Manitoba will soon have a Crown attorney specifically designated to prosecute hate crimes, the government announced Wednesday.
Justice Minister Matt Wiebe will appoint a lead provincial Crown prosecutor to tackle the issue and co-ordinate efforts of a working group providing guidance on prosecuting hate crimes, which can be complex.
The government says it will provide additional training to Crown attorneys so that offenders are held to account.
On Tuesday, Winnipeg police charged a 19-year-old with 26 counts of mischief in connection with some antisemitic graffiti found throughout a neighbourhood in the city. Police said the offences did not meet specific criteria of a hate crime as outlined in the Criminal Code.
Bernie Faber, chair with the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, says he’s been calling for something like this for a long time.
Faber, who’s also a former CEO of the Canadian Jewish Congress, says hate-crime charges are rare across the country.
Crown attorneys and police are often reluctant to pursue hate-related charges, he said, because they don’t know what could be successfully proven to be a hate crime.
“It’s easy when you catch somebody robbing a bank, right? Guy’s got a gun, he’s robbing a bank, he’s a felon, off he goes,” he said.
“It’s a little bit more difficult when you’re dealing with what is become known as ‘thought crimes.’ Now, these are not thought crimes, these are hate crimes — and very often neither the police nor the Crown attorney have the ability to discern what a hate crime is.”
Another problem, Faber says, is that hate-crime charges are among the few that require the approval of a government official — the attorney general — to prosecute.
“Canada has to be very clear as a country of laws,” he said. “Muslims and Jews and people of colour … ought not to worry about walking the streets at night.”
There were 178 police-reported hate-motivated crimes in Winnipeg between 2017 and 2022, the province says.
A Winnipeg Police Service report from last year found that hate crimes hit a recent historic high in 2023, with about 46 incidents reported.