THUNDER BAY -- The City of Thunder Bay and groups involved in combating racism in the city are set to announce a new initiative.
Details are due to be released on Tuesday about a program that will allow people to report incidents of racism that they have either been victims of or that they may have witnessed.
An advisory about the event includes a graphic with the caption "Listening starts here."
The announcement is scheduled to be made at the Lakehead Social Planning Council offices.
Groups involved in the launch include the LSPC, Diversity Thunder Bay and the Anti-Racism & Respect Advisory Committee.
The project was proposed last year by members of the city's Incident Reporting working Group. At the time, they discussed a staged approach, starting with encouraging community members to phone and report incidents of racism to 211, where trained staff would take calls and record statistics.
The next phase was to include a review of the collected data and possible development of an online reporting form.
Although the project has been under consideration for months, its launch comes on the heels of a recent Statistics Canada report which said Thunder Bay has the highest rate of hate crimes among Canada's census metropolitan areas.
