Montréal’s anti-insult by-law: only the Supreme Court can end the judicial lottery

I commend this initiative. But I want to be clear about what must follow: whatever the outcome in Superior Court, this case must go all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada. Not out of stubbornness, but because it is the only court capable of ending an uncertainty that has persisted for more than fifteen years in Quebec — an uncertainty that translates, concretely, into thousands of statements of offence issued on a legal foundation whose solidity no one knows.

I wore the RCMP uniform for nearly three decades. I am not arguing for the right to insult police officers. I am arguing for the right of every citizen — and of every police officer — to know precisely what the law prohibits.

Fifteen years of contradictory rulings

I have already documented in these pages the inconsistency of municipal court case law on this issue. The essentials come down to four decisions:

• Lévis (Ville de) c. Cloutier Lachance (2011): an insulting message posted on Facebook following a statement of offence leads to a conviction.
• St-Lin-Laurentides (Ville de) c. Blais (2015): abusive remarks posted on Facebook in a comparable context lead to an acquittal.
• Ville de Québec c. Valiquette (2018): giving the middle finger to police officers constitutes an insult within the meaning of section 9 of by-law R.V.Q. 1091; the accused is convicted.
• Ville de Laval c. Beaudin (2019): calling a police officer “racist” during a traffic stop leads to an acquittal.

The uncertainty also extends beyond the municipal courts. In 2023, in a criminal case of harassment between neighbours, the Court of Québec stated that offending someone is not a crime and that the middle finger falls under freedom of expression (R. c. Epstein). The context is different — neither a police officer nor a municipal by-law was involved — but the contrast with Valiquette shows how much the line between protected rudeness and a punishable offence varies depending on the court and the judge.

Montréal’s elected officials have seen this for themselves. During the September 21 debate, councillor Carla Beauvais pointed out that judges of the Québec City municipal court could not agree on what constitutes an insult, and that “a threat can be proven, while an offensive word is felt” (remarks reported by CBC). Yet the Montréal by-law does not define an insult. Before the vote, Mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada had stated that a middle finger would not warrant a ticket — before retracting. If the authority adopting the by-law cannot say with confidence what it prohibits, how could the citizen?

Meanwhile, these by-laws are being enforced. According to The Canadian Press, the Québec City police service issued 11,092 statements of offence for insults between April 2020 and March 2026, and Laval, 4,502 between January 2021 and April 2026. How many of these tickets would have survived a challenge? No one knows, since the vast majority of the people targeted pay without contesting, or simply do not pay because of their socio-economic situation or even their mental health.

Why trial courts cannot settle the question

The problem is not that judges made mistakes. It is structural. A ruling of the Lévis municipal court does not bind the Saint-Lin-Laurentides court; a Québec City decision does not bind Laval. Even when a municipal court concludes that a provision is unconstitutional, the effect of its decision is limited to the case before it: the by-law remains in force, and the next citizen starts from scratch.

The challenge by the AJP and the CJSM represents real progress: a declaratory judgment from the Superior Court would have broader reach than an acquittal in municipal court. But it would only target the Montréal by-law. The by-laws of Québec City, Laval, Longueuil, Sherbrooke and many other municipalities would remain intact. And whatever the outcome, the losing party will likely appeal.

Above all, the questions at stake require the interpretation of precedents that only the Supreme Court can clarify, adapt or, where appropriate, revisit. Since Canada (Attorney General) v. Bedford, lower courts are bound by the rule of precedent, subject to narrow exceptions. The Luamba case illustrates this: it took more than thirty years after R. v. Ladouceur for evidence of racial profiling to lead Quebec courts to declare section 636 of the Highway Safety Code inoperative — and it is the Supreme Court, which heard the appeal in January 2026, that will have the final word. Anti-insult by-laws raise questions of the same nature and the same seriousness.

The questions the Supreme Court will have to decide

1The scope of protected expression

Since Irwin Toy, any activity that conveys or attempts to convey a meaning is, on its face, protected by section 2(b) of the Canadian Charter, whatever its content, with the exception of violence and threats of violence. In Montréal (City) v. 2952-1366 Québec Inc., the Supreme Court confirmed that the public street is a place where expression is protected. A crude insult hurled at a police officer is no doubt unpleasant; it nonetheless remains expression — often an expression of disagreement with state action. A by-law that makes it an offence because of its content must therefore be justified under section 1.

2Vagueness

In R. v. Nova Scotia Pharmaceutical Society, the Supreme Court established that a provision is unconstitutionally vague when it does not provide a sufficient basis for legal debate. Terms such as “abuse,” “insult” or “offensive behaviour,” left undefined, whose meaning has varied from one judge to another for fifteen years, raise precisely this question. The inconsistency in the case law described above is not merely an inconvenience: it is in itself evidence of vagueness.

3Minimal impairment

Criminal law already offers tools for truly dangerous behaviour: uttering threats (s. 264.1 Cr.C.), criminal harassment (s. 264), assaulting a peace officer (s. 270), obstruction (s. 129), causing a disturbance (s. 175). In R. v. Lohnes, the Supreme Court specified that this last section requires a manifest external disturbance — merely offensive words are not enough. Parliament thus made a deliberate choice not to criminalize a simple insult. The man who insulted an SPVM officer last March, in the videos that went viral, was in fact charged in July under the Criminal Code and pleaded not guilty. Does a municipal by-law that goes beyond what Parliament deemed necessary meet the minimal impairment test established in Oakes? The question deserves a definitive answer.

