Canadian Heritage committee  That's a good question. Right now, the Ontario government has brought about some regulations about what to do with that information, how long it can be held, what happens to it eventually. But police officers have used carding to legitimately, for example, eliminate alibis. Peop

Canadian Heritage committee  I don't know the answer to that question.

Canadian Heritage committee  We had a session for the public about knowing your rights. We give them all of the law, and then at the end of the day—because we're dealing with a bunch of teenagers—we say to them, “Look, if a police officer asks you certain questions, you gotta be very careful. There's a diffe

Canadian Heritage committee  I don't believe so, for two reasons. One, there are all sorts of police officers with body cameras. In fact, when we see incidents that we're all very concerned about, often it's because a body camera captures it. Two, it's important to understand the depth of systemic racism.

Canadian Heritage committee  Differential enforcement is a fancy way for saying if you are.... I think of a commission that came out with its final conclusion that if you're black, you're going to be treated more harshly than if you are white, and that's at all levels. In the decision to arrest, police had a

Canadian Heritage committee  —if you are black than if you're white. It's the police officers' decision to exercise that discretion they have. It continues along the system, and remand is the one that catches the most headlines because you have people who have been in prison and at the end of the day, they

Canadian Heritage committee  Can you give me a little more meat, because I'm a lawyer and I have to be careful.

Canadian Heritage committee  Let me be very careful and stay with the study, because I have an obligation to the administration of justice and to make sure it's never held in disrepute. The findings of the commission were that if you looked at the factors that determined whether or not someone would be held

Canadian Heritage committee  I don't know if it's practised by all police forces. Certainly, Toronto had a live and well program of carding and, of course, Peel has one. On Ottawa, there was a report as well. It's something that appears to be quite broad across the country, but I don't have the statistics fo

Canadian Heritage committee  It could be that you're walking down the street minding your own business. Police drive by. They stop you and ask you who you are, where you're going, what you're doing, why you're doing it. They want your ID and they're taking notes the whole time. They call it “208” in Toronto

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes or no to a lawyer.

Canadian Heritage committee  Possibly. We were on Parliament Hill in February seeking recognition of International Decade for People of African Descent and member Fergus was kind enough to try and put that forward as a private member's bill. Canada has yet to recognize that decade and that decade is passing

Canadian Heritage committee  I can advise the clerk where to get it. The report is from December 1995. The academic is Professor Scot Wortley, who is a criminologist at the University of Toronto.

Canadian Heritage committee  No. Just to be clear, because this is enormous and it must have cost a lot of money to produce, Professor Wortley actually only looked at one issue and that was perceptions of bias among Toronto police. This report deals with everything, including people's perceptions and actuall

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes. The number of black people in prison both provincially and federally is increasing at a rate that does not track with our representation in the population. I think between 1986 and 1994, the numbers were somewhere around 300%. It's in the report, so don't quote me on that. S