Québec solidaire (QS) is urging Premier François Legault not to challenge the recent Superior Court ruling that will prohibit police from randomly stopping motorists.
The party's public security critic, Andrés Fontecilla, called on the premier to "take a historic step" by acting in the "most concrete way to eliminate racial profiling in Quebec."
He asked Legault to put his "energy into the reform of the Highway Safety Code, in the need to render section 636 inoperative," which he said is "one of the main sources of racial profiling," he said Wednesday morning at a press conference in Montreal.
Fontecilla was accompanied by Lesly Blot, a victim of racial profiling and witness in Judge Michel Yergeau's trial, researcher and professor Victor Armony, Fo Niemi, co-founder of the Center for Research-Action on Race Relations (CRARR), as well as the executive director of the Maison d'Haïti, Marjorie Villefranche.
In his landmark decision rendered at the end of October, Superior Court Justice Yergeau completely overturned a jurisprudence established just over 30 years ago by the Supreme Court, the Ladouceur decision, which allowed for police to arbitrarily stop drivers without real cause for road safety reasons. He argued that over time, this arbitrary power granted to police officers "has become, for some, a vehicle, even a safe harbour, for racial profiling against the Black community."
"This is a regulation that has been perverted. It can't stand anymore," Villefranche said Wednesday.
"We must have free and proud Black people behind the wheel, with the freedom to circulate, the freedom of movement without being stopped in an abusive way, without any real reason", said Niemi.
The day after the ruling, Legault defended the work of police officers in Montreal. He said he would take the time to analyze the decision before deciding whether or not to appeal Judge Yergeau's ruling.
Fontecilla viewed the premier's comments as 'hesitation' to fight against racial profiling.
According to the QS MNA, if Legault challenges the decision, he will go against the recommendations of his own government to ban random police stops. The MNA is referring to the report of the Action Group Against Racism, tabled in December 2020.
One of the members of this group is the new minister responsible for anti-racism, Christopher Skeete, who is Black. Fontecilla hopes the minister will use his influence to sway the government in favour of the ruling.
Last week, the Association des directeurs de police du Québec (ADPQ) expressed concern about the impact of the court decision on road safety.
It said that the purpose of section 636 "is to protect road users by ensuring that drivers and vehicles respect the law and established standards."
The ADPQ stated that it is "very aware of the issues of racial profiling and several initiatives have been put in place to address this issue."
"Efforts are currently underway at the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM) to combat racial profiling in its policing practices. But these efforts do not address the real source of the problem, which lies in the application of article 636 of the Highway Safety Code," said Fontecilla.
Armony, who is currently researching the impact of the initiatives of the SPVM and its new policy on traffic stops, said that "the hope is to see the trends change towards a reduction in the risk of racial profiling."
Armony and two other researchers found in a 2019 study that Indigenous and Black people are four to five times more likely to be stopped compared to white people.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on Nov. 2, 2022.
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This article was produced with financial support from Meta and The Canadian Press News Fellowships.
