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Hate crimes in Canada account for fewer than one in 1,000 reported incidents of common assault and an even lower proportion of incidents of mischief, Tapley wrote.

Moreover, Tapley’s fact-checking serves as a lesson to the majority of MPs who in March supported the anti-Islamophobia motion, which called for more research into hate crimes against Muslims. Tapley’s report showed much of the research has already been done.

Most hate crimes have nothing to do with religion, she said. And, of the 30 per cent that do, most target Jews, she said, citing an unnamed study suggesting three per cent of religious hate crimes in Canada are aimed at Muslims.

(A recent Statistics Canada report focussing on 2016 has the Muslim portion of religious hate crimes higher. Although it’s not clear what study Tapley is referring to from roughly five years ago, she may have been referring to a 2012 StatsCan report showing three per cent of all police-reported hate crimes targeted Muslims.)

To put another nail into the Status of Women’s claim that Muslim women are “far more likely to be victims of hate crime” in Canada, the Immigration Department official clarified that most victims of violent hate crimes, 72 per cent, are men.

Vancouver immigration lawyer Richard Kurland, author of the Lexbase newsletter, obtained the internal document. “It is rather candid, quite revealing and high level,” Kurland said, noting it was created for a meeting of deputy ministers.