Lawyers representing the attorneys general of Canada and several provinces asked the Supreme Court of Canada on Tuesday to uphold a Quebec law allowing police to make routine traffic stops without cause, while civil rights groups insist such stops lead to racial profiling.
The country’s top court spent a second morning hearing arguments about whether it’s constitutional for police to make traffic stops without reasonable suspicion the driver has committed an offence.
The case involves Joseph-Christopher Luamba, a Black Montrealer in his 20s who said he was repeatedly stopped by police for no apparent reason when he was driving or riding in cars.
None of the stops resulted in a ticket.
In response to his challenge, Quebec’s Superior Court declared the provision of Quebec’s Highway Safety Code on random traffic stops inoperative in 2022 on the grounds it led to racial profiling, and the Court of Appeal upheld the ruling in 2024.
The Quebec government is appealing the decision, in a case that could have implications across the country.
Federal Justice Department lawyer Marc Ribeiro told Canada’s highest court that police need the discretionary power to stop motorists at random in order to combat impaired driving.
He gave the example of a police officer who spots a group of people leaving a house party late at night and decides to pull them over.
Such a situation, he said, would not amount to reasonable suspicion that an offence has been committed, and would not be covered by a structured operation such as a check point — neither of which are being questioned before the courts.
“We could move on to a multitude of other examples where a police officer must act quickly based on what they observe in real time without otherwise observing erratic driving or forming a reasonable suspicion of it,” he said.
The 2022 ruling invalidated the rules established by a 1990 Supreme Court decision, R. v. Ladouceur, which found police were justified when they issued a summons to an Ontario driver who had been stopped randomly and who had been driving with a suspended licence.
The high court ruled that random stops were the only way to determine whether drivers are properly licensed, whether a vehicle’s seatbelts work and whether a driver is impaired.
On Tuesday, the court heard from parties who have signed on as interveners, or interested parties. That included civil rights groups and those representing Black and Indigenous communities, as well as groups representing police chiefs and Mothers Against Drunk Driving.
Fernando Belton, a criminal lawyer at a Montreal legal clinic, said the 1990 Supreme Court decision was made at a time when few studies existed on racial profiling and its nefarious effects.
As a result, he suggested its conclusions “no longer hold.” Upholding the law permitting stops without cause, he said, “would amount to authorizing the continued violation of the fundamental rights of Black communities, but this time… they would act with full knowledge of the devastating causes and consequences of racial profiling on Black and racialized communities across the country.”
He noted that while profiling is well documented, it’s hard to prove on an individual basis, which makes it difficult for victims to obtain justice.
Much of the discussion in court focused on whether racial profiling is an “inevitable consequence” of the law allowing discretionary stops, which is key to the decision on constitutionality.
Ribeiro and the attorney generals of Ontario, British Columbia, Saskatchewan and Alberta argued that profiling exists and is insidious, but that there are ways to fight it that don’t require removing the power of police to stop cars without reasonable cause.
Their suggestions included asking police forces to track data, making it easier for victims to seek recourse or declarations requiring the government to not implement the regime in a manner that discriminates.
The court also heard from lawyers representing Mothers Against Drunk Driving and the Canadian Association of Police Chiefs, who both argued that spot checks were among the most effective ways to deter and detect impaired, unlicensed and uninsured driving as well as vehicles that are unsafe to drive.
On the other side, lawyers for the African Nova Scotia Justice Institute and the Black Legal Action Centre, among others, said the data indicating that racialized people are stopped more frequently shows that profiling is a direct result of the law and its lack of guardrails to prevent abuse.
“The evidence tells us that the law predictably produces discriminatory effects for Black drivers and therefore cannot be upheld,” Sabrina Shillingford of the Black Legal Action Centre said.
The panel of judges took the case under advisement, and did not say when a decision would be made.
