Police in a few of Quebec’s largest metropolitan areas have handed out 1000’s of fines over the previous six years to residents for allegedly hurling insults at officers or different municipal officers, in line with inside knowledge obtained by The Canadian Press.
Quebec Metropolis police have largely pushed these numbers, issuing 11,092 fines between April 1, 2020, and March 31, 2026, to individuals who allegedly violated a municipal bylaw that prohibits disrespectful language directed at officers and different public officers.
Quebec Metropolis launched the numbers in response to a proper entry to data request.
Meantime, a spokesperson for the police power within the municipality of Laval, straight north of Montreal, says its officers issued 4,502 fines to individuals who violated a bylaw that prohibits abusive behaviour in the direction of municipal workers between January 2021 and April 2026.
Police in Sherbrooke, within the Japanese Townships area, say they issued 855 fines in 2025 underneath a bylaw prohibiting insulting and obstructing cops.
The 5 municipalities within the Longueuil space, all served by Longueuil police, have an analogous regulation prohibiting insults towards municipal officers, together with police. Longueuil police say they handed out 53 fines for this offence in 2025 and 49 thus far in 2026.
The discharge of information exhibiting the staggering variety of fines for foul language coincides with a sequence of high-profile instances about police misconduct in Quebec, together with in Montreal, the place investigators not too long ago dismantled a patrol unit in a multicultural neighbourhood over allegations of racism and what native police described as reprehensible behaviour by officers.
In Montreal, municipal officers have been finding out the potential for their very own model of a bylaw that will permit for fines for foul language.
Whereas the native brotherhood representing officers in Montreal has argued its members want this to cope with abuse from members of the general public throughout routine interactions, civil rights activists say now isn’t the time handy new powers to police.
Get breaking Nationwide information
Get breaking Canada information delivered to your inbox because it occurs so you will not miss a trending story.
“The nice cops might by no means use that bylaw, by no means,” says retired RCMP officer Alain Babineau. “The dangerous ones, they’ll use it on a regular basis. It’ll pile on.”
Babineau is now an advocate with the Pink Coalition, a company devoted to preventing racial profiling and systemic discrimination throughout Canada. He additionally served on Montreal’s anti-racism activity power in 2021 and 2022.
He mentioned the push to ban insults towards Montreal police is “frivolous” and “moot” in gentle of the latest allegations towards police about racism and legal behaviour within the multicultural neighbourhood of Montréal-Nord.
It’s not the one latest case of alleged police misconduct.
The Quebec authorities not too long ago ordered an investigation into the actions of the police power in Longueuil after an officer shot a 15-year-old boy final September.
Babineau warned that tensions between residents and police might escalate if town decides to offer officers extra powers.
Quebec Metropolis reported accumulating almost $1.7 million over six years from individuals fined underneath its bylaw. It states “it’s prohibited to abuse or insult a legislation enforcement officer or a municipal official in the middle of their duties, or to make hurtful, defamatory, blasphemous or obscene remarks to them, or to encourage or incite one other individual to abuse them or make such remarks to them.”
Jean-Pascal Lavoie, a spokesperson for the Quebec Metropolis administration, says the bylaw “goals to make sure that interactions between metropolis workers and residents are carried out in a civil method, regardless of the circumstances.”
The talk round banning insults towards police in Montreal was first sparked in March after movies of a person insulting a police officer with a barrage of misogynistic feedback went viral. The person, who’s of North African descent, later alleged he was a sufferer of racial profiling and has usually been stopped by police. On the day the video was taken, he had been fined $186 for having tinted home windows, police mentioned.
Story continues beneath commercial
The Montreal police power condemned the person’s actions, whereas the brotherhood mentioned that “respect is a price shared by Montrealers of all backgrounds” and that “range can’t be used as an excuse for inaction.”
Montreal Mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada has mentioned she continues to be open to implementing a rule just like the bylaw in Quebec Metropolis, however her workplace dismissed recommendations from civil rights activists that granting new powers to police might exacerbate tensions or situations of police misconduct.
“I’m merely saying that we shouldn’t combine up the 2 information in an off-the-cuff method,” mentioned the mayor’s spokesperson. “The context of every state of affairs is vital, and we must always keep away from trivializing them by evaluating them or setting them towards each other.”
The Montreal mayor has burdened that any bylaw that prohibits residents from insulting officers should be drafted fastidiously to guard each police and residents, and guarantee it won’t be contested in courtroom.
Advocates say police have already got powers to name for backup throughout an intervention and cost individuals with uttering threats, resisting arrests or obstruction of justice, they are saying.
“It’s not against the law to insult anybody. We have now the precise to insult police,” says Ted Rutland, a professor of geography at Concordia College who researches policing in Canada. “The individuals most definitely to face the fees would be the individuals extra more likely to face police abuses and repression on the whole.”
Mike Diomande and Jacky-Éric Salvant, attorneys who led a profitable class-action lawsuit alleging systemic racism amid Montreal’s police power, say they’re involved that, have been town to undertake such a rule, it might encroach on Constitution rights like freedom of expression, dignity and privateness.
“The statistics are fairly alarming and worrying. They justify the authentic considerations that folks might have about such rules, which we regard as an infringement of particular person rights,” says Diomande.
The Quebec Superior Courtroom dominated in 2024 that Montreal police violated the Constitution rights of these they unfairly stopped, arrested, detained and profiled between mid-August 2017 and January 2019. The Metropolis of Montreal appealed that call and authorized proceedings are ongoing.