

The Canadian Press





BRAMPTON, Ont. -- Peel regional police say anti-immigration flyers distributed last month in Brampton, Ont., don't meet the Criminal Code requirements to be considered a hate crime.

The flyers showed a black and white picture of a group of Caucasians above a separate photograph of a group of Sikhs with captions that read "from this...to this..."

Underneath the two pictures is a caption saying "Is This What You Want?"

Peel police say that while the flyers distributed by a group calling itself Immigration Watch Canada may be considered "racist and offensive," they do not cross the legal line into hate crime.

They say in a release that they understand the deep hurt and harm such incidents cause in the community but investigators determined there are no reasonable grounds to warrant criminal charges in the case.

After the flyers first appeared, an Ontario Sikh group called for criminal charges, suggesting that might deter others from distributing such literature in future.

Another group, the World Sikh Organization of Canada, also condemned the flyers but expressed doubt on whether they qualified as a hate crime.

Brampton has a population of 521,000 people, about 200,000 of whom have a South Asian background, according to 2011 census data on the city's website.