Montreal appeals landmark racial profiling ruling
Lawyers for the City of Montreal asked the Court of Appeal on Tuesday to overturn a landmark class-action ruling on racial profiling by police, saying it's too complicated to determine who is eligible for compensation.
The city is appealing a 2024 Superior Court ruling that determined Montreal police had a systemic racial profiling problem. Racialized citizens had alleged they were unfairly stopped, arrested, detained, and profiled by police between mid-August 2017 and January 2019.
Superior Court Justice Dominique Poulin held the city responsible for violating class-action members' Charter rights, ordering it pay each of them up to $5,000 in damages. However, her ruling reduced the period during which people profiled by police can claim compensation to six months, between July 11, 2018, and Jan. 11, 2019.
Raphaël Lescop, a lawyer representing the city, argued that Poulin should not have awarded damages to an unspecified number of victims. It would be impossible, he said, to determine who is eligible without having them each come to court to plead their case.
As well, he said the trial judge heard testimony from only one member of the class action: lead plaintiff Alexandre Lamontagne.
Lamontagne is a Black man who was stopped by Montreal police while leaving an Old Montreal bar in August 2017. During his arrest he was pinned to the ground, handcuffed and taken to the station. He was then issued three statements of offence and charged with obstructing police work and assaulting a police officer, but most proceedings against him were eventually dropped.
Lescop said the trial judge's decision was based on insufficient proof because it relied on one witness, external reports, public consultations, and on statistics from the police department.
"Are we saying all racialized people who are stopped by police are victims of racial profiling who should be compensated?" Lescop asked the three Court of Appeal judges.
The city's lawyers said it was unreasonable to ask Montreal to pay out an undetermined total amount. But Justice Christian Immer pushed back, saying Poulin had imposed a $5,000-ceiling on compensation claims.
During Tuesday's hearing Immer often challenged the city's lawyers, saying the reality of racial discrimination is well-established.
Lawyers for the Black Coalition of Quebec, which had brought the class action, accused the city's lawyers of repeating their trial arguments during the Court of Appeal hearing, and of implicitly asking for a retrial. Lawyer Mike Diomande urged the judges to focus on whether Poulin had made legal errors in her ruling.
He said Poulin's 100-page judgment was historic and tackled the city's arguments at length. Diomande said the city and police force have data on who was stopped, arrested or detained during the six-month period covered by the class-action ruling and can easily determine who was racially profiled.
"We can come to a precise number," he argued.
He also told the judges that the city has known about its racial profiling problem for years but did little to tackle it, and, therefore, should pay out victims.
In her 2024 ruling, Poulin concluded that the "the stop-and-search procedure inherently produces discrimination" against racialized groups, stressing that the city had endorsed such a measure. Poulin also rejected the idea that determining who could be eligible for compensation is impossible.
Diomande said the Superior Court judge laid out clear criteria for eligible members of the class action: individuals who were stopped, arrested or detained without justification and who had their personal information recorded by police.
The Black Coalition's legal team says it's still undecided exactly who is eligible for compensation and how the money awarded in Poulin's ruling will be distributed. The lawyers say those details will be decided in court following the Court of Appeal's ruling.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 21, 2026.
By Erika Morris | Copyright 2026, The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.