The Edmonton Police Service posted a video encouraging those who experience or witness hate to report it. The post prompted responses from the Alberta government this week. Hate crime researcher Irfan Chaudhry joined Alberta Primetime’s Michael Higgins to discuss this post and the reaction. This interview has been edited for clarity and length. Michael Higgins: To what degree do you see the Edmonton Police Service post warranting a debate of a political debate over freedom of speech? Irfan Chaudhry: I don’t see there’s any need for the provincial government to chime in. I think the Edmonton Police Service did what they’re expected to do, in general, in terms of raising awareness on community safety and providing citizens with the information needed to know where to turn to or where to go. To see it turn into this political stance on free speech and freedom of expression, I think it’s interesting. But maybe not surprising given the context of our province right now. MH: How do you assess the EPS post itself? Could it be construed as overreach on the part of police? IC: I don’t think so. If I think back to my time on the Edmonton Police Commission, I know that there was a strong interest around making sure the service was set up in a way to ensure when different forms of hate, whether crime or incident, did occur. There were elements of information available for citizens to know where to turn to. That’s how I view this video and this post and this campaign from this service, it’s just information awareness. I’m fully supportive of them and other police services being proactive in this way because oftentimes what you do hear is citizens feeling challenged on where to even report hate through to. So I think the police were just doing their due diligence to highlight that there’s an avenue where the police may or may not play a role in terms of if it’s a crime or not. But having said that, at least it’s a space that can be documented and help inform police just in terms of trends, intelligence and information. MH: What is the value of the portal itself as a tool for reporting hate? What role has it played since being introduced? IC: You see this quite a bit. Even when I had established “StopHateAB” with the Alberta Hate Crimes Committee at that time, the whole purpose was to capture hate incidents that wouldn’t necessarily hit the threshold of a crime and weren’t necessarily even being captured by police service at the time. Even though it might not hit the threshold of a criminal act, hate-related incidents still play a role in helping understand and inform what might be happening in different communities. So even though it might not be the threshold of a crime, there’s still some interesting information and insights that might be gleaned. I know in previous conversations, I’ve given the example with unfortunately what happened with the Quebec mosque shooting in 2017. Prior to the actual shooting, there were, over the span of seven years I believe, really small instances of hate-related, intimidation-related events that wouldn’t necessarily have hit the threshold of a crime. But when you take these things out of isolation and look at them collectively, it does give some really interesting insights that police want to be on top of in terms of trends or and awareness, so I think there’s value there. Outside of that, there’s also value in documenting it. At least if you’ve been able to inform and share with a legitimate agency like a police municipal police service, that provides you with a sense of, “Hey, I was able to do something or at least the information went somewhere.” This is what I think has historically been the case. They kind of just hang there with nowhere to go and then people don’t necessarily feel anything’s been addressed and that again impacts community safety and community trust. I think there’s a lot of layers beyond just reporting. There’s elements of community safety and community trust that these types of campaigns try to build and I think the comments from leadership have taken that focus away. MH: What’s the risk with police involvement? The risk of the slippery slope the premier alludes to? IC: I think that’s fair. One of the biggest things people have concerns about is like who’s actually defining hate, right? I might experience something, maybe it doesn’t hit the threshold of a crime but I still think it might be hate or bias motivated, and someone might have a different opinion. I think that’s how you know that it’s a slippery slope. I think what we might be alluding to is who’s actually defining it. Not discounting the charter guarantee that all of us have around freedom of expression, freedom of speech, freedom of observation, all those things are charter guarantees. But at the same time, that doesn’t necessarily mean freedom from an accountability aspect. That’s where I think this dialogue has come through. If we play devil’s advocate, we know that there’s more protections under current legislation around protecting free speech than there is around protection of hateful related speech. Awareness campaigns like this are an attempt to at least try to level the playing field so that there’s somewhere to go with these. We have more than the protections of free speech that I don’t think a public campaign like this is going to derail that in any way, shape, or form. MH: Based on what you’re seeing currently online in the Alberta context, even the examples alluded to in the EPS post, where is the distinction to be drawn between what is offensive and what’s hate crime in Alberta? IC: With all legislation directing definitions of hate, what the police services oftentimes are using is the criminal code. Under the current criminal code, there’s only a handful of specific categories of the code that allude to hate and it’s hate propaganda as well specifically. If there aren’t those thresholds that are met, it’s very difficult for police to be able to address it in a hate motivated way unless there’s evidence of such. There have been provisions, almost since the 1990s, when the criminal code was amended to consider hate as a motivating factor during sentencing. But that’s still pretty limiting in what police can do and it still leaves communities feeling unsafe. I think because there aren’t any other layers of public institutions outside of the police that do have the scope and authority and autonomy to at least provide a space for reporting, it goes into a void. That’s where I think it’s been missed in this regard because knowing that the same province came out with pretty strong statements, maybe a year or so ago, supportive of trying to combat and counter hate-related events, speech and motivated acts in our province. It’s just really interesting that it’s being viewed in this way in terms of eroding free expression because I don’t think that’s the case at all. I think this has maybe turned into a little bit of a political hotcake that likely the service had no intention of it becoming just because they wanted to raise awareness on something. I know the community is definitely raising awareness in terms of challenges to reporting hate.
