Hamilton is gaining the reputation as Canada's hate crime capital

    Hamilton had the highest rate of police-reported hate crimes in Canada during 2019, according to Statistics Canada. At 15.7 reported incidents per 100,000 population, the Hamilton rate was more than double the amount of incidents reported in Toronto. Over the years of 2015 to 2019, we see a steady growing trend for police-reported hate crimes in Hamilton and the city has been gaining a reputation as the hate crime capital of Canada. 

    The Hamilton Police Hate Crime Statistical Report of 2019, shows that the majority of reported incidents in that year were related to religion, racial bias and sexual orientation. The ones who are most commonly victimized in this city are the Black community, Jewish community and LGBTQ community. This report provides an overview of how the Hamilton Police have been trained and educated to deal with hate crime situations, as well as the actions and initiatives they have done with the community in hopes to combat this issue of hate. 

    Based on this study, there were a total of 92 hate or bias incidents that was reported to the Hamilton Police Service in 2019. Out of those 92 incidents, only eight fell within the parameters of a hate or bias crime. The total number of reported incidents did have a 26.4 per cent decrease from 125 in 2018.

    Hate or bias motivated crimes can be easily reported through the Hamilton Police website and they do encourage the community to report all incidents to ensure action is taken to make the community safer. But is that really true if only eight out of that large number of incidents actually led to arrests?

    In a CBC News article titled, "Hamilton is getting a reputation for hate, and critics say the city hasn't done enough to fight it," Samantha Craggs examines the forms of hate happening in the city. She mentions how Hamilton has had Canada's highest per-capita rate of hate crimes for the last three out of five years. 

    During Pride 2019, Craggs said that a group crashed the festival with homophobic slogans on signs and broadcasted through a loud speaker. In this incident, several people were even left injured as there was punching, shoving and hitting between the two groups. In this article, she writes about how many people feel that Mayor Fred Eisenberger doesn't care much about queer people and that the police took too long to intervene during the Pride incident, even though Pride volunteers told police in advance that a group would most likely appear. She mentions how Statistics Canada numbers show an upward trend of reported hate crimes in Canada as there were 1,798 hate-motivated crimes in 2018, compared to 1,295 in 2014. 

    In another article titled, "The anatomy of a city with a hate problem," HG Watson writes about how Hamilton has become a place with a severe hate problem. She mentions how the city lacked a safe place for the LGBTQ2 community, there are no queer community centres and no gay bars. In this article, Watson says how Hamilton is a city where "xenophobic protesters have made a routine out of demonstrating; and where a former neo-Nazi leader worked at city hall, openly, for years." In relation to the previous article mentioned, Watson also talks about how hatefulness was demonstrated in full force when a group of protesters with homophobic signs came during Pride 2019. 

    Despite the high rates of police-reported hate crimes in Hamilton, hate crimes in Canada are generally very under-reported. In an article by Mac Christie, he goes into depth about how Hamilton's hate crime rates could actually be much higher than what is reported. Christie mentions that in 2019, out of the 92 events reported, a true number is likely over 250. This article also mentions that Hamilton hasn't taken hate crimes or racism as seriously in the past, which explains the rise of hate the city has been experiencing. 

Data Update #3

Based on Chad's feedback from Update 2, I agree that the previous 19 rows of data I had for my data slice is a weird number, so I narrowed my set to 12 rows of data for my bar chart. I found this to be more concise and it made the bar chart easier to read. I highlighted Hamilton, Ontario and made the representing bar a different colour to stand out among the other cities in the data. 

 

Chart:

Unanswered Question: 

Looking at my chart, 7/12 of the cities are from Ontario. My unanswered question is, why do Ontario cities have the highest rate of police-reported hate crime in 2019, compared to the other provinces? 

How would I get the data?

Since this dataset is based on police-reported incidents, a possibility is that Ontario may just be better at reporting hate crime incidents, compared to other provinces. To find out this data, I will do further research, hopefully getting more data from Ontario's open data portal about crime. I will also try to find out if Ontario has strong resources that help victims/make victims feel more comfortable with coming forward and reporting incidents as such, which could be a reason to the higher numbers in that province.

Data Update #2

Lead:

Hamilton, Ontario had the highest rate of police-reported hate crime in Canada during 2019, according to Statistics Canada.

Excel Workbook Link and Explanation:

 
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1pmTnl5EUYB6h-RIubeuhRDDseq6buwHPV-CZb60AC0o/edit?usp=sharing 

The raw data is just as I downloaded from the Statistics Canada website. It contains the rates of police-reported hate crimes in the Census Metropolitan Areas, during the years of 2014 to 2019. My small data slice shows the top 20 cities with the highest rates of hate crime, showing that Hamilton has the highest among the rest of the cities. When I compared each year, I noticed that Hamilton very frequently has always had the highest rate since 2014.

