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January 23, 2004
B.C. premier promises action
Officials pledge to restore funding and staffing to the Hate Crime
Team.
PAT JOHNSON SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH BULLETIN
Minority rights organizations, including representatives of the
Jewish community, are optimistic that the beleaguered Hate Crime
Team is about to have its funding and staffing restored after several
years of bare-bones operations.
B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell and Solicitor General Rich Coleman
met with representatives of ethnic communities and the gay community
Jan. 13 to discuss the state of the Hate Crime Team, a co-ordinated
body that investigates and keeps statistics on hate- and bias-motivated
crimes in the province. The meeting involved representatives of
Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC), the Khalsa Diwan Society, the United
Chinese Community Enrichment Services Society and the B.C. Human
Rights Coalition, as well as members of the Centre, which serves
the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities.
According to participants in the meeting, the solicitor general,
who is responsible for policing in the province, and the premier
pledged to restore the team's effectiveness.
The groups have all been active in pressing for continued and improved
actions against hate and bias crimes, with some recent violent incidents
close to mind, including the murder of a gay man in Vancouver, the
murder of a Sikh temple custodian in Surrey and growing concern
over anti-Semitic incidents around the world.
CJC has been calling for a revived Hate Crime Team since provincial
funding reduced its staffing, shortly after the last provincial
election. A Vancouver police officer was previously seconded to
the team, but that position has been left unfilled as the funding
was discontinued. In addition to the single RCMP officer on staff,
backers of the team say it requires support staff for community
liaison, police training and data analysis. All of these positions
have been unfilled since budget restraints were initiated amid comprehensive
cost-saving efforts undertaken by the provincial government.
"One of the first things this government did in its economy
drive was shred the Hate Crime Team," said Nisson Goldman,
who participated in the meeting as chair of CJC, Pacific Region.
At a minimal cost to the budget, Goldman said, the Hate Crime Team
holds an important symbolic and practical value. "To my way
of thinking, it would be a no-brainer to restore it," he said.
The British Columbia Hate Crime Team is a model for similar co-ordinated
efforts across Canada and elsewhere. At full capacity, the Hate
Crime Team once had representatives of the Vancouver police department,
the RCMP, a part-time prosecutor, an office support worker and a
statistician. The team was recognized by the International Association
of Chiefs of Police with a civil rights award in law enforcement.
Goldman would not say that the long-awaited meeting was an effort
at fence-mending by the provincial government, which faces an election
in slightly more than a year, but acknowledged that CJC had been
requesting a meeting with the solicitor general for several years
and had been previously rebuffed. With representation from the Jewish,
Sikh, Chinese, gay and other communities, Goldman said, a significant
bloc of minority populations was at the table.
"The people in the room represented a large number of citizens
of British Columbia," he said. "One would hope that [the
government] would be responsive."
A provincial budget is expected this spring and the pledge to restore
funding to the Hate Crime Team may be realized during that process,
Goldman speculated.
The meeting was notable not only for its content but for its timing.
The premier, who returned from his annual Hawaiian vacation just
days before the meeting, is struggling to keep his government moving
ahead with the business of the day as rumors swirl over the contents
of search warrants that allowed police to raid legislative offices
in the last week of December.
The meeting is also coincidental to an investigation currently under
way by the Hate Crime Team into whether a recent article in a Muslim
community newspaper constitutes incitement to hatred in contravention
of Canadian law. The Miracle, a Delta-based weekly, in December
reprinted an article by Idaho white supremacist Edgar J. Steele,
accusing Jews of innumerable acts from inciting two world wars and
destroying the World Trade Centre to controlling the world economy
and filling e-mail inboxes with spam.
Pat Johnson is a native Vancouverite, a journalist and
commentator.
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