I think that decision is correct. Hear me out before you downvote.

What do we know? An indigenous woman yelled "I hate white people." and threw a punch at Lydia White.

What one has to understand when looking at criminal court cases is that the criminal law is the strongest and harshest tool a state has against his citizens. So you have to look into all the details before you make a decision. Following Dr. Peterson Doargumentation strategy - to try and make your opponents argument stronger, not weaker - I am going to do exactly that with the informations given in the article. So as a hypothetical judge I ask myself "What speaks against this being a hate crime?".

• Most importantly: "There is no evidence [...] wether she holds or promotes an ideology which would explain why this assault was aimed at this victim."

Yes, Ms. Crowchief said "I hate white people."

Lets take look into Wikipedia: "A hate crime (also known as a bias-motivated crime) is a prejudice-motivated crime [...]." In the subsection about canada: "A court that imposes a sentence shall also take into consideration the following principles:

(a) a sentence should be increased or reduced to account for any relevant aggravating or mitigating circumstances relating to the offence or the offender, and, without limiting the generality of the foregoing,

(i) evidence that the offence was motivated by bias, prejudice or hate based on race, national or ethnic origin, language, colour, religion, sex, age, mental or physical disability, sexual orientation, or any other similar factor, . . . shall be deemed to be aggravating circumstances.''

Now lets take this together. A judge has to be convinced that it was a hate crime. What in my opinion speaks against that is:

• a) since there are no informations wether Ms. Crowchief did something like that in the past I assume that this was the first time she ever committed a crime
• b) She is an alcoholic
• c) From the statement "I hate white poeple" and the following punch alone I am not convinced of this being a hate crime. I see the difference in comparison to other cases, like where a teenager sent a letter to a newspaper that states "`Death to homosexuals’ it’s prescribed in the Bible! Better watch out next Gay Pride Week." (From wikipedia: hate crime, subsection canada)
• d) It seems very impulsive, coming out of nowhere. It's not easy to prove this was a hate crime and not some stupid impulsive shit from a random alcoholic and to convince a judge of that. The consequence is a harder punishment and you don't want that to be taken lightly.
• e) There is no evidence of bias or prejudice. There might be evidence of hate because she said exactly that, but as I have shown above that is by all means not everything. What a judge does is not only to look at what the person said, but to gather more informations. Criminal law IS the sharpest sword the state has and you don't want the state to swing it around lightly.

Finally the title of the article is wrong. The judge did not rule that "I hate white people" and punching one isn't a hate crime. The judge ruled that yelling "I hate white people" and punching one is not a hate crime under these specific circumstances in this specific case given these specific informations he has about the incident. In other circumstances this exact behaviour can be a hate crime, no doubt about that.

So given these infos I would not have ruled this to be a hate crime either. One cannot stop at the sentence "I hate white people.". You cannot extract a racial or biased mindset out of that without any doubt. And when there is no other evidence about this being a bias/prejudice/hate crime, then you should treat lightly with the assumption of aggravating circumstances in a criminal law case.