The Minister of Public Security, François Bonnardel, is a good soldier. As part of his efforts to regulate random arrests by police forces, he was faithfully inspired by the moods of the Prime Minister, François Legault, as he expressed them the day after the devastating judgment of the Superior Court ordering an end to this abusive practice.
On October 26, Judge Michel Yergeau invalidated the provisions of the Highway Safety Code and the Criminal Code allowing police officers to make traffic stops without reasons. The judge concluded that this discriminatory practice led to racial profiling. No offense to identity conservatives, this well-documented concept “is not just a fantasy,” said Judge Yergeau. It’s “a sneaky form of racism […] which weighs heavily on black communities.
The addition of media testimonies and civil lawsuits in the courts should convince sane minds that recognition of the problem is not the result of multicultural brainwashing, any more than a trial in rule of the Quebec nation. If so many people from racialized minorities, with no connection to each other, have been complaining for decades about suffering the same injustices through the eyes of so many police officers over so many decades, it is proof that they invent nothing. Some police officers, but not all of them, still commit racial profiling offenses during arrests, with all the consequences that this entails on respect for fundamental rights and the bond of trust with regard to the police organization.
It’s not the result of a conspiracy woke whether the Commission des droits de la personne et de la jeunesse du Québec (CDPDJQ), the City of Montreal and even the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM) have all recognized the existence of racial profiling and its deleterious consequences. The problem, as Judge Yergeau pointed out in a meticulous decision, is that the calls of the foot, the action plans, the continuous training and the panoply of measures deployed by the police forces have been insufficient to tame the beast of the racial profiling.
Enter Prime Minister Legault. As soon as the judgment is rendered, he makes a profession of faith with regard to the police. “I have complete confidence in the police and it is important to support them,” he said. A declared supporter of random arrests, the Prime Minister demanded that the police be left to “do their job”. Precisely, discriminatory and unjustified arrest is not part of the arsenal of good police practices.
In this sense, the Prime Minister and his Minister of Public Security lack perspective to assess the situation. Called upon to choose between support for the constitutional rights of citizens and support for police corporatism, they chose the second option. Since the publication of the Yergeau judgment, police unions and the Association of Quebec Police Directors have complained that they will no longer be able to ensure the safety of the population.
The Legault government should have seen clearly in this alarmist and misleading speech. The judgment (appealed by the DPCP) did not invalidate the power of the police to intercept motorists or to set up roadblocks. They simply need reasonable and probable cause to believe that an offense has been committed before acting, a standard that is not abusive or irresponsible in a free and democratic society.
As recently as 2020, ministers and deputies from the Coalition avenir Québec demanded an end to random arrests, as part of the work of the Anti-Racism Action Group. Bill 14 marks a reversal of position that the government is trivializing. At least Minister Bonnardel recognizes the existence of racial profiling. His colleague in charge of the fight against racism, Christopher Skeete, is indignant at the fact that driving while being black can be enough to be intercepted by the police.
The fact remains that Bill 14 is satisfied with little. It will not prohibit random arrests, quite the contrary. Quebec will instead set “guidelines” to frame them, to prohibit them from being done for discriminatory reasons and to force police forces to carry out rigorous monitoring, which will notably involve the collection of data and their annual dissemination. In other words, the Department of Public Safety is putting the responsibility for addressing racial profiling issues back into the hands of organizations that have been unable to do so for so many years. And he imagines that he will obtain improbable results.
Might as well believe in fairy tales. To citizens driven by more realistic concerns, we advise filming the arrests, it is their right. For people arrested unfairly because of the color of their skin, we recommend finding a good lawyer. There is no hope of results with Bill 14. The government is providing the minimum service, so much so that it risks feeding the unshakable force of the status quo in the fight against racial profiling.