When 82-year-old Marion Schwarz arrived at her Bowmanville property on Tuesday morning to evict a tenant who had been bouncing his cheques since May, a spray-painted swastika greeted her from her front door, she found windows smashed, ceilings torn down and walls ripped open. In one room, next to a Canadian flag, another swastika marked up a demolished wall. It was spray-painted in green, as were a few racial slurs and the words “White Power” in white paint.

The Durham Regional Police Service is treating the incident as mischief, not a hate crime, and have not laid any charges. “A swastika on its own, as per the Criminal Code of Canada, is not a hate crime,” Sergeant Paul McCurbin said. “It doesn’t have the proper components to be considered a hate crime. For example, if I said that I was going to kill a race of people or we should kill a race of people, that would be considered a hate crime.”

(Source: National Post)