Insulting a Police Officer in Quebec: What the Law Actually Says — by Alain Babineau

The Quebec Commission des droits de la personne et des droits de la jeunesse (CDPDJ) has clearly established¹ that most incivility by-laws are neutral on their face, but it is their targeted application that opens the door to discrimination in the form of social profiling. Thus, a by-law requiring pedestrians to cross at traffic lights is not discriminatory in itself — except when it is systematically applied to homeless people.

These regulations disproportionately affect those who have no choice but to live in public space. The nighttime closure of parks in Montreal’s Ville-Marie borough is the starkest example: the CDPDJ concluded that this measure infringed the fundamental rights of the homeless and recommended its repeal. The Ligue des droits et libertés — Quebec Section has for its part denounced the futility of this over-judicialization for social reintegration and its exorbitant costs to the justice system.²

These problems reach their peak in by-laws prohibiting insults to peace officers, which exist in several Quebec municipalities: Laval, Lévis, Québec City, St-Lin-Laurentides, Les Collines-de-l’Outaouais. Their proliferation is the very ground on which the CAQ and PQ wish to build a provincial law.

The case law reveals the radical imprecision of these offences. Four decisions are particularly illuminating.

In Lévis (Ville de) c. Cloutier Lachance³, a citizen absent from the hearing was fined $150 for posting an insulting message on the personal Facebook page of an officer after the latter had issued him a ticket:

Judge Ouellet found that the insults were directed at the officer in the exercise of his duties, which was sufficient to establish the offence.

Four years later, in St-Lin-Laurentides (Ville de) c. Blais⁵, Judge Brochu acquitted a citizen for nearly identical facts — insulting remarks posted on Facebook after a police intervention — explicitly refusing to follow Judge Ouellet’s reasoning:

She held that insults published after the fact resemble defamation and fall under civil liability, not municipal penal law. This unresolved divergence between two courts of the same jurisdiction perfectly illustrates the arbitrariness: a citizen’s guilt depends on the municipality in which he lives and the judge who hears his case.

In Ville de Québec c. Valiquette⁷, a protester convicted for giving the middle finger to riot police during a demonstration illustrates a further concern: the insult offence is one of strict liability, meaning the citizen cannot even invoke the absence of malicious intent as a defence.

Finally, in Ville de Laval c. Beaudin⁸, Yvens Beaudin, a Black citizen stopped in circumstances the judge herself qualified as dubious, was issued a ticket for the sole use of the word « racist » directed at an officer during a stop whose motives he did not understand. Judge Chantal Paré acquitted him, holding that telling an officer on duty that he engages in racial profiling and is racist are statements free of the customary rudeness⁹ and that insults must receive a restrictive interpretation in favour of the citizen, not the officer.¹⁰

The judge relied on Switzman v. Elbling and A.G. of Quebec¹¹ to recall that the right to criticize state authority is an essential component of parliamentary democracy.¹² Although rendered in the context of the Padlock Act and not incivility by-laws, this ruling was expressly invoked by Judge Paré as the constitutional foundation of the right to criticize the police: its relevance is thus established by the case law itself.

Yet Mr. Beaudin was absent from the hearing and unrepresented by counsel. How many other citizens in the same situation simply paid the fine? This case also raises the spectre of racial profiling in the application of these regulations — a form of race-based discrimination prohibited by section 10 of the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms (CQLR, c. C-12).

The constitutional fragility of these regulations is acknowledged: the offence of insulting a police officer has not yet been declared unconstitutional, but could be, due to its vagueness, arbitrariness and overbreadth. The Supreme Court established in Montréal (City) v. 2952-1366 Québec Inc.¹³ that any restriction on freedom of expression must serve a pressing and substantial objective, be proportionate, and minimally impair the protected right (R. v. Oakes¹⁴).

Justice Binnie, dissenting, further recalled that the municipal power to prohibit « nuisances » cannot apply to something that « has no harmful character and causes injury to no one ».¹⁵ Criticizing a police officer, even crudely, causes no objectively measurable harm to public order.¹⁶

This would amplify the already documented discriminatory effects, potentially extend repression to speech on social media, and deprive thousands of citizens who never contest their fines of a constitutional protection to which they are entitled.

If clearly hateful or misogynistic remarks toward police officers deserve sanction, tools already exist: the Criminal Code, in matters of harassment, threats and hate propaganda. What is needed is for legislators to demand one simple thing before legislating: evidence showing that these regulations actually increase civility, rather than serving an institution’s interest in shielding itself from legitimate citizen criticism — the very citizens it is supposed to serve.