A broad network of community advocates, human rights and legal experts, academics, concerned and affected individuals and the Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC) is calling on the Province to ensure that its Draft Regulation on police street checks – or “carding” – achieves the Minister’s stated objective of ending arbitrary and discriminatory police street checks.
Twenty-five years after it was enacted, the provincial government (Government) is reviewing and revising the Police Services Act as part of its Strategy for a Safer Ontario (SSO). The OHRC welcomes the opportunity to provide input to the Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services (Ministry) on the SSO.
The Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC) continues to have significant human rights concerns about racial profiling and its impact on racialized and Aboriginal Peoples.
The Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC) welcomes the opportunity to comment on the Draft Regulation on street checks of the Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services (Ministry). We are pleased to have the support of the Human Rights Legal Support Centre (HRLSC) on this important issue.
This policy is about identifying and preventing both individual and systemic racial profiling in law enforcement. It is meant to be a resource, primarily for law enforcement authorities.
Racial profiling is a specific type of racial discrimination that pertains to safety and security. The OHRC currently defines racial profiling as:
[A]ny action undertaken for reasons of safety, security or public protection that relies on stereotypes about race, colour, ethnicity, ancestry, religion, or place of origin rather than on reasonable suspicion, to single out an individual for greater scrutiny or different treatment.
Thank you for the opportunity to talk about the OPS’s Traffic Stop Race Data Collection Project. My deputation will be available online this afternoon, and the Ontario Human Rights Commission’s full report with our analysis of the findings will be available on our website tomorrow. This project was based on a 2012 settlement between the Ottawa Police Services Board and the Commission, after Chad Aiken, a young Black man, filed a human rights complaint alleging racial profiling.
Thank you for receiving the Commission’s deputation on racial profiling and carding on November 18, 2013. We understand that the Toronto Police Services Board (the TPSB”) has retained Frank Addario to provide an independent legal opinion on carding, and that he has a broad mandate to look at “the entire process of interactions between police officers and members of the public”.
Racial profiling is a longstanding and deeply troubling concern of the African Canadian community, other affected racialized communities, and of the Ontario Human Rights Commission (the “OHRC”). In the past few years, many racialized people have experienced carding as yet another form of racial profiling.
The OHRC has frequently identified two key issues in the Toronto Police Service Procedure on Community Engagements that are critical to prevent racial profiling. To be consistent with the Human Rights Code and Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the Procedure:
Toronto – The Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC) is intervening in Roberts v. Toronto Police Services Board, an application before the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario (HRTO) that raises the issues of racial profiling and discriminatory use of force.
