Police officers patrol a city park in Montreal, on April 11, 2021. The Globe and Mail reached out to 12 of the 30 police departments collecting race-based data. Only two shared their data.Graham Hughes/The Canadian Press
Some of Quebec’s police services have finally started to collect racial data on the people they stop for questioning, after years of advocacy and a tribunal order forcing one department to act. But accessing the data is another matter: most of the departments the province says have started collecting this information still claim not to have it, or say they are unable to release it publicly.
Quebec’s human rights commission recommended over a decade ago that police departments “systematically collect and publish data related to the presumed racial identity of individuals during police actions,” to document and fight racial profiling. In a 2020 follow-up report, the commission noted that none had done so. Also in 2020, the province’s human rights tribunal ordered the City of Longueuil to collect and publish racial data starting in 2021, after a Black man was found to have been a victim of racial profiling during a traffic stop.
Quebec Ministry of Public Security spokesperson Louise Quintin said in a Jan. 31 e-mail that 12 of the province’s 30 municipal forces had fully implemented collection of racial data during police stops.
The Globe and Mail sent access-to-information requests to each of those 12 forces on Feb. 19. But only the police departments in Gatineau and Granby shared their data.
They sent information on a total of 122 police stops. Black, Latin and Arab people were overrepresented, compared to their proportions in the local populations.
Two other departments, Quebec City and Longueuil, had not formally responded to the access-to-information requests by Friday, well past the legal deadline.
The other departments (Laval, Bromont, Saint-Eustache, Sherbrooke, Mascouche, MRC Des Collines-de-l’Outaouais, Thérèse-de-Blainville, and Memphrémagog) said either that the data does not exist, or that it is incomplete and can’t be shared, contrary to what the Ministry of Public Security told The Globe.
When asked about the discrepancy between this and her e-mail, Ms. Quintin said her statement was “representative of the responses provided by the police forces” to the ministry at the time.
Quebec’s police forces have had the necessary tools to collect racial data since May, 2022, Ms. Quintin said. But Quebec’s Police Act does not give the provincial government the power to force them to do so. Bill 14, a police reform bill introduced by the government last month, could change that, she said.
The police departments in Memphrémagog and Bromont, which were among those who refused to share the data, both replied to The Globe’s request with the exact same words: “Currently, the data is incomplete, the collection systems are new and the latter are subject to validation. We must ensure the quality of data and systems before releasing results.”
Both said the data would be made available “as soon as the system validation mechanism and the data validation mechanism are completed.”
The two police forces appear to have been using language supplied to them on Feb. 20 by the Quebec Association of Police Directors (the Association des directeurs de police du Québec, or ADPQ, in French), a non-profit organization that represents police leaders.
“In order to co-ordinate the responses in this file, we recommend that you not follow up immediately,” Patrick Lalonde, an adviser at the ADPQ, said in an e-mail to Maxime Dupuis, an analyst at the City of Bromont who is handling The Globe’s access-to-information request. Mr. Dupuis read the e-mail aloud to a Globe reporter on the phone.
The e-mail says Bromont should instead reply with the answer about data validation.
In an interview, ADPQ executive director Didier Deramond, an ex-deputy director for the Montreal police, said his organization did suggest that police services not release the data. He would not comment on the association’s reasons for doing so. On this, he deferred to ADPQ spokesperson Anne Roy.
Ms. Roy said the ADPQ “wants this data to be made public in an appropriate manner” and that it “must always be put into context.” She did not say what context was needed, when the association believes the data should be made public, or which police services the ADPQ consulted with after The Globe’s requests.
Philippe-André Tessier, president of Quebec’s human rights commission, said he knows not all police departments endorse the idea of collecting racial data. But in his view, the information is “a tool that will allow police forces to do their job better, which is to apply the law, but all laws,” including those against racial discrimination.
Fo Niemi, director of the Centre for Research-Action on Race Relations, a Montreal-based anti-discrimination advocacy group, said there seems to be “an institutional resistance” to collecting and publishing racial data.
A 2019 report produced by researchers for the Montreal police found that Black, Arab, and Indigenous people were two to five times more likely than white people to be stopped by police in the city. The force has not published racial data since, despite a recommendation to that effect in the report.
Mr. Niemi said his organization is concerned that a lack of data will make it more difficult to take police to court over racial profiling.
The complainant in the Quebec Human Rights Tribunal case against Longueuil, Joel DeBellefeuille, alleges the city failed to act and is now in contempt of a court order. The city disputes the tribunal’s jurisdiction and has yet to submit a plea. The next tribunal hearing is scheduled for May 9.