MONTREAL -- Canadian police could soon be required to record the racial backgrounds of people they interact with, and Montreal advocates say it’s long overdue.
The Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police (NACP) and Statistics Canada released a joint statement on Wednesday declaring they’re working on new rules for police officers. While the rules are still in their infancy stages, a national standard could mandate officers across the country to record racial data in the same way.
"It may deter some people from engaging in racial profiling," said Alain Babineau, a former police officer and advisor to the Center for Research-Action on Race Relations (CRARR).
He said more demographic data would bring clarity to racial inequality under the law. "[Officers] will be thinking twice about their hunch, or 'Spidey-sense,'" he said. "If a police officer doesn’t have something to hide, then they shouldn’t worry about ticking another box."
The SPVM said it welcomes the announcement from Ottawa, and it "[intends] to collaborate with it as part of its consultation process on data collection."
Montreal police only record demographic data during street checks and arrests, meaning racial information is left out in all other areas of police work.
Montreal advocacy groups have been calling for standardized collection for years. Several groups came together in February to make a formal request to the SPVM to record race, after a damning report found Black and Indigenous Montrealers were over four times more likely to be stopped by police than their white counterparts. Indigenous women are 11 per cent more likely to be involved in a street check.
One of the authors of that report, Victor Armony from the Université du Québec à Montréal, said a national framework would be a positive step towards transparency. "There are blind spots," he said. "Right now, we have a very limited, fragmented portrait."
He said one of those 'blind spots' is a traffic stop. Demographic data isn’t recorded on a parking ticket, which serves at the record of infraction for both the driver and the officer. Even if the driver is arrested, most traffic laws come from the province, which doesn’t require the officer to identify the suspect’s background.
"So, for the so-called 'driving while Black' issue… we don’t have data for that," he said.
Armony said a national framework could help officers record ethnic information while working between systems.
He said 95 per cent of street check records in recent years included an ethnic description of a person, meaning officers are comfortable with the process. Now that needs to be expanded to other areas of policing, he said.
Just how it will be expanded is still unclear.
"We know what we want to do," said Stuart Betts, co-chair of the Police Information and Statistics Committee for the NACP. "The question now is how."
Betts said development of the framework is still in the consultation phase. He said a proposal could be ready as soon as August, and for the final regulations to be mandatory for all police.
"It’s our goal to have this rolled out as soon as possible," he said.
