TORONTO – Racist attacks targeting Toronto Muslims, Jews and Blacks have rung alarm bells across Canada, seeing unprecedented number of hate-motivated crimes in the tolerant city.

“Our concern is always quite high. Whenever there is, for instance, a terrorist attack done in the name of Islam, we will notice a spike in what’s being reported,” Amira Elghawaby, a spokesperson for the National Council of Canadian Muslims, told The Toronto Star on Monday, August 21.

“I don’t want to say that it’s the new normal, but it pretty much is the new normal.”

Elghawaby was concerned that hate crimes across the country were showing no sign of slowing down.

In one part of Greater Toronto Area, three Markham schools were plastered with anti-Semitic and anti-Black graffiti.

In another, a Muslim woman’s car window was smashed, with “derogatory” comments spray-painted on her property.

Her concern was echoed by Aidan Fishman, the interim national director of B’nai Brith Canada’s League for Human Rights.

“We continue to see a trend of a high level of anti-Semitic incidents in Canada going back to 2012,” said Fishman.

Numbers shared by rights groups show an uptick in the rate of hate crimes over the last eight to 10 months.

Elghawaby’s organization keeps a running tally of anti-Muslim incidents across Canada. There have already been 57 in 2017, compared to 64 at the end of last year and 59 in 2015.

“We’re likely going to outpace last year in terms of what’s being reported to NCCM,” she said. “It only represents a very small sliver of what’s going on as two-thirds of hate crimes are not reported, according to Statistics Canada.”

“It’s in the air, the apparent freedom now to express your sentiments, whether it’s verbally or whether it’s the form of this sort of graffiti and property damage,” said Barbara Perry, a professor in the Faculty of Social Science and Humanities at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology.

She said some incidents are a direct result of one’s ideology, while others are perpetrated by “thrill-seeking” teenagers. A third motivator is often the notion of “defending neighborhoods.”

“We refer to it as a ‘message crime,’” Perry said.

“It is meant to send that same narrative to all members of the community, not just the individual who is targeted, to say that ‘you people need to move out of our community, you’re not valued.’”

Perry partially blames US President Donald Trump for making such views becoming more mainstream in Canada.

“Obviously, Trump has been the latest lightning rod for that and has really enabled the rhetoric and the sentiment and the violence to flourish,” she said.

“But he’s not solely to blame. We have our own history here of Islamophobia and anti-Semitism and homophobia across the board.”