Bill C-22 fails to tackle systemic racism, critics warn

Advocates call on Ottawa to repeal federal laws on drug possession

Ottawa must repeal drug possession laws if it is serious about cracking down on systemic racism in the justice system, researchers and advocates say.

Last week, the federal government tabled Bill C-22, which was hailed for the most part as a progressive piece of criminal justice reform legislation. Among other things, it would eliminate all mandatory minimum penalties for drug offences, which the government acknowledges has led to the overincarceration of Black and Indigenous people.

Where critics say the bill falls short is in its treatment of drug possession offences. Rather than eliminating them entirely, the bill lays out a framework that requires police and prosecutors to consider alternatives to criminal charges and incarceration, including issuing warnings or referrals to treatment programs.

One of the problems, says University of Toronto criminologist Akwasi Owusu-Bempah, is that the bill leaves whether charges should be laid or prosecutions carried out to the discretion of police and prosecutors.

“We know that police officers do not exercise their discretion evenly across social groups,” Owusu-Bempah said, “and so racialized individuals, Indigenous

people and economically marginalized people are less likely to benefit from positive police discretion.

“I think a full repeal would have gone a lot further with respect to advancing the racial justice and racial equity stance that this government has indicated it wants to take.”

More than 100 organizations, including the HIV Legal Network, the Black Indigenous Harm Reduction Alliance, and the Canadian Nurses Association urged federal ministers in a letter last year to immediately decriminalize possession offences.

Justice Minister David Lametti made clear after tabling Bill C-22 last week that the government views drug addiction as a public health issue first and foremost, and not one for which the criminal justice system is best suited.

Lametti said Bill C-22 focuses on the over-representation of Black and Indigenous people in the justice system by removing some mandatory minimum penalties and giving police and prosecutors additional flexibility to keep people out of the system.

“The goal of this legislation was not decriminalization,” he said Tuesday, adding that it’s an “important question” that needs to be debated both in the public sphere and the legislature.

Toronto criminal defence lawyer Annamaria Enenajor said it’s crucial that people who access treatment programs are going on a voluntary basis. She said not everyone in possession of drugs has a substance abuse disorder, but argues the bill implies otherwise.

“It’s fitting people into a box where they don’t necessarily belong and not treating them like the autonomous human beings that they are,” Enenajor said.

Tens of thousands of simple possession charges are laid by police each year. Excluding cannabis, Statistics Canada noted that between 2010 and 2019, “the combined rate of possession offences for other types of drugs has been increasing annually.”

Last year, the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police endorsed decriminalization of drugs possessed for personal use.