Urban African Canadians: A Qualitative Study of Serious Legal Problems in Quebec

Background of People of African Descent and the Legal System in Quebec

People of African descent have a long history in Canada, including Quebec, dating back to 1628 (Gay 2004, 2004; Williams 17, 1997; Cooper 2006, 71; and Walker 2010, 5, 27). The racial codes associated with slavery still persist in the afterlife of slavery (Austin 2013, 7, 49), and, as Constance Backhouse has argued, historically the pervasive myth of Canadian “innocence” and the idea that Canada is a “raceless” society have served to overshadow the reality that the Canadian legal system has been profoundly shaped by race and racism (1999, 13–14).

Racism within the justice system has had immense implications for the criminal justice system and the rates of incarceration in Canada, particularly for Indigenous people and for Black people. As Akwasi Owusu-Bempah and Scot Wortley argue, there has been a reluctance to collect race-based data in Canada, despite the fact that it might inform our understanding of racial discrimination and anti-Black racism in particular (2014, 284–5, 287–9). Nonetheless, in a proportion similar to African Americans, African Canadians are over-represented in Canadian correctional facilities and the criminal justice system. Despite making up only 3.5 percent of the Canadian population in 2016, people of African descent accounted for 7.2 percent of the federal prison population in 2018–19 (Public Safety Canada 2020). Not surprisingly, many racialized Canadians believe that the criminal justice system is biased against certain racialized groups and are, in turn, less likely to trust in or have confidence in the legal system (Owusu-Bempah and Wortley 2014, 299). As legal scholar Dr. Esmeralda Thornhill has written about the Canadian legal system:

More often than not, it is the role of the legal system’s collusion with race that has aided and abetted racism and racial discrimination. As a direct consequence, Black communities across Canada have come to regard as "inherently suspect" both law and legal institutions – be they federal immigration agents, municipal police officers, subway constables, or private security guards (2008, 332).