The number of hate crime reports is down in British Columbia, Statistics Canada said Tuesday.

There were 34 fewer reports to police in the province in 2013 than in 2012 for a total of 150 incidents, according to the latest available data from the federal statistics agency.

Most of those (76) were reports related to race or ethnicity, followed by 37 reports of crimes related to sexual orientation, and 37 religiously-motivated incidents.

Overall in Canada, reports of hate crimes were down in 2013 by 17 per cent from 2012, as 247 fewer incidents were reported to police. The agency says the decline was mainly because of a 30 per cent decrease in non-violent hate crime incidents, primarily mischief.

Hate crime motivated by hatred of race or ethnicity represented about half of all hate crime incidents, followed by religious hate crimes (28 per cent) and crimes motivated by hatred of a sexual orientation (16 per cent.)

The decline was greatest for hate crimes targeting Arab, African, and West Asian populations, while there was an increase in reports against East and southeast Asian populations as well as Caucasian populations.

The majority (87 per cent) of police-reported hate crimes in Canada occurred in major cities, with Toronto, Montréal, and Vancouver accounting for 43 per cent of police-reported hate crime incidents in 2013.

However, the agency notes that thee three cities did not have the highest rates of police-reported hate crime. The highest rates were in Thunder Bay (20.9 per 100,000 population) and Hamilton (17.4 per 100,000 population.)

The agency says most hate-motivated crimes reported by police involved non-violent offences. Mischief, which includes vandalism, graffiti and other forms of property destruction, was the most commonly reported offence, making up half of all hate crime incidents. In 2013, four in 10 hate-motivated crimes were violent.

Among all hate crimes, those motivated by hatred of sexual orientation most frequently involved violent offences (66 per cent,) compared with 44 per cent of crimes motivated by race or ethnicity and 18 per cent of incidents related to religion.

ticrawford@vancouversun.com

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