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Montreal Gazette
a day ago
- Politics
- Montreal Gazette
Letter of the day: Random street checks by police have no place in a free society
The random police street check is a routine practice — in totalitarian states. Random street checks have no place in a free society committed to constitutionally protected human rights. Section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms guarantees everyone in Canada the right to be left alone, to be able to walk, jog and cycle in the streets of Montreal free from police interference unless they have reasonable and probable grounds to believe that you have engaged in or about to engage in criminal activity. Our courts routinely affirm these principles but the Montreal police seem to believe they know better and can engage in wilful blindness of court rulings. Police Chief Fady Dagher justifies his 'law and order' rhetoric by asserting that 'the overwhelming majority of the public wants police to have discretion to stop and question people in suspicious circumstances, even if officers don't have the legal grounds to detain them,' according to The Gazette. No evidence was cited to support his assertion that is in any event irrelevant. Even if there is some 'public' support for random checks, court-mandated human rights cannot be overridden by public opinion. Also not to be overlooked, as noted by the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, is that 'police services collect and retain a wide range of information about the people they come in contact with including records of contact, allegations, withdrawn charges, acquittals and mental health apprehensions, just to name a few.' These records are stored in what is euphemistically called a 'non-conviction database.' They are not criminal convictions — and yet, 'this does not mean, however, that they will never be released by the police in a background check,' the association warns. In my work as a criminal defence lawyer, I have come across reports of people with no criminal convictions applying for security-sensitive jobs and not being hired — and later recalling having been stopped by police and given their identification. Quebec Superior Court has authorized a class-action lawsuit against police forces, including the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal, over random interceptions. Such legal actions remain the only recourse for citizens as long as governments fail to rein in their police forces. But let's not forget: While Mayor Valérie Plante's administration says it's ready to pay compensation to those targeted by the interventions, it's taxpayers who pick up the cost of legal fees to defend against these lawsuits — and of the eventual payouts when damages are awarded. In a city whose infrastructure is crumbling, among other serious problems, it is nothing short of scandalous to be spending taxpayer dollars to finance police stopping innocent people in the streets of Montreal. The solution is simple: Random street checks, which overwhelmingly target racialized persons, are discriminatory and they must stop. Right now. Ralph Mastromonaco, St-Laurent Submitting a letter to the editor Letters should be sent by email to letters@ We prioritize letters that respond to, or are inspired by, articles published by The Gazette. If you are responding to a specific article, let us know which one. Letters should be sent uniquely to us. The shorter they are — ideally, fewer than 200 words — the greater the chance of publication. Timing, clarity, factual accuracy and tone are all important, as is whether the writer has something new to add to the conversation. We reserve the right to edit and condense all letters. Care is taken to preserve the core of the writer's argument. Our policy is not to publish anonymous letters, those with pseudonyms or 'open letters' addressed to third parties. Letters are published with the author's full name and city or neighbourhood/borough of residence. Include a phone number and address to help verify identity; these will not be published. We will not indicate to you whether your letter will be published. If it has not been published within 10 days or so, it is not likely to be.
Global News
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Global News
Just for Laughs founder Gilbert Rozon begins testimony in sex-assault trial
Just for Laughs founder Gilbert Rozon has begun his testimony in his civil trial on allegations of sexual assault. Rozon, 70, testified for nearly an hour at the courthouse in Montreal on Monday afternoon, giving a lengthy recounting of his childhood and the early stages of his career in show business. His testimony is expected to continue over several days in the coming weeks in a Quebec Superior Court civil trial that began in December. Get breaking National news For news impacting Canada and around the world, sign up for breaking news alerts delivered directly to you when they happen. Sign up for breaking National newsletter Sign Up By providing your email address, you have read and agree to Global News' Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy The Quebec impresario is being sued by nine women for a total of nearly $14 million in damages over allegations of sexual assault and misconduct. All of the women suing him have testified about their experiences and faced cross-examination. The case has heard from dozens of witnesses, including from seven other women who have also claimed that Rozon sexually abused them. Story continues below advertisement Rozon has always denied the allegations against him, though he did not address the allegations during his testimony on Monday. The civil lawsuit is the latest in a winding legal battle that began as a class action but was converted into individual suits after a 2020 Quebec Court of Appeal ruling. Also in 2020, a Quebec court judge found Rozon not guilty of rape and indecent assault connected to events alleged to have taken place in 1980 involving Annick Charette, who obtained a court order to make her identity public.
