The CDPDJ: watchdog or cautious civil servant?

Asked to launch an investigation on its own initiative into sixteen police officers from Station 39 of the Montréal police, the Commission des droits de la personne et des droits de la jeunesse answered with a single word: “premature.” Alain Babineau sees in it the symptom of a broader institutional question — and raises the possibility of a mandamus application.

Rethinking the Commission’s raison d’être in the wake of Bill 7

By Al Babineau, Director of Racial Affairs and Public Safety, Red Coalition / Coalition Rouge

On July 6, 2026, the president of the Commission des droits de la personne et des droits de la jeunesse (“CDPDJ” or the “Commission”), Nadine Koussa, responded to a request for an investigation on the Commission’s own initiative concerning sixteen police officers from Station 39 of the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM) with a single word: “premature.” That word deserves attention, because it reveals, better than any lengthy argument could, the broader institutional question the Commission raises today: can it still act as the independent watchdog the Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms (the “Charter”) intended to create, or has it become a cautious body, reluctant to act unless formally directed to do so?

Part IAn investigation on its own initiative, with no maturity requirement

The file originates in a complaint filed on June 15, 2026 by Coalition Rouge, a civil society organization and registered federal lobbyist dedicated to combating racial profiling. That same day, the SPVM’s director publicly confirmed that an internal investigation was targeting sixteen officers from Station 39, that two had been suspended and fourteen reassigned, and that the allegations included the collection of locks of hair as trophies as well as tickets issued on the basis of ethnic origin. The Commission itself issued a statement that very day acknowledging the seriousness of the situation.

Three weeks later, that publicly acknowledged seriousness became, in the president’s correspondence, a reason for caution. Yet section 71 of the Charter does not permit that reading. Its first paragraph provides that the Commission “shall ensure, by every appropriate measure, the promotion and respect of the principles contained in this Charter” — imperative wording, not discretionary. Subsection 1 of the same section grants it the power to investigate “on its own initiative or when a complaint is brought before it,” without any condition of representation or maturity of the file attached to it. This route is clearly distinct from that of section 74, which requires, for an organizational complaint, a mandate of representation and the identification of at least one victim. By importing into section 71 a maturity requirement that exists only under the section 74 route, the Commission creates a condition the legislature did not provide for.

Part IIA documented pattern of observation rather than action

This refusal would be an isolated incident were it not part of a longer-standing pattern. The Commission produced, in 2011 and again in 2019, reports documenting systemic racial profiling within the SPVM. Twice, the finding was made; twice, it was not followed by a referral to the Human Rights Tribunal or by a binding investigation on the Commission’s own initiative. Rather, it was the courts of general jurisdiction that had to recognize judicially, in 2024, the systemic character of race-based street stops, notably in Lamontagne c. Ville de Montréal, currently before the Québec Court of Appeal, and in Procureur général du Québec c. Luamba (2024 QCCA 1387). Thirteen years separate the Commission’s first documented finding from its judicial confirmation — a delay that calls into question the very function of the body: what purpose does a power to investigate on one’s own initiative serve if the one who holds it systematically waits for other forums to decide in its place?

Part IIIA parallel precedent: Québec’s detention centres

This pattern is not limited to the Station 39 file. As early as January 2023, Coalition Rouge submitted a formal request asking the Commission to open a systemic investigation into racism and discrimination in Québec’s provincial detention centres — a file fuelled notably by the death of Nicous D’André Spring in 2022, by a documented registry of 132 deaths in custody in Québec, and by racialized classification practices of detained persons specific to Québec. The Commission acknowledged receipt of that request in June 2023, then, more than three years later, in March 2026, informed Coalition Rouge that it was instead choosing to act under subsection 5 of section 71 — that is, conducting a “research project” — rather than opening the investigation on its own initiative requested under subsection 1 of the same section.

Faced with this prolonged inertia, Coalition Rouge filed a complaint with the Protecteur du citoyen in February 2026, then sent a formal demand letter to the Commission in March 2026. The parallel with file C1048_26 is striking: in both cases, the Commission holds a non-discretionary investigative power: in one case, it lets the file lie dormant for more than three years before substituting a less binding procedural route; in the other, it invokes prematurity three weeks after the complaint was filed. These are two distinct ways of arriving at the same result: avoidance of the investigative power that section 71 confers on it without condition. Coalition Rouge intends, moreover, to avail itself once again of the same recourse to the Protecteur du citoyen in the present file, should the observed inertia continue.

