EDMONTON — Hate crimes based on sexual orientation in Canada saw a 25 per cent jump in a single year, according to new data from Statistics Canada.

Kristopher Wells, an assistant professor with the Institute of Sexual Minority Studies and Services at the University of Alberta, wasn’t surprised, and said the issue is likely much worse.

“I wouldn’t be walking down Whyte Avenue holding my male partner’s hand, because there are days when you don’t want to deal with the homophobia and the threat of violence,” he said.

“You’ve learned throughout your life to be very wary of the person who walks in front of you, the person who walks behind you, the person who walks beside you but also the person within you because of the impacts of internalized homophobia,” Wells added.

According to a report released Wednesday, police-reported hate crime in Canada in 2016 rose from 141 incidents reported in 2015 to 176, making up 13 per cent of all hate crimes reported to police in Canada in 2016.

Wells called police-reported hate crimes statistics “a vast underrepresentation of what the reality is actually like for many minorities in Canada,” as only around 40 per cent of hate crimes are reported to police.

The majority of hate crimes based on sexual identity are violent, with 65 per cent involving assault, threats or criminal harassment.

Despite ongoing efforts to bolster inclusion, accused perpetrators of these hate crimes were younger than those motivated by other types of bigotry.

Most hate crimes based on sexual orientation, 59 per cent, were committed by people under the age of 25.

“No one is born with hate in their heart; hate is a learned value,” Wells said. “The real question is, where are they learning this kind of hatred?”

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In Alberta, the passing of Bill 10 and Bill 24 — allowing students to create Gay Straight Alliances (GSAs) in their schools — was lauded as a step towards re-educating young Albertans to value diversity instead of fearing it, said Wells.

However, debates surrounding these bills have become ground zero for an upswell of homophobia, as opposition over whether LGBTQ issues should be addressed in the classroom has been peppered with hateful rhetoric.

“We’ve seen tremendous backlash in those movements towards inclusion. We’ve seen leaders, community parents and even, in some cases, community members and parents say some pretty awful and discriminatory things about LGBTQ people, and that creates an environment where it says it’s OK to hate,” said Wells.

Wells suspects many of these hate crimes based on sexual identity are motivated in part to a rigid binary on what it means to be a man or a woman, and a desire to correct those who don’t adhere to gender-based stereotypes.

“The language to put you back in your box is homophobic and often followed by expressions of bullying and violence,” said Wells.

The vast majority of all victims of hate crimes motivated by sexual orientation in Canada identified as male, 84 per cent, and nearly all of those accused of perpetrating those crimes, 91 per cent, were male.

Wells said this is a product of the breakdown of toxic masculinity that has traditionally valued aggression and violence as part of what it means to be a man.

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“It’s important that we’re having these larger conversations, not just about homophobia and sexism, but around these concepts of hard masculinity or rigid masculinity that really entraps boys and young men into stereotypical roles. The way those roles are policed is through violence and hate,” said Wells.

The solution to this rise of hate, Wells said, is found close to home.

“If we are going to get serious about addressing hate in our country, we need to start in our schools, we need to start around our dinner tables, we need to be mindful of the kinds of language that we use,” Wells said.

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