Hate toward South Asians ‘skyrocketing’ in Canada, report says

A man uses a computer keyboard in Toronto in this Sunday, Oct. 9 photo illustration. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graeme Roy

There’s been a sharp rise in online hate targeting the South Asian community in Canada, spurred in part by a domestic extremist group and the spread of anti-immigration messaging, according to a new report published by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD).

“We did see on X specifically that South Asians were really disproportionately targeted compared to some other ethnic and religious minorities” said Steven Rai, a domestic extremism analyst with ISD, in an interview with CTV News.

The report — which found anti-South Asian has “been skyrocketing” both online and offline — is an analysis of high-level quantitative data specifically seeking posts with slurs targeting South Asian communities and filtering for those either coming from or referencing Canada.

“Our analysis found that posts containing anti-South Asian slurs increased by more than 1,350 percent from 2023 to 2024 on X (formerly Twitter), with police-reported hate crimes against South Asians in Canada increasing by more than 227 percent between 2019 and 2023,” the report states.

Rai called the findings “absolutely staggering.” He said the research also looked at other groups, for example Muslims, and the found hateful posts targeting those communities were stable in terms of quantity.

“That’s not to say other forms of hate aren’t incredibly important and concerning, but what really caught my eye here was just how much anti-South Asian hate specifically is rising,” Rai said.

The report comes amid separate analysis by the ISD digging into online domestic extremism in Canada. The institute defines targeted hate as any activity that “seeks to dehumanize, demonize, harass, threaten, or incite violence against an individual or community based on religion, ethnicity, race, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, national origin, or migrant status.”

Rai said he decided to do quantitative data analysis of posts targeting South Asians after he personally noticed an increase in hateful posts, and wanted to see whether the numbers supported his theory.

“And then I started to notice that the narratives painting Indians and other South Asian groups as invaders, as dirty, as criminals, really started to take off on social media,” he said.

“Unsurprisingly but unfortunately, we did see a really clear rise in the data beginning in late 2023 and over the course of 2024,” he added.

According to the report, the posts also target South Asian politicians in Canada, with a spike in posts during the April federal election, in particular aimed at former NDP leader Jagmeet Singh.

Rai said there are seemingly several factors affecting the issue, one of them being Canadians seemingly conflating concerns around the housing crisis, a lack of job opportunities and other economic anxieties as being the fault of immigration policy.

“And they’re sort of linking what they perceive as a weakness in the Canadian economy to an influx in immigration,” Rai explained. “So that’s the first piece for a lot of Canadians.”

“And then they’re looking at who are the most visible ethnic minorities in Canada, and we see a huge South Asian population there — in places like Brampton (Ont.) or Surrey (B.C.) — so South Asians have become visible targets for a lot of people who are looking for a scapegoat and for someone to blame for these economic problems,” he added.

Prime Minister Mark Carney has promised a cap on immigration numbers, in part to ease pressure on the housing sector.

The ISD report also included a case analysis of the white supremacist group Diagalon, which became prominent during the COVID-19 lockdowns in Canada, and the leaders of which Rai said “are really heavily promoting this hate against Indian people, specifically.”

According to the report, the dataset also found that Indian people specifically were targeted using language invoking the Great Replacement, an online conspiracy theory that elites are trying to deliberately change demographics by increasing non-white migration.

Extending the data search to include not just posts within Canada, but also those mentioning the country, Rai said, allowed him to also see that Canada is also being held up as an example of what might happen when a country is supposedly “overtaken” by “non-white invaders.”