The Legault government wants police to have access to all of the information on a missing person’s cell phone to facilitate searches.
This measure is part of a draft law to reform the police law presented yesterday by the Minister for Public Security, François Bonnardel.
“We want to better equip the police in connection with a disappearance,” he said at a press conference in Parliament.
If this law is passed, police will be able to obtain information about the cell phone of a missing person and those who may be accompanying them, as well as banking information and GPS location, by order of a judge.
racial profiling
This law also prohibits the police from making arbitrary arrests on discriminatory grounds.
If this principle is clear, there are still gray areas in its application.
Two months after passing the bill, the government will set the “policies” that must guide random wiretapping.
The spirit of the bill, as Anti-Racism Secretary Christopher Skeete clarified, is to give itself “room to maneuver” if, at the end of an investigation, it is found that discrimination has occurred in an arrest.
When asked if there is racial profiling in Quebec, the Minister of Public Safety cautiously replied: “There may be some, there may be some”.
At the same time, the continuous training of police officers to combat racial profiling would be improved and the police ethics complaints procedure would be made more accessible, according to MM. Bonnardel and Skeete.
A police ethics court will also be set up.
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