Winnipeg Free Press
3 days ago
- Politics
- Winnipeg Free Press
Quebec to seek leave to appeal school board reform ruling to Supreme Court of Canada
MONTREAL – Quebec will ask the Supreme Court of Canada for permission to appeal lower court rulings that found a provincial law abolishing school boards violates English-language minority education rights. A spokesperson for Quebec's justice minister confirmed this week the province will appeal a ruling from the Quebec Court of Appeal rendered in April. That ruling upheld a Quebec Superior Court decision from August 2023 which found the province's law abolishing school boards violates linguistic minority education rights, guaranteed in Section 23 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The law, known as Bill 40, was adopted in February 2020 and transformed French schools boards, which were governed by elected commissioners, into service centres run by a board of directors overseen by the province. The Court of Appeal said last month that the law 'radically alters the mission of these school service centres compared to school boards.' The law's measures affecting English school boards were stayed pending the outcome of the court challenge. As Quebec is now seeking to appeal again, spokesman Julien Garon says the government has no further comment. This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 31, 2025.
Montreal Gazette
6 days ago
- Montreal Gazette
Hanes: There are at least two major flaws with Montreal police's new street check policy
In decision after recent decision, the courts in Quebec have been crystal clear: The police practice of random interceptions runs the risk of racial profiling and must be halted. This month, Quebec Superior Court authorized a class-action lawsuit against police forces in the province, including Montreal's. It was filed by Papa Ndianko Gueye, who was pulled over in his white Audi in Longueuil in 2021, on behalf of 'any racialized person who has been the victim of racial profiling during a traffic stop without reason to suspect the commission of an offence.' That suit is in its preliminary stages, but last month, the Quebec Court of Appeal refused most of the provincial government's request to extend a six-month grace period for banning random spot checks after two earlier judgments found them discriminatory. For anyone keeping score, both the appeals court and Superior Court sided with Joseph-Christopher Luamba, a Black Montrealer, who sought a legal remedy after being stopped numerous times by various police forces without apparent cause. But after two strikes, Quebec is now hoping for a final kick at defending the tactic before the Supreme Court of Canada. Meanwhile, the City of Montreal is appealing a landmark ruling in which the court held it liable for thousands of cases of racial profiling by its police force. Mayor Valérie Plante's administration says it's ready to pay compensation to those targeted by the interventions. But it's challenging the ruling on technical grounds — including the finding that the city is responsible for the actions of its officers. As these judgments pile up, it's becoming increasingly difficult to justify interceptions that research irrefutably demonstrates zero in on Quebecers of diverse origins. It's also becoming increasingly expensive to pay reparations to victims of a practice that the courts have repeatedly tried to curtail. Yet the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal continues to cling to street checks as an essential law enforcement tool. This week, Montreal police Chief Fady Dagher unveiled a new and improved framework for random interceptions. Those pulled aside will be told why they are being stopped and that they are free to go, so they don't feel intimidated. Dagher said he believes the overwhelming majority of the public wants police to have discretion to stop and question people in suspicious circumstances, even if officers don't have the legal grounds to detain them. But he wants the new protocol to 'build trust, one intervention at a time.' Dagher, to his credit, has spent his career constructing bridges between cops and the community, pioneering a kinder, gentler approach to policing during his time in Longueuil without compromising the combatting of criminality. But trying to introduce a kinder, gentler approach to controversial street checks is doomed to fail. It's all well and good to want to clarify the obligations of officers and the rights of citizens. But there are at least two major flaws. Telling Montrealers they're free to go does little or nothing to prevent people from racialized backgrounds from being profiled in the first place. The SPVM's own data shows Black, Arab, Latino and Indigenous Montrealers are much more likely to be pulled over during these random checks. Those trends persisted or worsened even as the force tracked its interventions, trained its rank and file, and set more rigorous rules for the interceptions. Discretionary checks that begin innocuously enough also have an alarming tendency to escalate dramatically whether or not the person being intercepted dares question the officers or actually does try to leave — as they are supposedly, according to Dagher and the SPVM's framework, free to do. Lamine Sale Nkouendji was pepper-sprayed, dragged from his car and handcuffed in Outremont after two officers did a U-turn and followed him on the dubious suspicion he'd run a yellow light. Alexandre Lamontagne was thrown in jail overnight after two police officers outside the Old Montreal bar he'd just left stopped him and asked if he needed help because he apparently looked in their direction. These are more than isolated incidents. The court decision that held the city accountable for racial profiling by police estimated as many as 40,000 Montrealers could be entitled to compensation totalling $170 million. Now extrapolate to include all the police forces in the province. The writing should be on the wall for the SPVM and all other Quebec police agencies: No amount of tinkering can make this discredited and inherently problematic practice acceptable.
