Hate crime – The "True" North

Over the last few years, the city and country I live in, Ottawa and Canada, have been committing increasing resources to combat “hate”. In November 2019, the United Way of Eastern Ontario launched Ottawa’s United for All coalition. U4A was billed as “a coalition of 44 organizations representing 150+ partners who are all committed to overcoming hate-based violence, racism, and extremism in East Ontario.” The coalition’s website says it includes “social service agencies, faith-based organizations, policymakers, human rights groups, health providers, school boards and post-secondary institutions, grassroots social justice groups, criminal justice professionals, cultural groups and more.” The coalition also includes the Ottawa Police Service (maybe they’re the “criminal justice professionals”?) but no Black-led groups or police abolitionist groups, and only one Indigenous group.

The Government of Canada’s Budget 2022 announced the launch of a National Action Plan on Combatting Hate to be combined with a new anti-racism strategy to replace the existing one.

Also in March 2022, the Canadian Race Relations Foundation (CRRF) and the Chiefs of Police National Roundtable announced the formation of a joint Task Force on Hate Crime at a national hate crimes conference. The announcement said the task force would be co-chaired by the CRRF and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

The problem is that initiatives to combat hate in Ottawa, which is the home of the federal government, have had the impact of funneling money to the Ottawa police and initiatives at all levels have done little to address hate, let alone systemic, state-led anti-Black hate. This, despite the fact that Statistics Canada reported that Black Canadians faced the most hate crimes in Canada in 2020.

Instead, what we’ve seen is that the War on Hate, much like the War on Drugs, at all levels, is:

1) disproportionately harming Black Canadians by diverting focus and resources from addressing systemic, state-led, anti-Black hate;

2) fueling police budget increases; and

3) doing little to address the rise in white supremacist hate.

This isn’t because the War on Hate has failed. On the contrary, like the War on Drugs, it’s going exactly as planned.

One of the clearest indicators that Ottawa’s War on Hate isn’t designed to actually stop hate is the fact that the Ottawa police didn’t charge a single Ottawa Freedom Convoy protestor with a hate crime despite some of them carrying signs with Swastikas, being members of known white supremacy groups and allegedly verbally harassing women and racialized Ottawa residents for three weeks.

That the United for All coalition was never intended to address state-sponsored hate is clear from the fact the Ottawa Police Service are members and the coalition has been silent on issues like the OPS’ own data showing they continue to use force disproportionately on Black, Indigenous and Middle Eastern Ottawa residents – and have presented no plan to stop doing so.

Another question raised by the War on Hate is – hate against who? The Government of Canada has shown itself to be very selective in the hate it targets as indicated by a November 2023 open letter to the federal government from El Jones, a poet, journalist, professor and activist living in Halifax, Nova Scotia. In her letter, Jones cites February 2023 Government of Canada press releases announcing a change to the way the government would vet funding requests for community and anti-racism projects. According to these reports, government ministers would have the power to terminate funding to groups who “espouse hate and discrimination”, including vetting of social media accounts of staff of organizations who have received funding.

Jones asked whether the government would be suspending funds to CIJA (Centre for Israel and Jewish affairs) and reviewing the record of its funding. She argued that “even the most cursory read of CIJA’s social media reveals deeply disturbing anti-Palestinian racism, incitement to violence, and harassment of advocates speaking for Palestinian lives. The recent anti-Semitism conference hosted by CIJA and attended by numerous government leaders and officials featured a speaker who posted deeply dehumanizing content online, including a depiction of Palestinians as cockroaches. This post was labelled by Twitter as “sensitive content” due to its hateful nature – as the community note pointed out, the depiction of ethnic groups as cockroaches has a long history in inciting genocide, notably in Rwanda.”

Jones had not received a reply as I write this…

The fact the Ottawa police are members of the United for All coalition is one indication of the close ties between anti “hate” groups and police. Another indicator was former U4A leader Abid Jan leaving the United Way in March 2023 to become Director, Community Safety and Well Being…with the Ottawa Police Service.

This movement of people between the police and other organizations is one aspect of what we call “collective resistance”. Another example was former Ottawa police Chief Financial Officer, Cyril Rogers, becoming Ottawa’s General Manager and Chief Financial Officer in January 2023.

I first came up with the concept of collective resistance after seeing a woman from the Tamarack Institute talk about what she called collective impact at a November 2022 conference. She said collective impact was a key operating principle for Tamarack and defined it as “a network of community, members, organizations and institutions that…advance equity by learning together, aligning and integrating their actions to achieve population and systems-level change.” However, when I saw her definition an alternate definition – of collective resistance – immediately popped into my head:

“Collective resistance is a network of community, members, organizations and institutions that…impede movement toward real equity by working together, aligning and integrating their actions resulting in resistance to population and systems-level change.”

The November 2022 conference was the United Way’s Leveraging Our Strengths conference – focused on implementing equity, diversity and inclusion initiatives.

