(Montreal) Quebec has seen an explosion of tickets related to non-compliance with health measures, but there is no indication that this approach has had a positive effect on the number of cases of COVID-19.
Posted at 2:08 p.m.
This is one of the findings reached by four researchers from the Profiling Observatory, attached to the School of Social Work at the University of Montreal. They analyzed the issuance of statements of offense related to health measures in the province, between September 20, 2020 and October 3, 2021.
Their report, made public on Friday, indicates that 46,563 statements of offense related to non-compliance with health measures were issued during this period, or about 123 per day on average, whether for gatherings, cover fire, the wearing of the mask, the vaccine passport and so on.
They conclude that their report “unequivocally demonstrates that during the period studied, Quebec chose to make the public health crisis a public security crisis, managed 46,563 times by the police”.
A divisive policy
The authors are very strict with the approach of the Legault government. “The preferred approach in Quebec to enforce the health measures introduced to control the transmission of the COVID-19 virus has been to rely on police repression and the use of criminal law. This stems from a political choice and not from an inevitable obligation to “flatten the curve”. »
This approach, they say, is directly linked to the divisions that have emerged during the pandemic. “The punitive approach and the repressive discourse opposing the ‘minority’ of recalcitrant people to the measures of the ‘majority’ of people who respect them have had the effect of stigmatizing part of the population and creating a major division, rather than to strengthen solidarity. »
“In the end, we can read, the discourse around blame rather than mutual aid and compassion can quickly prove to be counterproductive. Not to mention the surveillance climate that has taken hold and has been encouraged by the establishment of reporting and complaint systems.
“Recall that in Quebec, Prime Minister Legault declared at a press conference in December 2020 that he himself had asked the police forces and the Commission des normes, de l’équité, de la santé et de la sécurité du work (CNESST) to issue more statements of offence. Thus, in the province, we punished a lot and quickly. »
Causality or correlation?
The number of reports jumped during the curfew period of winter and spring 2021, going from an average of 206 per week in autumn 2020 to 1093 in January, February and March, then to a peak of 2232 during the months of April and May.
The researchers compared the evolution of the number of cases of COVID-19 during the same period to find that the issuance of findings does not correspond to the evolution of infections. Thus, the number of new cases of COVID-19 peaked during the week of December 28, 2020, while the number of findings was still quite low. However, the number of new cases decreased steadily during the winter and spring of 2021, but the number of findings continued to increase during the same period, especially in connection with the curfew imposed on January 9. .
The authors of the report are careful, however, to draw conclusions on possible links between the two. “We can assume that the justification for issuing tickets is to punish and deter those who do not respect public health rules, in order to reduce contact and possibly the number of cases of COVID-19. Our data does not allow us to measure the effect, or the absence of effects, of the issuance of statements of offense on the number of cases of COVID-19, nor the deterrent effect of the imposition of criminal sanctions. behaviors,” it says.
Montreal in the lead
According to this study, for all offences, the Montreal region is the one where tickets were distributed the most generously, with a rate of 813.3 per 100,000 inhabitants, followed closely by the Laurentians (785.3). . Montreal’s rate is about three times that of the three regions where the repression was the weakest, namely Bas-Saint-Laurent, Gaspésie – Îles-de-la-Madeleine and Nord-du-Québec.
The researchers note that in 2019, so before the pandemic, the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal issued a total of 12,586 tickets (excluding traffic offenses), but that in a year of pandemic , 16,476 statements of offense related to COVID-19 have been issued in metropolitan France.
More specifically, nearly half (48.4%) of all tickets issued in Quebec, or just over 22,500, were issued for non-compliance with the curfew. It is also in Montreal that the curfew was applied most severely, with a rate of 391.3 reports per 100,000 inhabitants, followed by Estrie (302.3), Mauricie (298.9) and Abitibi-Témiscamingue (294.8). In contrast, the regions of Nord-du-Québec (100.7 reports per 100,000 inhabitants), Bas-Saint-Laurent (107.5) and Capitale-Nationale (133.8) bring up the rear.
Gatherings in private residences were the second most important reason for issuing tickets, representing 31.9% or 14,856 tickets. In this case, the three leading positions are occupied by the Laurentians, Montreal and Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean.
Each of the other grounds for issuing a report – in order: gatherings in public places; events ; businesses in violation; licensed establishments; non-compliance with quarantine; have crossed the Quebec-Ontario border; the vaccination passport – represents less than 5% of the reports issued and these total, as a whole, 19.7% of the offenses noted.
Quebec more repressive
The study also cites research by the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) and the Policing the Pandemic Mapping Project (PPMP) which, in an initial research report published in June 2020, concluded that 66% of approximately 10 000 tickets issued in Canada between 1er April and June 15, 2020, i.e. during the first wave of the pandemic, were in Quebec.
In another report comparing data from five Canadian provinces from October 2020 to February 2021, the ACLC and PPMP found that Quebec had a ticketing rate of 0.51 per 1,000 inhabitants, a far cry above the rates of Nova Scotia (0.21), Ontario (0.22), British Columbia (0.28) and just behind Manitoba (0.69).
Statements of offense in Quebec were accompanied by fines ranging from $1,000 to $6,000, a much harsher sentence for vulnerable or low-income people. Although nothing in the research report demonstrates that these were targeted more than the others, the authors argue that “the impact of such a sanction is unquestionably disproportionate for low-income people; such a fine even potentially exposing them to imprisonment for non-payment of fines if they fail to show that they do not have the capacity to pay”.