News & Events Event Reports

North America Regional Hub: City-Led Hate Prevention in Times of Global Crises — The Brampton Experience   

Publication Date:

09/06/2025

Content Type:

Event Reports

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BramptonCity-Led PreventionGlobal Criseshate preventionNorth America Regional HubPeel RegionWhole-of-Society PreventionYouth Empowerment and Engagement

Summary

On 9 — 10 June 2025, the Strong Cities Network North America Regional Hub hosted a workshop in Brampton (Ontario, Canada) for municipal officials and staff, representatives from civil society organisations and prevention practitioners from across the Peel Region.  

The two-day event was hosted in partnership with the City of Brampton and the Foundation for a Path Forward and with support from Canadian Heritage. Keynotes, presentations and panel sessions explored the key roles that each level of government plays, alongside community-based partners, in operationalising a multi-level, whole-of-society approach to preventing hate, extremism and social polarisation, as well as how to coordinate responses to hate-motivated incidents and intensifying polarisation, fuelled and exacerbated by global crises. The workshop provided an opportunity for senior officials from the City of Brampton and the wider Peel Region to share how they are already playing a role in these efforts and for community-based partners to explore avenues for further engagement and collaboration. Topics discussed include:

• Perspectives on the Threats and Challenges to Social Cohesion Across the Peel Region 
• Perspectives on Whole-of-Society Prevention in Times of Global Crises 
• Understanding the On- and Offline Hate Landscape
• State of Hate and Bias Prevention in Brampton and the Wider Peel Region 

Key Takeaways

1. Robust hate-prevention frameworks at the local level require trusted community partnerships and collaborations to counter hate effectively. As municipalities grapple with increasingly complex threats both online and offline, these partnerships become essential to early intervention and sustained impact. Municipalities can play a major role in prevention by fostering belonging, encouraging collective resilience and supporting residents with tools and frameworks to report hate when they encounter it. 

2. Avenues for knowledge exchange ensure that municipalities have access to the best-fitting practices for their local contexts and that all communities are represented in policymaking. Both inter- and intra-municipality knowledge exchange yield context-aware solutions and shared resilience. Collaboration across local government departments, civil society, law enforcement and community institutions is essential to building strong coalitions and developing inclusive policies that have support from local communities. 

3. Municipalities often experience a gap in who their prevention programmes are designed to reach and who they actually reach. Special attention is needed for both public messaging and dedicated outreach to ensure that hate-prevention initiatives have their desired outcomes. This means tailoring efforts to reach marginalised and underrepresented communities who may be most at risk but least likely to be engaged through traditional channels. 

4. Youth are a core part of the hate prevention landscape, especially when dealing with online harms. Digital hate disproportionately affects youth and marginalised communities. Thus, there is a clear and present need for digital literacy education, particularly for youth, so that they are more aware of how to respond to emerging forms of online hate and radicalisation.

5. Municipality-led efforts to reduce tensions between faith groups are essential as global crises continually put strain on these relationships. Brampton has large and diverse religious communities, making interfaith dialogue and cooperation a crucial part of maintaining social cohesion and preventing hate. Municipal staff placed great emphasis on maintaining relationships with faith leaders and communities outside times of crisis, so that they can reduce tensions as a trusted partner when needed.

Key Themes

1. The Value of Knowledge Exchange

Brampton Regional Councillor Gurpartap Singh Toor opened the event by sharing his experiences with Strong Cities and emphasised the value of knowledge exchanges among municipalities. Councillor Toor said that “workshops such as this one are valuable opportunities to explore the challenges to social cohesion that cities have been experiencing in the face of ongoing global crises through conflict and war”, he said. “By working together, we can develop localised strategies to address all forms of hate, including antisemitism and Islamophobia, whether on- or offline, mitigating real-world harms and providing a platform for continuous sharing and learning”. The importance of sharing ideas was echoed by Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown in his opening remarks.

