This January, Toronto’s Deputy Police Chief Rob Johnson gave a similar address as he’d given in previous months, saying:
“The attacks of October 7, 2023, ongoing concerns about the rise in reported hate, and other factors are all something we must monitor and respond to locally, particularly in a city such as Toronto. Since October 7, 2023, we have made 90 arrests and laid 129 charges in total related to Project Resolute demonstrations and protests. Additionally, we have made a total of 197 arrests and laid 523 charges in relation to hate crimes.”
Project Resolute is led by the Toronto police’s hate crimes unit and is focused on protests and direct actions related to Israel-Palestine. That includes, for example, the now-infamous postering and splattering of red paint on the Indigo storefront at Bay and Bloor in November 2023.
But what is counted in the “523 charges in relation to hate crimes?” Are there really that many hate crimes charges being laid, and for what? Or is there something else going on?
As of January 2025, there were around 17 charges for offenses that are technically hate crimes. So how did Toronto police count 523 charges?
There are technically five types of criminal charges for hate crimes in Canada.
One hate crime is in Section 318 of Canada’s criminal code (advocating genocide) and three are in Section 319 (public incitement of hatred, wilful promotion of hatred, and wilful promotion of antisemitism).
Section 430.4.1 defines the fifth hate crime: mischief motivated by hate in relation to property primarily used by one targeted group. For example: a religious institution, school, cultural centre, or nursing home.
In January, when Johnson gave his speech, there had been one Section 318 arrest since October 2023.
There have been around 10 Section 319 arrests. Three of those were for waving flags of organizations that Canada has listed as terror groups, namely Hezbollah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Those charges were quickly dropped as Crown prosecutors saw no chance of convictions. Waving those flags is not itself a hate crime. That would require evidence the person’s actions will cause “a breach of the peace.”
There had been one person arrested for Section 430.4.1 offenses in Toronto as of January, with seven counts of the charge.
People may understandably mix up a standard mischief charge with a “motivated by hate in relation to property primarily used by one targeted group” hate crime charge. This is because sometimes the police will add a note to a mischief charge saying they are investigating hate as a motivating factor.
So, as of January 2025, there were around 17 charges for offenses that are technically hate crimes.
How did Toronto police count 523 charges?
They didn’t respond to The Grind’s requests to provide an answer, but there are plausible explanations.
The first is that Toronto police consider any investigation where they think hate might be a motivating factor as a hate crime.
Take the Indigo paint and postering charges as an example. Eleven people were each charged with mischief, conspiracy to commit an indictable offense and criminal harassment. None of those three are hate crime charges. But police said they were treating it as a suspected hate-motivated offense. So this may be 11 arrests and 33 “charges in relation to hate crimes” in the eyes of the police.
Toronto police consider any investigation where they think hate might be a motivating factor as a hate crime.
Charges against seven of the defendants in the Indigo case have been withdrawn entirely. The conspiracy and harassment charges against the remaining four were withdrawn. Those four pleaded guilty to one count each of mischief, and the court made no findings of hate motivation.
So based on the evidence, there were zero hate crimes, though police might count it as 33.
This helps explain some of the tally, but not all of it.
Between the Oct. 8 and Dec. 12, 2024, meetings of the police services board, Deputy Chief Johnson said the number of hate crime-related arrests rose from 161 to 189, and charges rose from 403 to 515.
By assessing all police press releases in that period, The Grind looked at what Toronto police are counting as those 28 arrests and 112 hate-crime related charges.
In their releases through that time, police announced four people had been arrested, two for wilful promotion of hatred and two for public incitement of hatred. Those were the technical hate crime charges.
There were also nine other arrests with 29 associated charges being treated as suspected hate-motivated investigations. There were, for example, charges of harassment and uttering threats laid on someone alleged to have yelled slurs and threatened people in a mosque. And there were a total of 21 charges against two people alleged to have shot at a Jewish school in the middle of the night, mostly firearms charges.
All together, this adds up to 13 arrests and 33 charges potentially related to hate crimes (but not proven to be hate crimes).
So what were the other 15 arrests and 79 charges?
While the police haven’t provided clarification, there are some possible explanations.
The police may not have made public announcements about any of the other 79 hate crime-related charges. While press releases aren’t always issued for every arrest, it would be unusual for the police to not announce 15 arrests being looked into by their hate crime unit.
It is also possible but very unlikely that the suspicion of hate motivation was added to 15 arrests only after the press releases went out.
Another explanation is that the police are counting other arrests in these tallies, like of people involved in the pro-Palestine movement, even if the police aren’t mentioning hate-motivation.
When Project Resolute launched, the Toronto police seemed to suspect all arrests and charges related to protesting the war on Gaza as potentially hate-motivated.
This is significant as it creates a narrative, broadcast through press releases and in statistics, that protesters should always be investigated for hateful motives.
Actions like blocking the entrance to a weapons-making facility are painted as a hate-fest, not a legitimate way to try to stop loved ones from being slaughtered with 2,000-pound bombs or shot in the head by snipers.
In February, Toronto city council passed its annual budget, including a $45-million increase for the police. The rise in hate crimes was part of the police’s pitch for why they needed the extra cash.
At the police board’s Mar. 4 meeting, Deputy Chief Johnson, for the first time in many meetings, didn’t say how many arrests and charges had been added to the previous tally.
Police tallies putting hate crime charges numbers in the hundreds have been repeated uncritically, including by CBC News and The Canadian Press, whose reporting was in turn published by The Globe and Mail, CTV and others
Adding to the confusion, in a Mar. 29 Global News article about the Indigo case falling apart, a police statement provided to Global News indicated that since Oct. 7, 2023, there had been only 10 charges related to hate crimes at demonstrations related to “the conflict in the Middle East.” This corresponds to the number of technical hate crime charges laid, such as for public incitement of hatred, but wouldn’t include any other charges being investigated for hate motivation.
Police tallies putting hate crime charges numbers in the hundreds have been repeated uncritically, including by CBC News and The Canadian Press, whose reporting was in turn published by The Globe and Mail, CTV and others. Until there is much more transparency from the police, we should be very critical of their hate crime stats.
This article appeared in the 2025 April/May issue.
