Race-based hate incidents in Canada Dashboard
A five-year (2018 - 2022) study on Canadian race-based hate incidents collected through English media-reported incidents
This first-of-its-kind five-year study by the Canadian Cultural Mosaic Foundation provides groundbreaking data amalgamating characteristics of race-based hate incidents across Canada that were reported by mainstream English-language media sources from 2018-2022. This unprecedented data set highlights the varied nature and complexity of race-based hate incidents perpetrated against racialized and Indigenous people in Canada as reported by media. The harm caused by such incidents is palpable and clearly pervasive. As such, we are sharing our data with researchers, governments and institutions to build towards a more equitable future for all Canadians. We hope this data will inspire more Canadians to advocate change locally in their respective communities. Visit the research website for more information.
Selection options
Select the time period, province and additional options to narrow down your search, or look at the trends across the country without any selection. The selected options will filter the data for all charts and tables on this page.
Overview
An overview of all the incidents and trends based on your selection of options above.
The total number of media-reported incidents in each month and year. Changes from month-to-month and year-to-year reflect variations in the frequency of racist incidents occurring and also variations in the level of media attention to racism.
The chart data is shown in table format below. Clicking on a column heading will sort the table by that column.
Monthly
Yearly
Racist incidents map
Above is a map of racist incidents reported across Canada.
- Use the widgets to select how the data is summarized (by province or by city/town).
- Hover or click on a province or city/town to view the data.
- In the province map, you can further customize how the data is displayed by selecting which metric (total incidents or incidents per 100,000 people) to use for shading.
- In the city/town map, if there are multiple overlapping circles in your area of interest, keep zooming in the map until the circles display separately.
The city/town map shows the number of incidents in each city, town, village, etc. reported in the data. Due to the varying geographic scale of reported locations, there may be overlap between some of the locations shown on the map. For the major metropolitan areas, we have accounted for this by standardizing our labels; for example, we use the label "Toronto" for any location within the municipality of Toronto (including North York and Scarborough), and similarly for other large cities. However, it is beyond the scope of this project to account for potential overlap between all possible locations in the data, so this limitation should be taken into consideration when comparing locations and the reported totals should be considered approximate.
The map data is shown in table format below. Clicking on a column heading will sort the table by that column. Searching with the search bar will filter the table to show matching results.
Province
City/town
Trends about victims of racist incidents
Ethnic communities
The ethnicity of the victim as identified in the reference article. The "not specified" category applies when (1) the race of the victim is not mentioned or (2) the victim(s) are racialized people in general.
Click on an ethnic community to see its breakdown into sub-communities (where applicable). The sub-community is categorized as "not specified" when the broader ethnic community is reported, but not the specific sub-community.
Totals by sub-community may exceed the total reported for the corresponding ethnic community due to incidents with multiple victims and/or victims of mixed ethnicity.
If an ethnic community contains more than 10 sub-communities, its breakdown chart displays only the top 10 sub-communities. The full breakdown into sub-communities is available in the table view (click the "Tables" button above the chart).
The chart data is shown in table format below. Clicking on a column heading will sort the table by that column. Searching with the search bar will filter the table to show matching results.
Ethnic communities
Sub-communities
Gender
The gender of the victim as identified in the reference article.
Female includes cis and trans women; male includes cis and trans men; other/unknown includes any gender outside of the previously mentioned, as well as if the article does not reference the gender of the victim. Due to limited data in media reports, the other/unknown category cannot be further segmented.
Excludes incidents where gender is not applicable (e.g. vandalism in a public space where no specific person(s) is the victim). Some incidents have multiple victims and are counted in more than one gender category.
The chart data is shown in table format below. Clicking on a column heading will sort the table by that column.
Identity-based intersectionalities
Intersectionalities as identified in the reference article.
Hover on a bar to view definitions or click to view its breakdown into sub-categories (where applicable). Totals by sub-category may exceed the total for the corresponding main category because multiple sub-categories may be applicable (e.g., an incident involving discrimination against more than one religion).
Due to limited data, only the intersectionalities listed above are captured.
The chart data is shown in table format below. Clicking on a column heading will sort the table by that column.
Intersectionalities
Sub-categories
Trends about racist incidents
Criminal justice processing
Some incidents reported by media may appear to be criminal in nature, yet our legal system may not consider them as such. Instead of distinguishing between criminal (including hate crimes, specifically) and non-criminal incidents, this study opts to track the number of incidents that police were made aware of ("reported to police" category), according to the reference article.
Criminal investigations can be lengthy and ongoing. The "criminal charges laid" category summarizes the number of incidents that resulted in criminal charges at the time of the media report — and not necessarily at the final outcome of the investigation. As such, the number of incidents with criminal charges may differ from what is shown in the chart.
The chart data is shown in table format below. Clicking on a column heading will sort the table by that column.
Type of incident
Further breakdown into type of incident.
Hover on a bar to view definitions or click to view its breakdown into sub-categories (where applicable). Totals by sub-category may exceed the total for the corresponding main category because multiple sub-categories may be applicable (e.g., an incident of hate speech involving both imagery and letter/flyer sub-categories).
The chart data is shown in table format below. Clicking on a column heading will sort the table by that column.
Type of incident
Sub-categories
Incident occurred in the setting of
Breakdown into where/in what setting the incident took place. Click on a category to view its further breakdown into sub-categories (where applicable). Totals by sub-category may exceed the total for the corresponding main category because multiple sub-categories may be applicable.
The chart data is shown in table format below. Clicking on a column heading will sort the table by that column. Searching with the search bar will filter the table to show matching results.
Setting
Sub-categories
Data explorer
The table above shows the raw data set, with each row corresponding to a racist incident. The table is filtered based on the dashboard selections in the Selection options section. You can further filter the table using the search bars and you can change the table sorting by clicking on a column heading to sort by that column. To view/download the full data set, make sure the dashboard selections are clear by clicking the reset button and clear any values from the table search bars.