Mayor Brown stated that he is a “big believer in organisations” like Strong Cities because “there’s no monopoly on a good idea. If something works in Cape Town, it can work in Brampton and vice versa. And I think the more we exchange ideas and best practices, the stronger we’re going to be. This is one of the real assets and advantages of the Strong Cities Network”. Brown also emphasised the value of knowledge exchange at the local level, highlighting the diverse population of Brampton: “We’re the most diverse city in Canada … and when there is conflict in the globe, we feel those tensions. But I also think we’re a great example of how multiculturalism works, how it’s beautiful”. With so many cultures in the locality, engaging all of them and bringing all their needs and ideas to the table is crucial to developing responsive policy. Brampton does this by having its “city hall intertwined in the community” so that trust is continually built over time, for “trust is one of the foundations for prevention”. The mayor added, “I think it’s very important that at all the tables we have that we see the mosaic of our community and our country. You’re not going to solve challenges in silos”.

Strong Cities Executive Director Eric Rosand reiterated the importance of “carving out dedicated spaces for municipalities to discuss shared challenges and share promising practices”, as it often is “the first step to ensuring they are integral partners in a society’s approach to preventing violence, hate and extremism. While these issues often catch the attention of national actors, the role of local actors is just as important”. As Rosand said, “[local officials] have a unique understanding of the local dynamics, and this means that they’re best placed to identify and respond to actions that pose threats to social cohesion. Yet despite this, historically, they’ve been overlooked in national, regional and global conversations about these local challenges”. Rosand further expanded the scope of knowledge exchanges to refer not just to exchanges between cities or communities within a city, but to the wide array of stakeholders within a region. Collaboration between city departments, civil society, law enforcement, the private sector and local institutions, such as universities, parks, cultural centres, hospitals and libraries, is essential to effective prevention and response frameworks. Rosand concluded that “cities are well placed to coordinate multidisciplinary efforts to deal with these complex challenges, which, as the mayor said, cannot be addressed in silos”.

2. Threats and Preparedness in Brampton and across the Peel Region

Speakers provided perspectives on the threats and challenges to social cohesion across the Peel Region. Razmin Said, Senior Manager of Community Safety & WellBeing at the City of Brampton, spoke to the importance of addressing what are often global trends in extremism and polarisation at the local level, for “we see firsthand how polarisation is showing up in our neighbourhoods, schools and public spaces, and we’re often the first to deal with impacts”. The Community Safety & WellBeing Office at the City of Brampton developed a Community Action Plan to focus specifically on prevention and early intervention so that tensions are addressed before they expand into violence. This plan relies on working closely with “residents, faith leaders, community champions and frontline staff to co-create responses that are grounded in local realities and built on trust”. Said shared that the city has learned “that tackling hate and division isn’t just about response, it’s about investing and belonging”. Making this work necessary are the myriad countervailing forces to social cohesion that panellists identified, including rising hate incidents, fear of reporting, microaggressions, online polarisation, online mis- and disinformation, exclusion of marginalised groups and social isolation.

Ken Boyd, Director of Education at CIVIX, a non-profit dedicated to strengthening democracy through civics and citizenship education for school-aged youth, called attention to the increasing difficulty teachers find in discussing political, social and ideological issues in the classroom. Teachers have self-reported avoiding these topics in classrooms out of fear that conversations will get out of control or they will face castigation from parents or administrators. This leaves a critical gap in both civics education and safe spaces for youth to have formative conversations about these topics. CIVIX works to fill this gap by providing “young people with the skills that they need from a young age to be able to address the kinds of problems that they will face…online”. Focusing on educational institutions, Boyd posited, serves as an upstream method of addressing the issues Said identified in Brampton.