Part IVCoalition Rouge as a partner, not an unwelcome interest group

The Charter itself invites the Commission to work with civil society organizations: subsection 7 of section 71 allows it, where the public interest requires, to invite interested groups to publicly present their observations. Coalition Rouge is therefore not, under the Commission’s own constituting statute, an unwelcome third party to be held at procedural arm’s length — it is precisely the type of interlocutor the legislature intended to see associated with the exercise of the Commission’s mandate. Treating an organization of this kind as a source of pressure rather than as a natural partner in the promotion of rights amounts, in our view, to a restrictive reading that sits uneasily with the spirit of the provision.

Part VInstitutional independence compromised by legislation

This institutional reluctance arises in a legislative context that may shed light on its origin. On April 1, 2026, the National Assembly adopted Bill 7, An Act to reduce bureaucracy, increase the efficiency of the State and strengthen the accountability of senior officials. An amendment folded into that bill, adopted — according to several union organizations — without genuine public debate, had the effect of integrating the Commission’s staff into the Québec public service. The Confédération des syndicats nationaux and the Fédération des professionnèles, which represent Commission employees, both denounced this change as an infringement on the independence of a body whose mission consists precisely of challenging government decisions and assessing the conformity of legislation with the Charter.

The question is not rhetorical. Does a body whose staff now falls under the public service of the same government that funds and oversees the police forces it is meant to monitor retain the same institutional will to act firmly? The Commission itself, in its own briefs predating the adoption of Bill 7, had called for a strengthening of its independence from the government. The coincidence between this recent legislative weakening and a file in which the Commission retreats before facts it has itself described as serious deserves to be raised publicly.

Part VIThe mandamus hypothesis

A related question now arises with growing urgency: should Coalition Rouge consider a mandamus application before the Superior Court of Québec to compel the Commission to exercise a power the Charter confers on it outright? The applicable test, set out in section 529 of the Code of Civil Procedure and refined by the case law, requires a demonstration of a clear right, a public duty of a non-discretionary nature, a failure to act or an unreasonable delay, and the absence of an alternative remedy. The imperative character of section 71, which admits no notion of maturity of the file, favours the first two conditions.

The last two conditions remain, at this stage, more fragile. Three weeks separate the initial complaint from the response invoking prematurity — an interval a court might not yet characterize as an unreasonable delay within the meaning adopted by the case law on mandamus. The July 6 letter, moreover, does not definitively close the door: it indicates that the Commission is “following the matter closely,” which could be interpreted as a non-final decision rather than as a constructive refusal to act. Finally, the condition of the absence of an alternative remedy normally presupposes that internal avenues — a formal demand letter, referral to the Protecteur du citoyen — have been exhausted, which is not yet the case in the present file.

This does not make the mandamus hypothesis premature in the sense the Commission means, but it does suggest that it must be built before being filed. The usual sequence in such matters — demand letter, expiry of a reasonable delay, recourse to existing oversight mechanisms — solidifies the procedural record and deprives the Commission of the opportunity to see its own objection of prematurity turned, this time on solid ground, against Coalition Rouge itself. This is precisely the path already taken in the parallel detention centres file, where the complaint to the Protecteur du citoyen preceded the demand letter and then the preparation of a mandamus application; Coalition Rouge intends to reproduce that same sequence in file C1048_26, which will make it possible, when the time comes, to fully satisfy the condition of the absence of an alternative remedy. The remedy nonetheless remains a legitimate and increasingly concrete lever: each further dilatory response from the Commission brings the file closer to the threshold the case law requires for a court to order a public body to exercise the jurisdiction the law assigns it without condition.

Part VIIWhat is at stake

The Commission’s mandate only has meaning if it is prepared to exercise it at the moment when it is most needed — that is, when the racialized population of Montréal-Nord has serious grounds to believe its rights have been violated by the very people charged with ensuring its protection. If section 71 becomes a power one chooses never to exercise out of institutional caution, the distinction the Charter sought to establish between the organizational complaint route and the Commission’s own power of initiative loses all practical significance.

Coalition Rouge has asked the Commission to confirm whether it intends to exercise its power to investigate on its own initiative, to rule on a request for a provisional moratorium on the SPVM’s random street stops, and to publicly explain the legal basis of the prematurity ground it invoked. These requests remain, to this day, without a complete answer. The question that now arises is no longer merely that of file C1048_26: it is whether the Commission des droits de la personne et des droits de la jeunesse du Québec remains able, structurally and institutionally, to fulfil the function its very name assigns it.