It’s still not illegal to just be racist, say Brampton police

The authorities have weighed in on a now-notorious anti-Sikh flyer (see to the right) that started circulating in Brampton last month. According to the Star, Peel Regional Police announced on Thursday that no charges will be laid. They investigated, but found that the leaflet, while blatantly racist, just isn’t hateful enough to constitute a crime.

Dan Murray, a spokesperson for Immigration Watch Canada, the group that made the flyers, told the Star he wasn’t expecting to be investigated by police. “The real uproar should be over unnecessary immigration…displacing thousands of Canadians from their jobs,” he said. Immigrants make up roughly half of Brampton’s population, though, and so while being a not-extremely-hateful racist may not be a crime, it’s definitely not a route to popularity.