In his new role as Ottawa’s General Manager and Chief Financial Officer, Cyril Rogers gave a presentation on the City budget at a consultation hosted by three city councillors in February 2023 and said money from the police budget couldn’t be moved anywhere else. When I challenged this by reminding him that, in 2021, the Ottawa Police Services Board and City Council approved $3 million dollars less than the police asked for – and used the money for youth mental health services – Rogers then admitted that money could in fact be moved from the police to other things. If he had done that just once, I might have thought he temporarily had his facts wrong – but then he made exactly the same claim at an October 2023 budget consultation. This kind of misleading information helps justify police budgets that help fund the War on Hate.

A key tool of collective resistance is creating initiatives that claim to be working for fundamental change but have little to no criteria, or misleading criteria, to measure what they’re actually achieving, if anything. The Ottawa Police Service’s hate crime unit is an example.

In January 2023, the Ottawa Police Service issued a press release titled “Annual Hate Crimes data show a 13% increase in reporting to police”. The first line of the release was, “The Ottawa Police Service Hate and Bias Crime Unit released its 2022 Annual statistics. The Hate and Bias Crime unit saw 377 total incidents, including 300 criminal and 77 hate incidents, which marks an increase of 13% over 2021.” Later, the release said:

“The groups most victimized are:

Jewish

Muslim

Black

LGBTQ+

Arab West Asian

East and South Asian”

The release didn’t say how many incidents each group faced and when I asked the guy who is the Ottawa police hate crimes unit (the “unit” is only one guy) – why that was, his answer made no sense. One thing he did say in an earlier conversation that did make sense was that the number of hate crimes against Black people is probably three times higher than what’s reported because Black people are likely reluctant to report incidents to the police because they have little faith the police will do anything.

In addition to weak to non-existent evaluation criteria, another way War on Hate initiatives support collective resistance is taking a really long time to produce anything to evaluate. Federal government consultations on the new Anti-Racism Strategy and Action Plan on Hate ended May 8, 2022 but the government web page on the initiative still says, “The Federal Anti-Racism Secretariat is currently synthesizing what they heard from communities across Canada in their various engagement sessions to inform the development of a new anti-racism action strategy for Canada.”

Our definition of collective resistance is similar to the definition of system racism in Turner Consulting’s November 2023 report Systemic Anti-Black Racism by the Numbers: Canada vs the US:

“Systemic racism describes how policies, institutional practices, organizational culture, individual attitudes, and other norms within a system work in various, often reinforcing ways to perpetuate racial inequity. Systemic racism is not something that a few people or organizations choose to practice. It is a key feature of our social, economic, and political systems.”

Interestingly, the only reference to the “War on Hate” that came up when I Googled it was Henry Kopel’s book War on Hate: How to Stop Genocide, Fight Terrorism, and Defend Freedom. Kopel is a former U.S. federal prosecutor and serves on the global advisory board for the Abraham Global Peace Initiative which bills itself as “a prominent international Canadian NGO that educates, advocates and publishes articles, reports and produces exhibits, symposiums and media content to counter Antisemitism; combat Holocaust denial; advance The Abraham Accords, defend Israel, Canada and their allies; and advance freedom, democracy and universal human rights.”

The “War on Hate” is focussed on the wrong enemy – by design. The real hate is in the actions taken everyday by the organizations, led by mostly white people making six figure salaries, that run programs that provide some relief while also supporting collective resistance against addressing systemic, state-led, anti-Black hate. These organizations get funding to provide Bandaid solutions to more serious societal issues. And if you’re in the Bandaid business – it’s in your interest for people to keep bleeding.

In 2018, in a ranking of 415 cities, towns and villages, MoneySense Magazine named Russell Township, 40 minutes southeast of Ottawa, as one of the best places to live in Canada. However, based on what happened last week, Russell’s few Black people weren’t home when they did the survey.

On Tuesday, Sept. 22, a 10-yr-old Black youth was biking with a white friend along a Russell street, when they passed two white boys their age, one of whom called the Black boy a nigger. When the boy’s white friend asked if the white boy had said what he thought, the white boy repeated it several times. When the boy’s white friend told the aggressor to stop, the aggressor hit the Black boy in his leg with his scooter, knocking him to the ground. The other white boy then jumped on the Black boy’s arm, breaking it in two places. When the Black boy’s mom found out, around 5:15pm, she immediately called the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) (who cover Russell), but they didn’t come. The officer who did finally call, around 9:30pm, was very rude and dismissive and said, “it was consensual” and “It’s not a crime to call someone a nigger.” The mom then asked for the officer’s superior and spoke to his sergeant, but he said she’d have to speak to the same officer. When she refused, the sergeant finally connected her with an officer who was empathetic. The 613-819 Black Hub immediately contacted the boy’s mom to provide support.

The principal of the victim’s school said that the principal of the arm breaker’s school said he suspended the arm breaker but she didn’t know what, if anything, he did to the other kid who the mother said also called her son a nigger then assaulted him with his scooter.

With the mom’s consent, we emailed the head of the Russell OPP requesting a meeting to discuss the troubling police response, and the principal of the school the arm breaking kid attends also asking for a meeting. The response from OPP Russell County Detachment Commander, Luc Duval, is below.

