Ontario to regulate carding

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This fall the Ontario government will introduce new regulations for police officers to manage street checks, to ensure encounters with police are without bias.

Community safety minister Yasir Naqvi says there’s zero tolerance for racism and discrimination, and they want to change the rules governing carding: the police practice of stopping people who are not suspected of a crime and adding their names and other personal information to a police database. The practice commonly targets young black men. “We have all heard the personal stories about the negative experiences associated with street checks in various forms; experiences of members of racialized communities going about their business having done nothing wrong and stopped for no reason.”

“The status quo in these cases is not acceptable and cannot continue.”

The province will consult with a number of community organizations, policing partners and the human rights commission to create a new set of rules. They will ask for input on a variety of topics including the circumstances when police can ask someone for information, a person’s rights in a situation when they are questioned by officers and how to enhance training requirements.

After all of the consultations, including talks with each police chief in Ontario, the regulations will be introduced and will be consistent throughout the province. It’s not likely that carding will be banned outright, but the province wants to address human rights concerns and ensure that there is no racial bias.

Premier Kathleen Wynne: “Any practice that discriminates against people solely because of their colour or background or their characteristic, those kinds of characteristics, that’s unacceptable. And we need to make sure that we are not doing that anywhere in the province. And by we, it is a society, that we are not discriminating against people because they are of a particular age or a particular race walking down the street of an evening. We need to make sure that is not happening.”

If you are stopped on the street you are free to walk away without answering any questions from police. Once the regulations are passed by the provincial government officers will be instructed to abide by them, no matter what.