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Sixth Global Summit: Hate Prevention and Reporting –Training and Awareness-Raising

Publication Date:

22/01/2026

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Event Reports

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Building BridgesHate crime preventionHate crime reportingNational-Local CooperationSixth Global SummitToronto

— 8 minutes reading time

This report provides a summary of discussions during the session and does not necessarily reflect the views of the Strong Cities Network Management Unit, Strong Cities members, event sponsors or participants.

Introduction

On 9 – 11 December 2025, the Strong Cities Network held its Sixth Global Summit in Toronto (Canada), bringing together more than 300 representatives of local governments, national governments, civil society organisations, academia, the private sector and international organisations. This included nearly 60 mayors and governors, as well as 110 other local government officials from 100 cities and 42 countries. Under the theme Stronger Together: Forging Safer, Connected, Thriving Cities in a Changing World, the Summit provided a platform for city leaders to share practical and innovative solutions to prevent and respond to hate, extremism and polarisation, and build safer, more resilient and more inclusive communities.

The Summit agenda included a parallel session on Hate Prevention and Reporting – Training and Awareness-Raising that examined how coordinated training programmes can bridge critical gaps in hate crime recognition, reporting and response. The session featured a practical demonstration of the Canadian Race Relations Foundation’s (CRRF) Building Bridges workshop programme, moderated by Sara Thompson, Professor of Criminology at Toronto Metropolitan University. Representatives from municipalities and community-based organisations across Canada explored capacity gaps in Canada in identifying and responding to hate crimes, the vital role of trauma-informed training for frontline service providers, emerging trends in hate crime victimisation and national frameworks for standardising hate crime response protocols across jurisdictions.

Key Takeaways

1. There is a capacity gap across Canada in recognising hate crimes and holding perpetrators accountable. Training of local law enforcement in how to recognise and follow a case through is important in reducing this gap. The CRRF Building Bridges workshop addresses this need through focused instruction on initial response procedures, operational guidance, key bias indicators and evidence-based practices.
2. One of the biggest areas of need in training is distinguishing hate crimes from hate incidents and other non-criminal acts for frontline service providers. Effective training must focus on patterns, trends and victimised groups; impacts on individuals and communities; intersectionality of hate; community reporting practices; and victims’ rights and needs to ensure appropriate responses that neither minimise genuine hate crimes nor overreach on protected speech.
3. These training programmes have resulted in tangible improvements, including victim reassurance protocols that strengthen police legitimacy and trust from racialised and minority groups, as well as national training standards that ensure coordinated, consistent responses to hate crime reporting across different jurisdictions and agencies.

Key Themes 

1. The Rising Threat of Hate Crimes in Canada

Professor Thompson opened the session by establishing the context driving the need for enhanced training, with hate crimes in Canada rising to 4,882 incidents reported to police services in 2024. Official statistics like these, however, undercount the true scale of the issue as 60-90% of hate crimes are never reported to authorities. This massive gap between actual incidents and official reports underscores both the prevalence of hate crimes and the challenges victims face in coming forward. In addition to the recently reported increase in volume of hate crimes, their quality appears to be shifting as well:

• Hate crimes committed by perpetrators under age 17 and 18–24 are increasing.
• Cyber hate and hate speech are growing problems. Young women, especially indigenous and Muslim women, are at greatest risk of experiencing cyber hate.
• Global events increase hate crimes against Canadians.

Thompson noted that hate crimes differ fundamentally from other offences in both their motivation and their impact. Perpetrators intentionally target victims as symbols of larger groups, seeking to send fear through entire communities. Hate crime assaults tend to be uniquely violent and threaten core national values of tolerance and inclusion. These crimes cause fear that can escalate and prompt retaliation, creating cycles of violence that extend far beyond individual incidents.

2. Building Bridges: A National Training Initiative

Against this backdrop, the CRRF launched its Building Bridges Workshops series in 2024 to help strengthen trust across and within communities, as well as between communities and law enforcement. The programme emerged from recognition that significant capacity gaps exist in the criminal justice and social services sectors regarding hate crime identification and response. Thompson explained that many frontline service workers lack the specialised training needed to recognise hate crimes (especially the differences between a hate crime and a hate incident), understand their unique impacts and respond in ways that support victims while building cases for prosecution.

Police and frontline enforcement officers conduct initial responses to hate crimes, securing scenes, investigating incidents and providing crucial information and access to support services. When these responses incorporate empathy and cultural sensitivity, they can quell anxiety and fear in the wake of a hate incident. To achieve this goal, the Building Bridges programme emphasises victim-centred, trauma-informed and culturally sensitive training for hate crime reporting. Quality training can enhance hate crime response through increased reporting, increased convictions, reduced community fear, deterrent effects, enhanced victim support and improved relationships and trust between communities and police.

A key goal of these trainings is to achieve consistency within municipalities, so that victims receive the same quality of response and support no matter who responds, but also across municipalities so that victims do not receive variance in care based on their geographic region. The workshop curriculum was designed to address distinct needs of different practitioner groups, including key themes such as: understanding patterns, trends and victimised groups; mastering definitions to distinguish hate crimes from non-criminal acts; recognising hate crimes using structured frameworks; comprehending impacts on individuals; understanding intersectionality of hate; learning community reporting practices and options; and understanding victims’ rights and needs alongside best practice recommendations.

