The Edmonton Police Service posted a 16-second video on July 31 showing comments it wanted people to report.
Blurred screenshots, one after another. "Send them back home!" A comment reading "Canada needs" followed by a redacted word and "DEPORTATION." Something about bad drivers. The word "Whiners." Then "Hang him." A phrase beginning "It's about time for a g," redacted, followed by a dozen exclamation marks. And "take over and if you say anything youre going 2 jail."
The text above it read: "You typed it. Someone lived it. Online hate isn't 'just a comment.' It hurts real people and harms real communities. Hate has no home here."
It reached 171,000 views. Then police took it down, and have not said why.
The buses have been saying it since 2024
The video wasn't the start of this. It was a post promoting a campaign that has been on the road for nearly two years.
"SEE HATE? REPORT HATE" is wrapped across Edmonton Transit buses in white on black, with a red panel, a QR code and the Crime Stoppers line 1-800-222-TIPS. Around the top and bottom edges the same message repeats in Arabic, Somali, Amharic, Chinese, Russian and Spanish. It launched in September 2024, built to reach communities that may not know reporting exists or may not trust police enough to use it. The Crime Stoppers partnership dates from the same year.
Those buses are what people have been photographing and posting over the past few days, and for many of the people sharing them, the multilingual wrap is itself part of the objection: evidence, as critics see it, of how large the campaign is.
The QR code goes to the same portal the deleted video pointed at.
Why critics object
Josh Dehaas, interim litigation director at the Canadian Constitution Foundation, called the post "very disturbing to me as a free speech lawyer." He wrote that nothing referenced came close to illegal speech, that people had no business reporting it, and that police had no business taking reports on it.
Conservative MP and lawyer Roman Baber addressed the service directly. "No @edmontonpolice, you have no jurisdiction to limit online speech unless a criminal law is broken. The criminal offence of 'Hate Speech' is limited to the definition articulated by the Supreme Court almost 40 years ago. Not what others find offensive!"
Baber is describing a narrow standard. Section 319 of the Criminal Code covers inciting hatred against an identifiable group in a public place where it's likely to lead to a breach of the peace, and the wilful promotion of hatred. Section 318 covers advocating genocide. Charges under 319 require the provincial Attorney General's consent. Nobody in Edmonton has been charged over the comments in the video.
Two further objections have circulated widely. One is that logging non-criminal reports inflates hate statistics that are then cited to justify further legislation, with Bill C-9 named most often. The other is comparative: critics point to the UK, where police record non-crime hate incidents against named individuals.
Two categories, one unit
The service's website sets out the distinction it works from.
A hate crime is a criminal offence against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by bias based on race, national or ethnic origin, language, colour, religion, sex, age, mental or physical disability, sexual orientation or gender identity. Assault, threats, vandalism, graffiti, distribution of hate propaganda.
A hate-motivated incident is defined by EPS as a non-criminal action motivated by the same bias. Its listed examples include verbal insults, name-calling, offensive jokes and slurs.
Both are filed through the same portal. Both go to the Hate Crimes Unit.
What the numbers show
EPS's report to the Edmonton Police Commission gives the service's own figures.
Non-criminal hate incidents in Edmonton rose from 128 in 2024 to 227 in 2025, a 78 per cent increase. Recorded hate crimes fell over the same period, from 83 to 60.
The composition changed. Historically most hate-motivated files were property offences, graffiti and vandalism. In 2025 the service recorded a measurable increase in violent hate-motivated crime. The report says there's no single identifiable cause and points to a rise in issue-based demonstrations across political and social topics, bringing groups with opposing views into contact more often.
On the non-criminal side, the report is specific about content: most reports involve verbal slurs, derogatory language, and comments such as "go back to your country."
EPS says collecting them gives investigators a clearer picture of hate-related trends and helps flag risks before they escalate.
What happens to a report after it's filed
The portal is the part of this nobody has examined closely, and it's where the practical questions sit.
EPS's online reporting page accepts hate-motivated incident reports directly, with no requirement that a crime have occurred. The form can be completed on behalf of another person. Submissions generate an automated email with a police file number. Reports go to the Hate Crimes Unit, the same unit that investigates assaults, threats and property offences.
Beyond that, EPS's public materials say little. They don't specify how long a non-criminal report is retained, whether the person whose comment is reported is ever contacted or told a file exists, or whether such a file can surface in a records check.
Those questions are the difference between a statistics-gathering exercise and something with consequences for a named individual. EPS hasn't answered them publicly and did not respond to media inquiries this week.
Where it stands
The video is gone. The buses are still on the road and the portal is still open, accepting both categories.
In early May, Ali Wahed Noor, a 56-year-old Black man, was assaulted while driving home from a Muslim centre northwest of Edmonton with his family. The Edmonton Police Commission has separately directed EPS to examine whether some communities underreport hate crimes more than others and to report back.
Sources:
Edmonton Police Service, post of July 31, 2026, since deleted
Edmonton Police Service, Hate Crime and Hate Incidents: https://www.edmontonpolice.ca/CommunityPolicing/OrganizedCrime/HateBiasCrime
Edmonton Police Service, Report a Hate-Motivated Incident Online: https://www.edmontonpolice.ca/ContactEPS/ReportAHateMotivatedIncidentOnline
Edmonton Police Service, Report Hate campaign launch, September 2024: https://www.edmontonpolice.ca/News/SuccessStories/ReporthateCampaign
Edmonton Police Service report to the Edmonton Police Commission on Hate Crimes and Hate Incidents: https://edmontonpolicecommission.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/5.4.1-EPC-Report-Hate-Crimes-Hate-Incidents.pdf
Criminal Code of Canada, sections 318 and 319
CBC News, "Edmonton saw more hate-fuelled violence in 2025, despite fewer hate crimes": https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/edmonton-more-hate-crime-violence-2025-9.7167450
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