Quebec police have issued more than 46,500 statements of offense accompanied by hefty fines over a period of just over a year for non-compliance with health rules, shows an exhaustive compilation of the Observatory of profiling.
The four authors of this 60-page report, unveiled Thursday afternoon, thus deplore that Quebec has opted for “police repression” – and therefore a “punitive” approach – to enforce the health rules aimed at limiting the spread of COVID-19 in the province.
“Our report unequivocally demonstrates that during the period studied, Quebec chose to make the public health crisis a public security crisis,” write the university experts. They thus believe that the Legault government preferred to bet on “coercion” and a “warlike logic” in the context of the pandemic, “to the detriment of that aimed at education, promotion and prevention”, on which relied more British Columbia, among others.
The document, produced in partnership with several community organizations, is based on an access to information request made to the Ministère de la Sécurité publique. Analysis of the tables thus obtained reveals that 46,563 reports and statements of offense were issued under the Public Health Act during a period of 54 weeks, between September 21, 2020 and October 3, 2021, for a daily average of 123 fines. The amount of these was generally $1,546, with fees.
However, the number of reports issued did not follow a “flattened” curve, to paraphrase the former national director of public health in Quebec, Horacio Arruda. The number of fines distributed to citizens rather “jumped up” during the first three months of the year 2021 “to oscillate between 1093 and 1951” findings per week, against a weekly average of 206 fines during the previous months, indicates the report. .
Quebec, explains to the Homework Céline Bellot, professor at the School of Social Work at the University of Montreal and director of the Observatoire des profilages, has in other words opted for “a logic of escalation” of health constraints and repression against recalcitrants, between the second and fourth waves of COVID-19 cases. “And there, we really see in particular the discrimination” and the legalization of vulnerable people that this can lead to, she adds.
The curfew at the heart of the sanctions
This explosion of reports issued during the period studied is consistent with the implementation of a curfew for nearly four and a half months, from January 9, 2021. Nearly half (48.4%) of reports of offenses analyzed by the university experts thus concern non-compliance with this ban on being outside one’s residence during certain hours at night. This represents 22,544 fines, or 162 per day during the duration of this curfew.
The effectiveness of this measure from a pandemic management point of view has also been questioned by several epidemiologists. Montreal Public Health had itself published an opinion against the establishment of a curfew, fearing, among other things, its disproportionate effects on people with low incomes or in a situation of homelessness. The latter then proposed alternative solutions to limit the rise in cases of COVID-19, such as better ventilation of closed places and the use of rapid screening tests. A notice that did not prevent the Dr Arruda to still recommend the implementation of a province-wide curfew.
However, “when we choose the punitive approach, it has consequences. And those who pay the price even more are the marginalized and racialized communities, ”insists the professor at the Faculty of Law of the University of Sherbrooke Véronique Fortin, who took part in the drafting of this report.
Montreal targeted
The Quebec metropolis, which has a majority of tenants and a large homeless population, is also the region where the largest number of statements of offense for non-compliance with health rules have been issued, all things considered. The report thus mentions 813.3 fines per 100,000 inhabitants in Montreal, a number well above the provincial average, which is 470 fines per 100,000 inhabitants.
In second place among the health rules that have given rise to the most sanctions, after non-compliance with the curfew, we find the ban on gathering in a private residence, which is at the origin of 31.9% of the findings of offense analyzed in the province. The other statements of offense distributed concerned in particular gatherings in public places and the participation and the fact of having participated in a demonstration without respecting the basic health rules.
The Ministry of Public Security had not commented on this report at the time of this writing.