4Equality and discriminatory enforcement

A by-law that is neutral on its face can produce discriminatory effects when it rests entirely on the discretion of the police officer. That is precisely what Justice Yergeau found in Luamba with respect to traffic stops without cause. In the case of anti-insult by-laws, the problem is magnified: the officer who considers himself insulted is often at once the “victim,” the main witness and the officer who writes the ticket. As Fernando Belton of the CJSM pointed out, the courts have already recognized that granting overly broad powers leads to abuse and racial profiling. In a city where the SPVM dismantled, last June, a night patrol unit in Montréal-Nord following allegations of racism and misconduct, the section 15 question cannot be set aside.

In reality, this by-law merely adds to the regulatory arsenal targeting “incivilities,” by-laws long recognized as disproportionately affecting young Black people and racialized people. As early as 2009, the Commission des droits de la personne et des droits de la jeunesse described the judicialization of homeless people in Montréal as social profiling. During the 2019 public consultation on systemic racism and discrimination held by the Office de consultation publique de Montréal, the Commission called for a review of the City’s regulatory framework in order to curb its effects on discriminatory profiling. At the end of that consultation, the City of Montréal itself acknowledged the systemic nature of racism and discrimination.

In practice, only those who can afford it will be able to challenge in court the treatment they received from police officers — and thereby avoid paying fines they consider unwarranted.

For young people and people in precarious situations, the choice is likely to be quite different: being unable to pay a fine they consider unjustified, compounded by being unable to exercise their right to contest it.

Accessible justice cannot depend on a person’s financial ability to defend themselves.

Respect goes both ways

Defenders of the by-law rightly invoke the dignity of municipal employees and police officers. I share that concern. No police officer should have to endure insults simply because they wear the uniform. But Quebec already has a regime that rigorously governs speech in interactions between police officers and citizens: police ethics.

On September 14, 2026, one week before the Montréal by-law was adopted, the Tribunal administratif de déontologie policière (police ethics tribunal) rendered its decision in the case of Mr. Johnny Lerouge, a Black restaurant owner stopped in Montréal in February 2024. Mr. Lerouge had insulted the officers repeatedly, including in Creole. Officer Anthony Desjardins Bélisle had replied, among other things, with “Arrête de faire tes macaqueries comme un esti d’enfant” (“Stop your monkey business like a damn child”) and “Tu es un timoune” (“You’re a little kid”), repeated three times. The Tribunal concluded that these remarks constituted abusive language based on race, skin colour and ethnic origin, in breach of section 5 of the Code of Ethics of Québec Police Officers.

Two aspects of this decision deserve attention. First, the Tribunal acknowledged the officer’s exasperation at the “litany of insults” he was subjected to, but reiterated that he “had to control himself, remain calm and avoid prolonging the conversation” (para. 45) [translation]. That is the professional standard — the very one I taught as a team supervisor and staff manager: provocation does not justify retaliation. Second, the Tribunal precisely defined what abusive language is — language “that offends, humiliates, hurts or expresses contempt” (para. 41) [translation] — and assessed it in context, based on a video recording, after a three-day hearing.

The contrast is striking. On one side, an ethics regime with a defined standard, a specialized tribunal and complete evidence. On the other, a by-law that does not define an insult and that gives the officer concerned the power to decide, on the spot, whether the words addressed to him deserve a fine.

In full transparency, the Red Coalition, of which I am one of the directors, filed a report on October 7 with the Commissaire à la déontologie policière (Police Ethics Commissioner) concerning sexual remarks made by an SPVM officer during a traffic stop that took place on September 19 — two days before the by-law was adopted — and captured on a video that went viral. No decision has been made in this matter, and it is up to the Commissioner to assess its merits. But it illustrates the principle we stand for: while Montréal was raising expectations of citizens, section 5 already imposed standards of language, respect and courtesy on police officers. As our executive director, Joel DeBellefeuille, put it: respect goes both ways.

The way forward

Three actors now bear the responsibility of ensuring that this question is settled once and for all.

The parties to the litigation. Whatever the outcome in Superior Court, the losing party should take the case to the Court of Appeal of Quebec, then seek leave to appeal to the Supreme Court under section 40 of the Supreme Court Act. Leave is never guaranteed, but rarely will a question have presented such obvious public importance: freedom of expression, police discretion, racial profiling and municipal regulatory autonomy.

The Government of Quebec. It has a faster and more comprehensive tool at its disposal: a reference to the Court of Appeal under the Court of Appeal Reference Act. A reference would make it possible to submit the question of the constitutionality of anti-insult by-laws as a whole — not just the Montréal by-law — and the opinion of the Court of Appeal could be appealed as of right to the Supreme Court (s. 36 of the Supreme Court Act). Before codifying these by-laws in a provincial statute, as some are calling for, the government would do well to know their constitutional limits.

The City of Montréal. Pending a final decision, it should suspend enforcement of the by-law. Nova Scotia showed the way in 2019 by imposing a moratorium on street checks without cause while an independent review was carried out — a moratorium that led to a permanent ban. A Montréal moratorium would prevent hundreds of tickets from being issued, then contested or quashed, on an uncertain legal basis.

Conclusion

The rule of law requires that the law be known, predictable and applied equally. After fifteen years of contradictory decisions, thousands of tickets and a new by-law that does not define the offence it creates, anti-insult by-laws meet none of these requirements. The Superior Court will take the first step. Only the Supreme Court of Canada can take the last.

Respect goes both ways. So does legal clarity.