Police in Ontario will be banned from stopping people on the street—known as “carding”—based solely on race and other “random or arbitrary” reasons, according to legislation proposed by the province on Oct. 28.
Yasir Naqvi, Ontario’s minister of community safety and correctional services, announced on Oct. 22 the province would be banning “arbitrary carding.”
The proposed legislation regulating police carding, also known as street checks, is only a “Band-Aid approach,” according to Carleton criminology professor Darryl Davies.
The legislation would also require police officers to inform people they stop on the street why the information is being collected, and they are not legally required to answer any questions.
The practice of carding is at the centre of a debate on police ethics after increased protests from the black community in Toronto.
In June 2015, Toronto police chief Mark Saunders vowed to end “random” carding, but said he believed the practice was a valuable investigative tool.
Davies said many of the concerns that were raised about carding are not being addressed by the regulation.
He said there should be an appeal process if people are carded unfairly, and the legislation should address what happens with information that has already been collected and is being stored in police databases.
Carding enforces “systematic racism,” according to Sakinna Gairey, a member of the University of Ottawa-based BlakCollectiv.
“It tends to be that the people who the police are checking are marginalized individuals—so black, Indigenous, people of colour, trans people,” she said.
Gairey said she doesn’t believe carding is a random practice, and confrontations with police can occur on university campuses between black students and campus security.
She said there have been instances at the University of Ottawa (U of O) when black students have called campus security and instead of addressing the problem, security has harassed the students who called them.
“It’s not only dealing with police officers, but people in positions of authority who make black students and black youth and black people feel unsafe where they’re paying $7,000 to feel marginalized,” Gairey said.
The safety of students is important when thinking about access to post-secondary education, said Bilan Arte, the first black national chairperson for the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS). Arte has helped organize rallies in support of Ferguson protesters, following the killing of Michael Brown.
Arte said she thinks the safety of marginalized groups on campus is often ignored when considering barriers to attending university.
“When we think about access, we need to think about how our campuses, more broadly speaking, are welcome to a diverse population of students that are coming with a lot of different experiences and realities at hand,” she said.
Arte said these realities can include police violence, depending on where students are coming from.
Between 2011 and 2014, 20 per cent of people carded in Ottawa were black, according to a report by the Ottawa Police Service (OPS) released in July. In comparison, about five per cent of Ottawa’s population is black.
The report also revealed 4,405 street checks were conducted in Ottawa in 2014, down from 8,240 in 2010.
OPS inspector Mark Patterson conducted the report, but said Ottawa police does not have an official street check policy.
The idea street checks target minorities is a “myth,” Patterson said. “We don’t tolerate random street checks. There has to be an intelligence link to it.”
The Oct. 22 announcement came after months of consultations held by Naqvi in communities across Ontario. Until then, police services across the province had different policies and procedures for carding.
The proposed legislation is now subject to a 45-day public review process.
“In a lot of the consultations across the province it became very clear that people associate street checks or carding to an arbitrary police interaction which is taking place . . . when there is no cause or reason,” Naqvi said.
Naqvi said a ban on arbitrary street checks would help people from racialized backgrounds feel less vulnerable and marginalized.
“We are making sure as we are developing these regulations that somebody’s race, gender identity, or sexual orientation is not a cause or reason for them to have an interaction with the police,” he said.
But Gairey said there is no “legitimate reason” for any street checks.
“The fear that comes with dealing with a system of power that you have no defence against, that’s scary in itself,” she said.
At Carleton, there are no tensions between campus security and specific communities, said Kyle Gallinger, staff sergeant with the department of university safety.
“We don’t do carding. We don’t keep statistics on what the race and nationality is of the people we deal with,” Gallinger said.
He added the department has a community liaison officer who people can contact if they have concerns. But as far as his position goes, Gallinger said he “deals with everyone.”
Gairey said BlakCollectiv aims to raise awareness about the issue of racial discrimination on campus. She said there needs to be “safe spaces where black students can just talk about it.”
Carding can exacerbate poor relationships between police and the black community in neighbourhoods where tensions are already high, according to retired RCMP officer Calvin Lawrence, who spent 36 years as a cop.
“A lot of police officers go into black communities to hunt,” Lawrence said. “They don’t go into the black community to work with the community, to better that community in the area of the law.”
Lawrence has spoken out about racism and carding by the RCMP since retiring in 2006. He has won two good-conduct models in his career and served as a bodyguard for two prime ministers, but was often turned down for promotions.
The Globe and Mail reported in 2007 that files Lawrence received in an Access to Information request identified him as a “non-white” and a “troublemaker.”
Although Lawrence, who is black, has never carded anyone himself, he said while working undercover he has been carded by other officers. When he identified himself as an officer, the other officer quickly backed down.
Lawrence said he isn’t sure if the new regulations will correct the problem.
“The collection of information, the usage of information, the storage of information, the destruction of information, and who gets the information has never been made clear in my mind,” he said.
Lawrence said police carding is a “structural issue” caused by improper training and poor communication by police officers.
“Today, police officers don’t know how, or don’t care about the ways in which they communicate . . . So you’re setting up the potential for confrontation,” he said.
Since Ontario announced a ban on “arbitrary carding,” police services across the province have had to assess how they will change their practices when it comes to street checks.
OPS chief Charles Bordeleau said in October the new regulations are “complex and contain significant new requirements for police services.”
Bordeleau said OPS would continue their current practices until the new regulations are enacted by the province.
“Over the next few weeks, we will be reviewing the draft regulations to determine the practice applications and project impacts on the scope, approach and budget,” he said in an Oct. 29 press release.
Gairey said the way policing is structured needs to change. When people consider the relationship between police and the black community in Ottawa, she said people need to think about how racism is “silent” and “systematic” in the city.
“If you’re going to have police officers in a community . . . they need to be trained in a way and they need to be checked in a way that they’re not being right now,” she said.
Now there is carding legislation in Ontario, Davies said people should watch out for police stopping people on the streets and taking down their information.
“Unless they have grounds to arrest you, they have no right to detain you,” he said.
Davies encouraged people in this situation to ask police officers whether they are under arrest. If the response is “no,” Davies said, “just walk away.”
