police in Canada reported 4,708 hate crimes in 2025, according to Statistics Canada's latest police-reported data. That is down 2.7% from the record of 4,841 in 2024, but more than three times the 1,362 reported in 2015. Crime Canada estimates this works out to about 11.3 hate crimes per 100,000 people. Many hate incidents are never reported to police, so the real number is likely higher.

What is the most common motivation for hate crimes in Canada?

Race or ethnicity is the most common motivation. It accounted for 2,391 of the 4,708 police-reported hate crimes in 2025, or about 51%. Religion followed with 1,115 incidents (24%) and sexual orientation with 534 (11%). Black people were the most targeted single group (858 incidents), followed by Jewish people (788).

Are hate crimes increasing in Canada?

Over the past decade, yes. Police-reported hate crimes rose from 1,362 in 2015 to a record 4,841 in 2024, an increase of about 255%. In 2025 the count dipped slightly to 4,708, mainly because of fewer religion- and sexual orientation-motivated incidents. Part of the long-term rise may reflect more reporting to police, not only more hate.

Which province has the highest hate crime rate in Canada?

Using Crime Canada's estimated rates for 2025, Nova Scotia had the highest provincial hate crime rate, at about 16.8 per 100,000 people (184 incidents), followed by British Columbia at about 15.5 (881 incidents). Ontario had the most incidents (2,131) but a lower rate of about 13.1. Quebec (7.7) and Newfoundland and Labrador (6.2) had the lowest.

What are the hate crime laws in Canada?

The Criminal Code makes it an offence to advocate genocide (s. 318, up to five years), publicly incite hatred or wilfully promote hatred or antisemitism (s. 319, up to two years). It also allows seizure and online removal of hate propaganda (ss. 320 and 320.1). For any crime, s. 718.2(a)(i) requires judges to treat hate motivation as an aggravating factor at sentencing, which can mean a longer sentence.

Is a hate crime a separate offence in Canada?

Usually not. Most police-reported hate crimes are ordinary offences, such as mischief, assault or uttering threats, that police find were motivated by hatred of a group. Hate motivation then becomes an aggravating factor at sentencing under s. 718.2(a)(i). Only a few offences, such as advocating genocide (s. 318) and public incitement or wilful promotion of hatred (s. 319), are specific hate offences.