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On 9 June 2008, Statistics Canada published a report (Hate crime in Canada) which finds that hate-motivated incidents account for a relatively small proportion of both police-reported and self-reported crime.
Hate crimes refer to criminal offenses that are motivated by hate towards an identifiable group. Police-reported data for 2006 reveals that most hate crimes were motivated by either race/ethnicity (61%), religion (27%) or sexual orientation (10%).
The report also provides information which shows that hate crimes are most likely to involve young people, both as victims and as accused persons. In addition, most violent hate crimes are committed by strangers. In 2006, 77% of victims of police-reported violent hate crime did not know there perpetrator compared to 33% of victims of other violent crimes.