Original Dataset Link:

https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=3510019101&cubeTimeFrame.startYear=2014&cubeTimeFrame.endYear=2019&referencePeriods=20140101%2C20190101

Based on the feedback from Update 1, I agree with Chad that the previous dataset I chose is difficult to extract data from since it's simply a list of locations. I chose another dataset, which I feel I'm likely to have more to work with for my Final Data Report.

Study Link and Brief Summary:

https://www.toronto.com/news-story/10282846-hamilton-hate-crime-numbers-may-not-tell-the-whole-story/

In this news story, Mac Christie writes about how Hamilton's hate crime rates could actually be much higher than what is mentioned because most cases are under-reported. This news story is relevant to my data because it covers the issue of Hamilton having the highest rate of police-reported hate crimes in Canada and gives me some idea to why the rates are high in that city. Christie mentions that in 2019, the Hamilton Police service said that out of 92 hate/bias events reported, only eight were labelled a hate/bias crime. I found that quite shocking and later on he also mentions that out of the 92 events reported, a true number is likely over 250. This article also mentions that in general, Hamilton hasn't taken hate crimes or racism seriously in the past, which I feel like that could be a big factor as to why the rates are so high now.

Assignment #2 - Data Update 1

 1. What dataset will you use for your final report? 

For my final report, the dataset I will be using will be on the Residential Care Facilities in B.C., published by the Ministry of Health, Seniors Services Branch. 

2. Describe the dataset. What kind of data does it contain? 

The dataset that I chose is from the B.C. government's open data portal and is in spreadsheet format CSV. It specifically contains both publicly subsidized and private paid residential care facilities within our province, it's street address, the city it's located in, it's postal code and their phone number. In the dataset description, it mentions how this data is intended to provide assistance to families searching for all types of care under the residential care regulation and that the dataset is updated biweekly. 

3. Is there anything about your data that you don't understand? How will you find this out?

At first, when I opened the raw data in spreadsheets, there were many additional columns that I was confused about. After I cleaned the data up a bit and removed the unnecessary columns (longitude, latitude, etc.), the data started to make more sense and was less overwhelming to look at. One of the columns I'm still confused about would be "column H: Inspection_URL." I'm not sure if that means records of previous inspections and I'm wondering what is included in their inspections. To find this out, I will click the URLs provided and make notes on if each inspection are based off of the same criteria and from there I'll be able to see if it will be important to my data analysis. There is also a column labelled "hospice," which is a word that I'm not familiar with so I will have to do my own research on what that is, for me to understand the data fully. 

4. What are some question you hope to answer with your data? List at least three. 

- Which municipality within B.C. has the most residential care facilities available? 

- Which municipality within B.C. has the least amount of residential care facilities available? 

- How many facilities help people with mental health issues or substance use issues? 

- Are the number of facilities available per city, linked to the population of the area? 

- Are the facilities mostly located in quieter areas of a city or busier areas of a city with more traffic? 

(JRNL 3165) Assignment #1: Data Visualization Analysis

 

Veronica Penney's data visualization shared in her article, Electric Cars Are Better for the Planet - and Often Your Budget Too, overall, does a good job in illustrating how electric cars are easily more climate friendly than gas-burning cars and often cheaper per mile. In her chart, she visualizes the average amount of carbon dioxide emissions per mile and average cost per month, comparing electric cars, hybrid cars, and traditional gas-powered cars, that all retail for $55,000 or less.

This dotted map chart was definitely pleasing and simple to look at. With my first glance at the data, I was able to clearly distinguish which colour represents the different type of car from the descriptions beside them on the chart. I liked how the colours that she chose weren't overwhelming to the eyes and that she sectioned the three categories with a bubble that surrounded the dots. I could also answer any questions that I have about this topic just by using this data visualization. I'm able to see how there really are not many electric cars made yet in comparison to the many gas-powered cars. It's also clear that the average amount of traditional gas-powered cars cost more than electric cars. 

Something that was confusing at first would be that there are so many dots on the chart but only four were actually labelled onto it. I then found out a link under the photo that led me to an interactive version in which hovering my mouse over the dot revealed the different car models. I think that the interactive visualization definitely made the chart make more sense. However, since there are many gas-powered cars that retail less than $55,000, it did make her chart seem very cluttered in that section since there were even multiple dots layered on top of each other. I think that the visualization in this interactive dotted map could've been simpler and less cluttered/confusing if she narrowed her data down, or calculated a total average per category, or if instead, I think a line chart could've worked as well with comparing the three car types. A line chart could've worked as well because the differences between electric cars, hybrid and traditional, are pretty far apart from each other. I think that she could've calculated the total average per month and total carbon dioxide, per car category and placed only three lines which showed the clear differences in data. 