“Hello Robin:

Thank you for reaching out. I definitely understand your interest in this matter. The OPP takes incidents involving young people very seriously. Due to the ages of those involved, we cannot get into specifics related to those involved in the incident. For this reason, I must respectfully decline your invitation to meet. I am able to tell you that our area Crime Supervisor has reviewed the actions of the officers involved, to ensure proper steps were taken. As the injuries were not life-threatening, officers waited until the medical issues could be dealt with as a priority before responding to the hospital to talk to the victim. It took one hour from the time of dispatch to the time the officer was at the hospital. This is not unusual for an assault involving non-life-threatening injuries. We are aware that the incident allegedly started over a racial slur, but cannot speculate on the thought processes or the reasons it happened. As you are aware, under Canadian law, individuals under the age of 12 cannot be charged criminally. For that reason, the OPP is working with the parents of the young people involved and has engaged community support services, including the Intersections program and Valoris.

You can learn more about Intersections at http://improvingsystems.ca/projects/intersections-3. Information about Valoris can be found at https://valorispr.ca/en/about/. Both families agreed with this approach.

Inspector Luc Duval, Detachment Commander, OPP, Russell County Detachment”

There are a number of problems with Mr. Duval’s response:

He says he can’t meet with us because of the kids’ ages and the fact that he can’t discuss the specifics. But why can’t he meet the family to see how they’re doing and to discuss our other request: what the OPP is doing to address systemic anti-Black racism within the ranks of the OPP, that even Premier Doug Ford has acknowledged?
He says proper procedure was followed and “it took one hour from the time of dispatch to the time the officer was at the hospital.”, when, according to the victim’s mother, no officer ever showed up at the hospital.
He says, “We are aware that the incident allegedly started over a racial slur, but cannot speculate on the thought processes or the reasons it happened.” Really? A white kid calls a Black kid he doesn’t know a nigger and then breaks his arm and they can’t speculate what might have motivated that? Would he say that if a Black kid had called a white kid a honky then busted his arm?
He says “the OPP is working with the parents of the young people involved” but the mother says they weren’t working with her at the time of his reply so he must have meant they were only working with the attackers’ families.
He says nothing about the mother’s claims that the officer, who finally contacted her more than 4 hours after she called 911, was rude, said the attack was “consensual” and angrily told the mother, “It’s not a crime to call someone a nigger.”

But, at least Mr. Duval responded which is more than can be said for the principal. Instead, his school superintendent, Norma McDonald, who we copied on our email to him, responded on his behalf:

“Good afternoon Mr. Browne, I am responding to your email regarding an incident which occurred on September 22nd which resulted in an injury to a student from Russell. Immediately after learning of the incident, a principal’s investigation took place which resulted in appropriate immediate remedial action. By reason of privacy obligations, I cannot supply you with any details of the steps taken by the Board to address the situation. You have requested a meeting with our principal to discuss the incident. Unfortunately, I must decline your request. As I am sure you can appreciate, we are not able to discuss the personal circumstances involving a particular student of the Board. I would add that the Board treats with the utmost seriousness any allegation of racist behaviour by any student, member of staff or any other official of the Board. [Quotes board policy]. While I cannot speak to the specifics of any matter involving a Board student, I can advise that the Board will adhere to the commitments outlined in its policies and will take all reasonable steps to ensure their application to any student, staff member or other official of the Board who has acted in contravention of those policies.

Thank you for your email, Norma McDonald, Superintendent of School Effectiveness, CDSBEO”

The main problem with Ms. McDonald’s response is the same as with Mr. Duval’s. She cites privacy issues as a reason for not being able to meet with the family and us but doesn’t explain why she can’t meet with us to find out how the victim and his family are doing and to discuss what the school is doing to address systemic anti-Black racism on, and off, school property.

The OPP did finally reach out to the victim’s mother, by phone, to offer support services, including those provided by Valoris that Mr. Duval mentioned in his email. Under “Services”, Valoris offers individual and family mental health counselling. There is also a section called Diversity and Inclusivity with a tag line: For Everyone. However, under that tab, it says, “Pick the topic that interests you”, and offers only two choices: LGBTQIA2S+ and FMIN (First Nations, Metis, Inuit). The chances of the young victim being able to see a Black counsellor through Valoris are about as high as Russell hiring its first Black police chief next week (like Ottawa did last October).

Russell may have been named one of the best places to live in Canada in 2018 but now it’s one of the best places in Canada to see systemic anti-Black racism up close and personal.

From the boy being the victim of a violent anti-Black hate crime; to the police response, first late, then hostile, then blaming the victim; to the school principal not reaching out to the family and continuing to ignore requests to meet with them; to the attackers’ families also not reaching out to the victim’s family to the mom being challenged to find a Black counsellor, Russell has it all.

So, our advice to Black families is as clear as the title of Jordan’s Peele’s Oscar winning movie: Get Out!

Leave Russell and come to Ottawa. We have Ottawa’s first Black police chief, its first Black director of education and its first Black city counsellor. The city has a new anti-racism directorate, the Federal Black Employee Caucus and the 613-819 Black Hub. We would also tell businesses not to invest in Russell until the people in power in Russell do something to address systemic anti-Black racism.

Ottawa is open to Black folks and open for business!