Speakers drew attention to the community-wide impacts of leaving threats to social cohesion unaddressed. Hate crimes and incidents, in particular, can erode the fabric of society as they create a climate of fear, where residents are less likely to engage with others and more likely to stay in their silos. Moreover, not all threats to community well-being rise to the level of crime or even incident. Sarah Rogers, Executive Director of Victim Services of Peel Region, spoke to her experiences working with residents who are the victims of lower-profile, day-to-day microaggressions that may go unnoticed, but can fuel hatred, separation and isolation. She sees this reflected in the simmering conflicts among neighbours that fuel community tensions. If left unaddressed, these can eventually boil over into community conflict, including violence. These individual traumatic incidents can compound to create community trauma, Rogers explained. Rogers called attention to the proliferation of traumatic images across media as a key culprit in the bombardment of the community’s nervous systems.

Boyd connected this to the over-exposure to hate that young people experience on social media. He cited the lack of context that youth have for complex issues they are exposed to online, highlighting the need for instructional spaces for them to process what they see online. CIVIX runs a constructive discussion initiative for just this purpose.

Speakers concurred, however, that technology was something to be embraced, not avoided, as “technology is here to stay”, as Rogers phrased it. That is why cities “need to teach our young people about digital citizenship and how to use it responsibly, how to monitor it and how to use it in a positive way. How to speak up when there is online hate”.

3. Whole-of-Society Prevention Tactics

Participants shared promising prevention practices. For Jasbir Dhillon, EDI Manager at the Peel Regional Police (PRP), the challenges around education, awareness and reporting stood out as key areas of focus. She said that the policing space has been evolving to be more proactive in how law enforcement addresses and counters hate in communities. This includes changing the paradigm from one where an incident has to result in a charge for the police to get involved, to one where her department is “more heavily involved in education and awareness”, as they actively build relationships with “community partners to build collaborative solutions that address…the front end”. This includes educating community members on when and what they can report, as well as what supportive resources they have access to. She encouraged more police departments to have what she termed “courageous conversations” about how to be more actively involved in proactive community support.

Shannon Nash, Senior Policy Advisor at Public Safety Canada, continued by comparing that community-centred approach of the Peel Regional Police with the public health informed approach taken by Canada Centre for Community Engagement and Prevention of Violence within Public Safety Canada. She spoke about how preventing radicalisation to violence required actively seeking out collaboration across all demographic groups and communities while examining all parts of society to identify the root causes of violent extremism. This is especially important, she said, in a complex threat landscape where violence is being fuelled by interconnected global crises like the effects of the pandemic, distrust in institutions, inflation, the housing crisis and the epidemic of social isolation. Nash explained, when facing multifarious threats, where challenges to local cohesion can come from any angle, being connected across one’s community is crucial to intercepting threats before they materialise. Public Safety Canada aims to do this with the Community Resilience Fund, which is the only federal fund dedicated to countering radicalisation to violence in Canada. The Fund plays a critical role in both immediate needs and policy priorities, and it has financed 81 projects for $85.4 million CAD since 2016.

Harkirat Singh, Deputy Mayor and City Councillor for the City of Brampton, agreed that maintaining steady funding for these initiatives was important to their success. He highlighted the many departments and initiatives Brampton supports, including the Community Safety and Wellbeing Office, the Equity Office and the Black Empowerment Unit. He also called attention to the need for strong, vocal leadership in support of violence and radicalisation prevention efforts. As an elected official, he said, he views it as his duty to “provide direction, to steer the ship…and not fan the flames”. This can be especially difficult in today’s climate where officials face hate, abuse and threats online for their positions, Singh shared an example of tensions flaring in his district over the location of a proposed new gazebo. Singh was able to step in and mediate the discussion, reducing tempers, but had he not been able to intervene the conflict over the gazebo might have escalated into a larger community wide conflict. Proactive leadership from elected local leaders is critical to help communities maintain social cohesion in the midst of cascading global and national crises.

