Carding meeting reveals deep worries over new legislation

There is plenty of room for discrimination in Ontario’s proposed carding legislation, says Runako Gregg of the African Canadian Legal Clinic.

“They don’t go nearly f ar enough,” the acting staff lawyer for the legal clinic told a crowd at Hamilton’s Regional Indian Centre Tuesday night.

The issue of carding has been a hot topic for Hamilton, whose former chief has been vocal about issues surrounding carding.

In late October, Ruth Goba, interim chief commissioner of the Ontario Human Rights Commission, said former police Chief Glenn De Caire’s Sept. 21 letter to Yasir Naqvi, Minister of Community Safety and Correctional Services, on carding and street checks “contains a fundamental and significant error.”

That error in the letter, she says is that “when we send officers to this area in response to shooting, we are going to be stopping, talking and investigating young black males.”

De Caire wrote a response to Goba explaining that she took him out of context.

Gregg pointed out what he called one of the fundamental flaws in the legislation — as soon as police are investigating a specific crime the protections under carding legislation disappear.

Beyond that, Gregg cited three further examples where the proposed legislation leaves legal wiggle room for officers to discriminate.

While the new legislation requires police officers to inform individuals their participation is voluntary, the way officers inform citizens of that “hasn’t been standardized,” he said.

That could allow officers to inform citizens at the end of their conversation, and gives officers the ability to inform them of that right in a very unclear f ashion where it might not be understood, Gregg said.

The legislation would require a superior to review all street checks, and expunge those that are irrelevant from the records.

Errol James, a 74 year-old Hamil- tonian who came to the city from Guyana more than 40 years ago, says police officers need to be better trained and integrated into their communities. Though he doesn’t get stopped anymore, when he first came to Hamilton, he recalls being stopped more than seven times in a trip across the city in what he described as an expensive car.

As a former police officer in Guyana, James says he understands “police officers have their work to do,” but wishes police officers would get out of their cars and integrate more with the neighbourhoods.

“You can get legislation on moving a wheel barrel, but it’s not going to change how these cops are trained and how they perceive their community.”

Marlene Thomas, a Hamilton civil rights activist, says she commends Naqvi for being the first minister to really take a look at this issue, but says the legislation “needs to have more.”