Synagogues, mosques, churches and other community groups impacted by acts of hate in B.C. can apply for up to $10,000 in funding from a new provincial fund starting Nov. 28 on a first-come-first-serve basis.
Eligible organizations will be able to use the money to improve security, remove graffiti and repair property damage.
Premier David Eby announced the Anti Hate Community Support Fund Wednesday (Nov. 15) in Vancouver, where Attorney-General Niki Sharma, Public Safety Minister Mike Farnworth and June Francis, chair of the provincial anti-racism data committee, joined him in making the announcement.
The session also included the promise to speed up the roll-out of an anti-racism hotline first promised in the spring of 2021. Plans now call for a launch in the spring of 2024, if not sooner.
The trauma-informed multilingual service offers culturally-safe platform for witnesses or victims of hate to report incidents when they may not feel comfortable contacting the police. Government will use anonymized data from the racist incident helpline and the BC Demographic Survey to inform where and how to deploy additional resources to combat racism.
Eby said funding for the fund and the hotline build on existing measures totalling $2.4 million, with money coming from government-seized proceeds of crime. He added that the fund includes sufficient money for 60 organizations to receive the maximum amount of $10,000.
“In terms of the timing (for the hotline), I agree,” Eby said, when media asked him about the delays. “I would have liked to have seen this much sooner, but we are moving forward with it quickly to ensure that British Columbians have the support given what we are seeing in the community right now.”
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B.C. has seen what Eby called a “deeply troubling rise in acts of hate and racism” including rising anti-Semitism in the form of graffiti on synagogues and threats of physical violence and acts of Islamophobia including an attack against two Muslim women in Vancouver in the wake of the on-going conflict in the Middle East between Israel and Hamas.
“These acts of hate are completely unacceptable,” Eby said, adding that Jewish and Muslim communities are not the only victims of hate in pointing to incidents against British Columbians of Asian descent and 2SLGBTQ+ community members.
Eby said racist-related attacks rose before the current Middle East conflict during the pandemic in the form of anti-Asian racism and his comments suggest that racism-related crimes won’t go away after the end of the current conflict.
“We’ve actually unfortunately seen them increase and now to expand to different community groups,” he said. “So what you are seeing here is that we are increasing our resources and expanding the capacity of the province to be able to respond to meet this on-going growing challenge.”
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But if the province stepped up resources for groups impacted by the current conflict, it also faced questions about resources that are currently available.
While B.C. is the only province with a dedicated unit policing hate crimes, Eby and his ministers faced questioned about its size and effectiveness.
Eby said B.C. has specially trained prosecutors dealing with hate crimes and Sharma pointed out that the provincial prosecution service is actively updating its hate crime policy.
Farnworth also said changes are coming forward in the spring around how police will be dealing with racism cases.
“It’s something that police themselves recognize,” Farnworth said. “We recognize as government that there is considerable amount of work that needs to be done and that work is underway.” He also added that steps are underway to hire more specialized officers.
Francis also defended the hotline against suggestions that it won’t actually help police because it won’t directly connect callers to police.
“Racialized communities are faced with these kinds of choices all the time,” she said. “(To) be quite honest…sometimes, we’re not comfortable with what our experience of law enforcement has been. We are not necessarily feeling safe in the face of what we are facing. Sometimes, we experience it so often, that we ourselves aren’t sure, ‘is this a crime?’”
But racialized communities would nonetheless like opportunities to record their experiences, she added.
“The hope of course, is that depending on what the situation is, it will percolate out, so there is a police response,” she said. “Let me just reinforce. This is not just about people being able to tell you stuff. That is part of it, but the important thing is to hold government and agencies accountable for responding to what they hear.”
@wolfgangdepner
wolfgang.depner@blackpress.ca
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