Audrey Monette, Director of Engagement and Services at the Canadian Centre for Safer Communities (CCFSC), spoke about the CCFSC’s broad focus on community safety and well-being, which encapsulates the varied facets of prevention that Dhillon, Nash and Singh raised. She said that CCFSC’s work is underpinned by local assessments conducted to understand what the specific local challenges, pressure points and areas of concern are in a given community. Monette reported seeing some consistent issues, such as social challenges, issues in downtown cores, mental health and substance abuse, but she also identified emerging trends as the threat landscape evolves, such as an increased social polarisation and radicalisation. While the downstream effects of these challenges can be quite disparate, Monette observed that “the more upstream we go, the more similar the risk and protective factors are”. This explains how even if some of CCFSC’s work appears broad, like a focus on youth recreation, it can have specific and tangible downstream impacts, like combating the male loneliness epidemic. Monette also emphasised the value of ensuring practitioners have the proper skills to operate in this space, sharing how her team’s training in transformative mediation helps them navigate the tensions that arise when discussing community safety at the local level.

Discussions highlighted the importance that partnerships play in addressing these issues. Singh shared how the local impacts of global crises across Brampton — a multinational city — have prompted deeper collaboration with law enforcement agencies. These partnerships have become critical not only for addressing threats but also for understanding how global events reverberate at the community level. Dhillon concurred that without partnerships, police cannot deliver community safety. Integral to her work are the strong relationships between the Peel Regional Police and all levels of government. They are actively working to build trust and partnerships within communities by working alongside trusted local institutions, expanding the scope of their work to include facilitating and mediating conversations and working proactively with groups to mitigate tensions through the use of police liaisons.

Nash explained how one of the biggest roadblocks for partnership is groups and individuals who only see themselves as part of prevention or part of law enforcement and do not understand how they go hand in hand. Education efforts and intentionally broad convenings can help overcome this challenge and bring more partners into the fold. This is in part why Public Safety Canada’s Community Resilience Fund is exploring a new partnership grant model that invites collaboration by bringing together 10 to 12 organisations to work together on a single grant.

In the context of community partnerships, Singh mentioned that the solutions developed in convenings of prevention and community well-being practitioners are often not necessarily the solutions desired by community members. He cited the recent car theft epidemic in his ward that has sparked fear and violence among residents. As a result, his constituents feel there needs to be a ‘tough-on-crime’ response as investing in prevention efforts does not feel like it will make an immediate impact. This experience illuminates the challenge of being an elected official, where he has to hear all sides and come up with programmatic solutions that both make residents feel heard and deliver substantive change.

Participants discussed what assistance or other support is needed to enhance local hate prevention efforts, from improved data practices to data collection to data processing and to data sharing. Monette explained that data on community well-being is often fragmented, inconsistent or not easily usable by the people who need it most. Having a streamlined way to access and apply this data would significantly enhance the impact of community well-being work. Dhillon added that the ability to compare datasets, identify gaps and uncover shared challenges across sectors would not only support policing but also improve coordination with community partners. Singh said that getting more elected officials and community leaders to talk about these issues is needed, so that there is greater awareness of and support for this type of work.

4. Why Now is the Time to Focus on Hate-Prevention

Silvia Gualtieri, Member of Provincial Parliament and Parliamentary Assistant to the Solicitor General, said the mission of Strong Cities is “more important than ever”. In her time in office, she has seen a rise in hate felt across communities in Ontario, mirroring a rise across Canada and across the world. Gualtieri asserted that the hateful marches in cities targeting the Jewish community must not be “the new normal” in Canada. To this end, she praised the work the City of Brampton is undertaking to counter hate and violence and expressed hope that the recent Safer and Vital Communities grant from the Ontario provincial government would further strengthen local capacity.

Regional Councillor Rowena Santos described Brampton as a young, diverse and rapidly evolving city and noted that it is the third-largest city in Ontario. Despite this scale and growth, Brampton continues to face structural inequities, such as being served by only one hospital emergency room. She pushed back on the negative media narratives that can surround Brampton, which focus on crime and high insurance rates, and instead called attention to the city’s national leadership in inclusivity, innovation and cultural representation. With over 250 cultures represented in the city, diversity is deeply embedded in the city’s identity, making equity work more intuitive and grassroots in nature. Santos identified gender-based violence and intimate partner-based violence as key issues of concern in the region, especially with the proliferation of online hate.