Law enforcement-specific training includes these foundational elements but extends further to cover characteristics of those accused of hate crimes, typologies of hate crime and the terrorism/violent extremism nexus, initial response procedures, operational guidance and key bias indicators and evidence-based practices that support both victim recovery and successful prosecutions.

To extend learning beyond the workshop itself, participants receive community toolkits that serve as ongoing reference. The toolkits ensure that participants can continue accessing definitions, frameworks, reporting procedures and support resources as they encounter hate crimes in their daily work. Thompson shared evaluation data demonstrating the programme’s effectiveness, with post-workshop surveys revealing that 93% of police workshop participants reported a deepened understanding of hate crime reporting and 90% of community participants reported satisfaction with the knowledge learned and improved understanding of hate crime dynamics.

3. Implications for National-Local Cooperation

The training initiative operates within a broader national framework; Canada’s National Hate Crimes Task Force, launched in 2022, works to increase scope, awareness and response capacity while identifying gaps and developing resources and tools for frontline police and services. Two outputs from this task force have gained particular traction: victim reassurance protocols and identified national training standards. These outputs ensure coordinated responses and standardise empathetic, culturally competent responses that prioritise victim needs and safety. The Building Bridges law enforcement training was developed in line with these standards and is a method of operationalising these national frameworks through practical, locally delivered training.

National frameworks provide consistency, resources and legitimacy that support local implementation and local delivery ensures training responds to community-specific contexts and needs. The Building Bridges programme exemplifies how national organisations can develop evidence-based training that municipalities and regional police services can adopt and adapt. Thompson emphasised that closing capacity and capability gaps requires sustained investment in training alongside broader systemic reforms. Training alone cannot eliminate hate crimes, but it substantially improves how communities and institutions respond when incidents occur.

Next Steps

Building Bridges exemplifies how evidence-based training can strengthen local responses to hate crimes when national frameworks are translated into practical guidance for frontline service providers. Strong Cities will continue to build on this work by:

• Exploring partnerships with CRRF to enable more municipalities across Canada to benefit from the Building Bridges training programme
• Holding convenings to build partnerships between local government, law enforcement and community organisations to coordinate hate crime response
• Drawing on learnings from the Building Bridges programme to inform Strong Cities’ ongoing training initiatives, including Prevention Academy Canada and other capacity-building programmes across the North America Regional Hub
• Supporting municipalities to establish multi-actor coordination mechanisms that bring together law enforcement, social services and community partners to create consistent hate crime response protocols within and across jurisdictions

For municipalities interested in applying the lessons learned during this session, consider:

• Ensuring frontline staff across all municipal departments receive training on recognising and responding to hate crimes
• Building relationships with racialised and minority communities before incidents occur to establish trust and facilitate reporting
• Standardising hate crime response procedures across different municipal departments and services
• Monitoring local hate crime trends and sharing data with regional and national bodies to support coordinated responses

Additional Resources

Recent Strong Cities policy briefs and resources:

• City Leadership in Partnering with Local Communities for Social Cohesion: Ten Considerations for Mayors and Local Governments, Strong Cities Network, 2025
• National-Local Cooperation: Opportunities and Lessons Learned for Secondary and Tertiary Prevention, Strong Cities Network, 2025
• City Leadership in the Face of Rising Incivility and Polarisation: Ten Considerations for Mayors and Local Governments, Strong Cities Network, 2025
• Innovations in Prevention: Piloting Multi-Actor Frameworks in Small and Mid-Sized Cities in the United States, Strong Cities Network, 2025
• A Toolkit for Cities: Building a Multi-Actor Local Prevention Framework, Strong Cities Network, 2025
• A Toolkit for Manitoba Municipalities: Addressing Anti-Government Hate and Harassment, Strong Cities Network, 2025
• A Guide for Cities: Preventing Hate, Extremism & Polarisation, Strong Cities Network, updated 2025
• A Guide for Mayors: Preventing and Responding to Hate, Extremism & Polarisation, Strong Cities Network, updated 2025
• A Guide for City-Led Response, Strong Cities Network, May 2024
• City Spotlights Library, Strong Cities Network

Further Resources

• North America Regional Hub: Enhancing Local Efforts to Address Technology-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence (TFGBV) and Misogyny as Drivers of Social Polarisation and Violence, Strong Cities Network, December 2025
• North America Regional Hub: Countering Online Harms in British Columbia — The Role of Municipalities in Preventing and Responding to Online Threats to Social Cohesion, Strong Cities Network, September 2025
• ESA Regional Hub: Regional Roundtable on Showcasing and Sustaining City-Led Action to Prevent Hate, Extremism and Polarisation, Strong Cities Network, September 2025
• City Spotlight: Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States, Strong Cities Network

Donors & Partners

The Sixth Global Summit was co-hosted with the City of Toronto and the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, and delivered with generous support from the Government of Canada, The Fourth Freedom Forum, The Toronto Foundation and Charities Aid Foundation.

Contact Information 

For more information about the Sixth Global Summit or the Strong Cities Network, please contact [email protected].

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