FOI/ATI Request

Vanessa Magtibay
Kwantlen Polytechnic University 
12666 72 Avenue
Surrey, B.C.  V3V 2M8
(604)599-2000

November 1, 2020 

Dan Proulx
Access to Information and Privacy Coordinator
Canadian Border Services Agency
333 North River Road
14th Floor Tower A
Vanier, Ontario K1A 0L8

Dear Mr. Proulx:

Under the Access to Information Act, please provide me with: 

• Records of all cases charged with attempted entry of undeclared and seized firearms from the U.S. into Canada since Jan. 1, 2016.

If there are any problems releasing some portions of the documents requested, please do not withhold release of all the documents, but instead forward those you can release.

To avoid photocopying fees, you may provide me with these records in PDF or JPG format electronically through email. 

I have enclosed the $5 application fee.

If you have any questions or concerns, please phone me at (778)828-7498 or by email at vmagtibay@live.ca.

Please advise me when the material is available for release.



Sincerely, 

Vanessa Magtibay

Explanation for request:

Trudeau introduced a new gun ban of over 1,500 various forms of assault-style firearms, on May 1, 2020. Illegally trying to smuggle firearms and attempts to not declare firearms across the border into Canada has been an issue for a while, and I’d like to know if the new ban has helped decrease this issue or if it actually enticed more to try to smuggle/not declare them across. Through the data requested, I’ll be able to look at the number of cases since May, when the ban was introduced, and compare that to the history of when there was no ban yet. I think it’s very important for the general public to know if this new gun ban has actually been helping keep the community safer.

Drugs - Cocaine Addictions Are Deadly

Photo by: Bruce Rosin

Cocaine is an extremely addictive stimulant drug that is highly toxic to our health and can even be fatal. It has been illegal in Canada for many years now and it should always remain that way.

Parleen Kaur argued in “Cocaine is not only used as a drug!” that the drug should be legalized because of its beneficial uses. Kaur did make some good points on how cocaine was medically used in the 1900’s, but I was quite surprised at how she did not cover many facts which support her actual argument of legalizing the drug. The negative health effects of cocaine, greatly outweigh those very few benefits that she pointed out in her blog argument.

Kaur argues that, “it is a great anesthetic and it is used in all kinds of head and neck surgery.” I don’t agree with this because it also causes many negative effects on the heart, which is a major and essential organ that keeps us alive. According to Dr. Joaquin Lucena, who led a study about deaths from cocaine use, “it causes adverse changes to the heart and arteries that then lead to sudden death.” Cocaine has significant toxic effects on the heart and is linked to increased risks of stroke, and extreme chest pain that commonly send many abusers to the ER.

Also, challenging Kaur’s point that I previously mentioned above, according to the National Institute of Health on drug abuse, the use of cocaine causes long term changes to the brain. A cocaine user’s brain ages more rapidly than a non user. The dopamine receptors in a cocaine user’s brain go through physiological and chemical changes which make their craving for more, so powerful.

Another point Kaur makes is how cocaine is used as a “vasoconstrictor agent which means it is used to narrow the blood vessels from the contraction of muscular blood vessels.” The narrowing of blood vessels reduces blood-flow in the gastrointestinal tract, which could lead to tears and ulcers. There are many other vasoconstrictor agents, other than cocaine. I don’t agree that cocaine is a good agent for this because it is such a strong stimulant as well a vasoconstrictor. This means that it makes the heart pump faster while at the same time contracting the blood vessels, which strains and overworks the heart. That creates tiny tears in the heart muscle that eventually will turn into scar tissue.

Photo by: artgyrl

In Kaur’s argument, she asks, “do you all know that cocaine is an ingredient in Coca-Cola?” With the way that it’s worded, she implies that cocaine is still an active ingredient in the drink, today. It’s widely known that Coca-Cola’s original formula did have cocaine in it, but by 1929, the company was forced to remove all traces of cocaine. The soda that we know today still does contain coca, but the ecgonine alkaloid that cocaine is derived from in coca leaves is removed, making cocaine itself, not an active ingredient anymore.

Lastly, Kaur ends her blog argument comparing cocaine to marijuana. Marijuana does also have its negatives, but the ongoing list of negative effects that cocaine has, makes the two drugs incomparable. The strong addiction that comes with cocaine, takes over your life, and the worst effect is that it will result in damaging relationships and family life.

Even the smallest amount of cocaine use can quickly lead to a serious addiction that rapidly grows. Once a user becomes addicted, their mind and body become obsessed with the next intake. Legalizing cocaine will be a massive mistake that will inevitably lead to many addicted and dependent on the drug.