Santos shared how she has faced these threats personally as a woman in political leadership, underscoring the toxic climate of online hate that many women in public office face. In 2024, she was the target of a violent hate letter and malicious social media posts spreading lies and misogynistic attacks. Many elected women, she noted, are choosing not to seek re-election due to this pervasive abuse. In response to this threat landscape, the City of Brampton and the Peel Region have continued to invest in programmes and institutions to support women facing this violence. The Community Safety and Well-being team and Brampton’s Equity Office have been instrumental in shaping an inclusive policy environment, with dedicated officers focusing on anti-Black racism, anti-Islamophobia, Indigenous rights and gender equity. Initiatives like the annual Break the Silence campaign on family and intimate partner violence aim to raise public consciousness and promote prevention. The municipality has also taken early action to protect vulnerable communities, including implementing one of the first policies in Canada to prevent violent protests outside places of worship and hosting a Red Dress art installation to honour missing and murdered Indigenous women.

5. The Online Harms Landscape and its Impact on Youth

Tariq Tyab, co-founder of the Foundation for a Path Forward, called the digital sphere “a battleground for hearts, minds and public order”, and cautioned that online threats are not merely abstract, but sow division and impact the material well-being of citizens. Tyab highlighted different aspects of the online harm landscape. For example, he noted how seniors are disproportionately targeted and vulnerable, how young Canadians may encounter more online hate and violence than the national average and how gender dynamics fuel cyber-aggression. In terms of prevention and response to these challenges, Tyab emphasised that “no entity can tackle these complex challenges alone” and that there needs to be shared ownership of both the problem and the solution.

Caroline Wade, Digital Threat Analyst at ISD, presented on ISD’s research into the digital hate landscape in and around Brampton and Canada more broadly. This revealed how offenders do not fit into the ideological boxes of the past, in part due to the amorphous nature of threats where online narratives are constructed between domestic and foreign influencers. Wade detailed the loose online communities and actors that radicalise people every day, which stand in contrast to the more well-defined terrorist and extremist groups that exist offline. When online radicalisation results in offline tragedy, Wade made clear that “lone actors never act alone”, as they are frequently mobilised to violence by a community or receive support to carry out their attacks. Not all of the impacts of digital hate, however, are as visible or high-profile as a lone wolf attack. Digital hate also results in verbal and written harassment, hate crimes, swatting, doxxing and propaganda, most frequently targeting migrants, women, members of the LGBTQ+ community, other marginalised groups, and public officials and elected leaders.

Especially relevant to Brampton’s young population, Wade paid special attention to the rise of nihilistic extremism in online communities glorifying mass violence for young audiences. This content, which is created specifically for, and in some cases by, minors, serves as an entry point into other radical online communities.

Building on Wade’s analysis, a diverse group of experts and practitioners working on the frontlines of hate prevention and community safety, including municipal leadership, academic research, grassroots engagement and law enforcement across the Peel Region identified a wide range of online trends and threats. These include groups that specifically target vulnerable youth, the growing anti-statism, anti-authority movement, gaming platforms like Roblox being used as recruitment arenas and the use of online spaces to disseminate hateful narratives to build community among white nationalists.

Barbara Perry, Professor and Director of the Centre on Hate, Bias and Extremism at Ontario Tech University, drew special attention to politicians and public figures at the local level fanning the flames of online hate. These actors, she said, can have large impacts even without the mass attention that national public figures garner. Perry also drew a connection between policies that target the rights of minority groups and the legitimacy people feel online to target these groups with hate and harassment. Abokar Mohammed, Manager of Client and Community Engagement at ETA Ontario, warned that online radicalisation was especially pernicious due to the narrative overlap that many extremist ideologies exhibit, so vulnerable individuals may be drawn in without fully realising the nature or trajectory of the content they are engaging with since it is coming from many different sources and angles.

