Montreal mayor says husband, who is Black, was stopped last year 'at least 5 or 6 times — for nothing'

Montreal city manager Soraya Martinez Ferrada says a moratorium on law checks would be a “ goodness number one tread” in helping address allegations of racism within the city’s police service.

In an interview Friday on Radio-Canada’s Tout un Matin, Martinez Ferrada said her husband, who is Black, has been stopped while driving “at least five or six times — for nothing” in the past year. 

Martinez Ferrada said this is the reality facing many Black Montrealers. 

"We have to start by calling things what they are,” Martinez Ferrada said, adding that we can't "be afraid" of talking about the existence of systemic racism and racial profiling. 

The mayor made the comments a week after Montreal's police chief held a late-night news conference, revealing that 16 of its own officers at a station in the city's Montréal-Nord borough were under investigation for racist and hateful acts against Black and Arab people.

In a recent interview with Radio-Canada, Premier Christine Fréchette refused to acknowledge the existence of systemic racism in Quebec, following in the footsteps of her predecessor François Legault.

Her comments are reinforced by new data by a team of university researchers, which suggests Black and Arab individuals in Montreal remain far more likely to be stopped by police than white residents.

Victor Armony, one of the report's authors and a sociology professor at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), said the findings suggest an ongoing problem that can’t be solved by removing a few “bad apples.”

“This stems from a systemic issue,” he said in an interview.

“The main danger here is just to say this is a bunch of individuals who are racist and this is isolated and this is bad apples in a good context. That’s exactly the false response to the problem.”

The 2024 data shows that, in Montreal, Black people are four times more likely to be stopped than white individuals, while Arab people are five times more likely to be stopped.

In Laval, where data was analyzed for the first time, the disparities are even higher: Black and Arab individuals are four and seven times more likely to be stopped, respectively.

The data made avalaible was too small to make a meaningful statistical calculation about the treatment of Indigenous people, Armony said, though previous research has found they were more likely to be stopped by police.

The report noted the disparity in police stops remains, even when adjusting for the relative rate of criminal offences; Black individuals are still stopped at a rate approximately 47 per cent higher than the white population.

The report recommends an immediate end to arbitrary street checks across the province, echoing Martinez Ferrada. The report's authors made the same main recommendation in 2023.

Armony said his research group was already working on the latest analysis, but the investigation into the officers in Montréal-Nord compelled them to move more quickly to release their findings.

Montreal Black community leaders call for public inquiry into racism, profiling within police

Also on Friday, community organizations and civil liberties groups sent an open letter to Quebec's premier, reiterating the call for the province to hold a public inquiry into racism and racial profiling within Montreal police.

The joint letter, written in French, states that "recent events are not isolated incidents."

"A public inquiry is the only mechanism that can address the broken trust between the population and police forces," the letter reads.

Some Black Montreal police employees say they're worried about going to work

Reckoning with police racism allegations in Montréal-Nord

Martinez Ferrada said she would also be open to an inquiry but wants to ensure that it doesn’t impede the criminal investigation into the police officers.

Two of the 16 officers under investigation in Montréal-Nord have been suspended, and Quebec's director of criminal and penal prosecutions is determining whether charges will be laid. 

Some officers allegedly collected pieces of locs cut from people's hair during police interventions. Radio-Canada also reported that tickets were allegedly issued to citizens solely on the basis of their ethnic background.

Montréal-Nord residents rally outside local police station over racism allegations

Journalist

Benjamin Shingler is a reporter based in Montreal covering social issues and Quebec politics. He previously worked at The Canadian Press and the New Brunswick Telegraph-Journal, and is an alumnus of the Oxford Climate Journalism Network. He can be reached at benjamin.shingler@cbc.ca.

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