Montreal Gazette
26-05-2025
- Politics
- Montreal Gazette
Quebec government ordered to pay $164 million plus interest in ‘historic' class-action ruling for justice denied
News By A person's right to appear before a judge within 24 hours of being arrested and detained is a cornerstone of Canada's criminal justice procedure, and now a judge has ordered the province of Quebec to pay damages of $164 million plus interest for wilfully violating that right thousands of times. 'The (prosecutor's office) and the (Quebec justice department) failed in their obligation to put in place a system that guarantees an appearance that complies with the requirements of the Criminal Code, knowing full well that their faulty appearance system led to the systemic violation of the fundamental rights of those seeking justice by failing to comply with the 24-hour deadline on Sundays and public holidays from 2015 to 2019-2020,' Quebec Superior Court Justice Donald Bisson writes in a 155-page ruling dated May 20 in a class-action lawsuit against the province. 'It was expected that thousands of people seeking justice would be affected, and that is exactly what happened.' The suit was filed by the Montreal law firm Kugler Kandestin on behalf of people whose right to a court appearance within 24 hours was violated between 2015 and 2020. It's estimated there were about 24,000 such incidents during the period covered by the class-action. 'It's a significant judgment and we're extremely proud of it,' lawyer Robert Kugler said on Monday. With the interest accumulated, he estimates the province will pay about $240 million. 'It can never be forgotten that any time an individual is arrested, even if the peace officer thinks that person needs to be detained, those people are presumed innocent. They can't be punished until such time as they are found guilty. That's why there are such strict rules in place in the Criminal Code, to ensure that their rights are respected.' The judge ruled in favour of the class-action lawsuit in its entirety, stating that the Quebec government not only intentionally violated the fundamental rights of thousands of people to have a court appearance within 24 hours of being detained, but also that it did so for budgetary reasons to save the cost of staffing courts on Sundays and statutory holidays. 'The evidence shows that administrative and budgetary considerations led to the withdrawal of Sunday appearances, even though such considerations can never justify the violation of constitutional rights,' Bisson writes. Before June 2015, 'telephone appearances' before a justice of the peace were permitted in parts of Quebec, but these were subsequently ruled to not respect the Criminal Code. The class-action start date of June 2015 represents the date when the Quebec prosecutor's office removed all appearances, including telephone appearances, on Sundays and statutory holidays, Kugler said. The Quebec prosecutor's office had argued in its defence that it was the justices of the Court of Quebec who didn't want to sit on Sundays and statutory holidays, and therefore it wasn't responsible for the rights violations. However, Bisson rejected the argument, stating in his ruling that 'the responsibility for implementing a system that ensures compliance with (the 24-hour rule) belongs to the state and, consequently, to all state actors.' The province only changed its system and began staffing the Court of Quebec on Sundays and statutory holidays after the class-action lawsuit was authorized to proceed in 2020 — a fact that Bisson notes in his ruling. The province sought unsuccessfully to have the class-action lawsuit denied by a judge. 'It suggests this situation never would have been rectified without a class-action,' Kugler said. The class-action initially included City of Montreal and Quebec City because the two cities also did not staff their municipal courts, which treat minor offences of municipal bylaws, on Sundays and statutory holidays, at the time. After the class-action lawsuit was authorized against the province and the two cities, Montreal and Quebec City settled out of court, with Montreal paying $4.3 million and Quebec City paying $412,000 in their settlements, Kugler said. The Quebec government, however, chose to go to trial, which was held over a month earlier this year. Bisson's judgment grants the plaintiffs' damage claim of $7,000 per incident of detention beyond the 24-hour delay between 2015 and 2020, plus interest. However, given the number of incidents, the judge has ordered the government to pay a lump sum of $164 million plus interest within 30 days and to cover the cost of a claims administrator to identify and track down thousands of people who qualify for damages through court and police records. The province has 30 days to decide if it will file an appeal. 'Out of respect for the judicial process, we will not be making any comment,' the justice department said in an email Monday. The Quebec prosecutor's office also said it can't comment, saying in an email: 'We acknowledge the court's decision and are taking the time to analyze the merits of its conclusions.' Numerous court rulings over the years have affirmed the fundamental right of a person to have an appearance before a judge within 24 hours of being arrested and detained, Kugler said, and other provinces allow such appearances on Sundays and statutory holidays. When a police officer makes an arrest, the person may be released from custody after signing a promise to appear in court at a later date to faces charges. However, the police may decide the person should not be released and will detain the person in a holding cell at a police station until they can appear before a judge. Before 2020 in Quebec, that meant a person arrested on, say, a Saturday evening would not appear in court until Monday and would sit in a police holding cell until then. 'A holding cell is nothing like a cell in a detention facility,' Kugler said. 'In a holding cell in a police station, the lights are on all the time. There's zero privacy. There's no ability to take a shower. You don't get really any meals, there's nothing to do. There's no television, there's no one to speak to, there's nothing to read.' The person may need medication or treatment and doesn't have access to that in a police cell, he added. Kugler said he hopes the ruling will serve as a precedent in another class-action lawsuit filed by his firm on behalf of at least 1,500 Nunavik residents. This second class-action claims that the right of people arrested in the North to a timely bail hearing — the next step in the criminal justice process after an appearance before a judge — was systemically violated for years.