Echoing other speakers, Yusuf Siraj, F4PF Co-Founder, said that the digital space was especially dangerous for youth, appointing to the “disconnect between where children are online and where parents and teachers are”. This leads to unsupervised channels of communication that predators can infiltrate.

Mohammed urged that one of the single biggest steps parents can take is to know what their kids are doing online and who they are talking to. He added that these online spaces are often providing youth with “some need that is not being met”, like belonging, community, or validation, so once parents are aware of what their kids are engaging in online, they can seek to fill those needs in other ways. Feras Ismail, Superintendent at Peel Regional Police Ismail, concurred that much of online harm prevention for youth starts in the home. He stressed that parents need to be willing to have “uncomfortable” conversations with their kids about online dangers since schools are not frequently having those conversations. Siraj offered that pre-emptive education can be effective by showing kids how to respond to certain behaviour online when they see it. Mohammed laid out the stakes in stark terms: “Someone is in your house and you’re not aware of them. You don’t see them”.

When asked about who should play a role in combating online harms, Perry responded that it is incumbent upon all individuals to play a role where they can. Nevertheless, she recognised that virtually no marginalised communities are safe from hate online, and the more visible they are or the more they assert their rights, the more likely they are to be targeted. Mohammed also underscored that what language we all use online matters. Everyone, he advised, should be conscious of not only what they say online, but how they say it. Furthermore, anyone who is active in online spaces should be correcting and stopping hateful language when they see it. Perry added that cities can support individual action by providing frameworks for and models of what positive online interaction looks like and how to correct out-of-line behaviour. Siraj highlighted that one of the most impactful things individuals can do to protect themselves online is to be aware that they are being targeted and that there is often a sinister motive behind emotionally triggering content. If people are aware that they are being manipulated, they are much less likely to fall prey to that manipulation. Ismail emphasised that emotional manipulation was an essential tool for both online predators and for those seeking to sow divisions in a community.

Participants pointed to how online hate is fuelling or exacerbating community tensions and highlighted for more to be done to address this worrisome trend. Ismail suggested that collective resilience was necessary to insulate communities from the divisive and destabilising impact of online threats. Siraj offered that community building and fostering a sense of belonging were some of the most effective ways to build this collective resilience. Municipalities, he argued, were well-situated to take on this work through the building of a collective city identity.

6. The State of Prevention Work in Brampton and Wider Peel Region

Nishan Duraiappah, Chief of Police of the Peel Regional Police (PRP) said that the intertwined nature of community risk in a region like Peel requires policing to not operate in a silo. Duraiappah argued that police need to be just as involved in risk mitigation, prevention and social development as they are in response. He added that the Peel Regional Police were guided by an aspirational statement to be the “most progressive, inclusive and innovative police agency” in the country. To this end, they employ a non-traditional policing model where the average officer only spends 20% of their time focused on crime with the rest devoted to assisting vulnerable persons and being a first point of contact and resource for the community. Having an inclusive agency, Duraiappah believes, also means investing in personnel so that the staff reflects the diversity of the community. If it does not, Duraiappah warns, the agency suffers in its interactions with the public.

Feras Ismail provided an overview of some of the key findings from his agency’s most recent hate-motivated crimes report, with data showing that reported hate-motivated crimes nearly doubled in 2024 compared to 2023 numbers. Race/nationality, he said, is the most common motivating factor for hate-motivated crimes, followed by religion and sexuality. Within those categories, he said the Black community experiences the highest rate of hate incidents, followed by the South Asian community, while Jewish residents remain the most frequently targeted religious group. Ismail cautioned, however, that the data only reveals “the tip of the iceberg” as hate-motivated crimes are one of the “most under-reported crimes across the world”. He urged more work to be done to make people feel more comfortable reporting not just hate-motivated crimes but hate-motivated incidents as well. There can at times be a perception that reporting incidents takes time away from police officers or that people worry about repercussions from reporting something to law enforcement. Ismail stressed, however, that reporting incidents is critical and that agencies must actively create conditions where community members feel safe, supported and empowered to report what they see and experience before it escalates into a violent or serious incident.

Duraiappah explained how the Peel Regional Police strive to create this supportive reporting environment through their reassurance protocol, where the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Bureau follows up within 48 hours and checks in on the well-being of anyone who calls in and is the victim of a hate crime or incident. If needed, they connect the victim or affected parties with social services and other supports. Duraiappah added that having relationships with places of worship, schools and other locations where hate-motivated incidents are more likely to occur is fundamental to building the trust needed for communities to feel comfortable reporting hate crimes. Internally at the agency, they prioritise hate-motivated crime reports for immediate dispatch, again to reassure the community that this issue is taken seriously

One of the largest investments the Peel Regional Police have made in community-based prevention is the multistakeholder Countering Hate Committee, which, with funding from Public Safety Canada and the Ontario Government, delivers to community members both education on hate-motivated crimes and provides tangible solutions to combat hate and discrimination. The training program was developed by community members and is intended to penetrate into and be shared within neighbourhoods and among communities that the police have historically not been invited into. To date, it has trained over 5,000 people to engage in conversations, raise awareness, increase reporting and provide education on digital literacy and the digital world. As Ismail cautioned, this work must not be stalled by the mindset that “we aren’t invited, so we are not going to share this”. So efforts like this one, and a community ambassadors’ program that encourages community members to share information in their WhatsApp groups, are central to the Peel Regional Police’s desire to extend their reach to all communities in the Peel Region and ensure that critical information flows through the channels people actually use.

Looking at the state of hate and bias prevention in Brampton and the Peel Region more broadly, Urz Heer, Co-Chai of the Interfaith Council of Peel, spoke to the difficulties in having honest conversations about the impacts of hate and bias without first having trust. This is why the Interfaith Council holds monthly meetings both in-person and online to build trust, with a particular focus on communities currently experiencing, or likely to experience, tensions. In the Peel Region, the Hindu and Sikh communities can clash as global events thrust tensions into the spotlight. Heer emphasised that consistent connections within these communities are necessary to mediate conflicts, so the city or other actors are not merely arriving once the conflict has already begun.

Heer also spoke to how challenging the aftermath of October 7th was in Peel, as it was in many regions, and that the Interfaith Council has put a tremendous amount of work into repairing relationships that were ruptured following October 7. That is in part why the Community Safety and Wellbeing Office brought countering hate presentations directly to the faith communities, so people could see the statistics for themselves and be encouraged to help create a culture of reporting.

Gerald Adad, Manager of Youth Services and Countering Hate for Safe City Mississauga, and a member of the Countering Hate Committee provides these trainings to each department and service provider that interacts with Mississauga residents, so that they are prepared to receive a report from someone in the community who may trust them more than a law enforcement officer. Adad added how the committee’s focus on youth outreach – and seeking to reconnect young people with the institutions that serve them – was especially important as youth display high levels of distrust in institutions and often feel neglected by how they are served.

Amanda Agnihotri, Supervisor of Community Safety and Well-Being at the City of Brampton, spoke about how the city was working in other ways to build connections, like the work her office performs directly in neighbourhoods to bring residents together. One example of this work is the Affiliated Neighbourhood Association programme, which provides grants of up to $2,000 CAD to put on an event for their community. In 2024, the programme funded 52 projects across 38 neighbourhoods, engaging more than 6.000 residents, and 97% of participants felt an increased sense of belonging after participation.

Muhsin Kermalli from the Equity Office in the City of Brampton highlighted how important directing resources towards hate prevention work in cities is, as programmes like the Affiliated Neighbourhood Association, require a robust budget to operate. Kermalli pointed out how this applies to staff as well, as hiring, and then investing in, the right people to tackle hate can be critical to the success of a prevention initiative. Agnihotri added that teaching residents how to navigate city services is also critical to the take up an initiative as there can often be a gap between what services residents need and what services residents are familiar with. The Community Safety and Wellbeing Office, for example, prioritises meeting people where they are to make things more accessible, and, for instance, provides communications in 11 languages. Kermalli agreed and explained that approach is why the local government has dedicated staff to go in and foster relationships with residents in addition to departments leading their own outreach.

Discussions also highlighted the increasing urgency of digital literacy as a cornerstone of hate prevention efforts. Agnihotri spotlighted the City of Brampton’s partnership with the Rogers Cybersecure Catalyst at Toronto Metropolitan University, which operates wide-ranging public education programmes to enhance cybersecurity awareness and provide residents and businesses with the tools they need to protect themselves against online threats. Kermalli added that the Brampton Entrepreneur Centre provides small businesses with free access to workspaces where they offer tailored programming that includes workshops on digital literacy. He emphasised the importance of supporting local NGOs and leveraging existing city infrastructure to expand this work, referencing the Advance Brampton Fund as one vehicle for investing in digital literacy. In the city’s continued efforts to make resources accessible, Adad said that Safe City Mississauga wants to encourage young people to “take control” of their social media and be active participants in shaping safer, more positive digital spaces. To this end, his organisation co-designed exercises with youth to adapt resources to fit the challenges they face on social media.

Participants also emphasised the value of proactive relationship-building as a way to head off tensions before they escalate into crises. This includes making communities feel seen by the city through events like heritage months and flag raisings for instance. Kermalli added that celebratory events should be designed to bring people together across communities, not to silo them, in order to foster cultural understanding. He also mentioned that it is often behind closed doors, through quiet, consistent engagement with communities, that the city is able to de-escalate issues and maintain trust. Discussions further pointed to the importance of education initiatives to promote understanding of all the threats and challenges to social cohesion. Participants said that city-led education programmes need to be informed by what residents want and need. Local governments need to seek and take in feedback and use it to inform policies, responses, and outreach initiatives. Kermalli closed by saying that “forcing education is tough”, so the city needs to meet “people in different areas where they can just come and feel that sense of belonging”.

Next Steps

Strong Cities continues to expand its work in Canada, launching Prevention Academy Canada in July of 2025, and a second Prevention Academy for British Columbia Municipalities on Countering Online Harms set to launch in September 2025. The year will conclude with Strong Cities Sixth Global Summit in Toronto this December. To stay up to date on upcoming webinars, events and project launches sign up for Strong Cities Network’s mailing list.

Additional Resources

• A Guide for Mayors: Preventing and Responding to Hate, Extremism & Polarisations, Strong Cities Network (updated March 2025)
• A Guide for Cities: Preventing Hate, Extremism & Polarisation (see Navigating Difficult Issues), Strong Cities Network (updated March 2025)
• A Ten-Step Roadmap for Enhancing City-Led Support for Community-Based Programmes to Address Hate and Extremism, Strong Cities Network (February 2025)
• Community Resilience Study: Kumanovo, North Macedonia, Strong Cities Network (updated February 2025)
• A Guide for City-Led Response, Strong Cities Network (updated February 2025)
• Bridging Differences Playbook, Greater Good Science Center & Bridging Differences (February 2025)
• Countering Hate Speech in Times of Crisis: Considerations for Mayors and Local Governments, Strong Cities Network (December 2024)
• European Citizens’ Panel on Tackling Hatred in Society: Final Report, European Commission (October 2024) 
• A Practical Guide to Youth Capacity Building for Countering Hate and Extremism, Strong Cities Network (updated September 2024)

Partners and Donors

We are grateful for our partners at the Foundation for a Path Forward and Canadian Heritage for partnering with us for this event.

Contact Information

For more information on this event or Strong Cities North America programming, please contact the North America Regional Hub at [email protected].

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