La Ville de Longueuil a plaidé le 23 mars dernier que le Tribunal des droits de la personne n’était pas la bonne instance pour entendre la plainte déposée contre elle par le citoyen Joël DeBellefeuille pour outrage au tribunal. Cette plainte, selon la Ville, aurait dû être déposée en Cour supérieure du Québec. Selon le cabinet qui représente M. DeBellefeuille, cette «tactique» de la Ville a pour effet de ralentir le processus judiciaire.   Read More

A 2012 racial profiling case has led to the City of Longueuil facing charges of contempt of court, for failure to publish data about racial profiling. This is after Joel DeBellefeuille won his racial profiling case against the Longueuil police in 2020. The human rights tribunal ruled the city of Longueuil had to publish data related to racial profiling within 24 months – which it failed to do. Now – a judge has summoned the city to enter a guilty or not-guilty plea on March 23, 2023, or face charges of contempt of court.  Read More

Group says administrators at private school near Montreal ignored racism complaints A private high school west of Montreal is promising to make changes, following allegations that administrators for years ignored complaints about racist bullying targeting two Black students. Joel DeBellefeuille, founder of Montreal-based anti-racism group Red Coalition, said the family of the two girls approached his organization after administrators brushed off their complaints. “They’ve been trying to tell them that they’ve been spat on, their hair pulled and they’ve been called the N-word on numerous occasions by other students at the school,” DeBellefeuille told reporters Wednesday. He said the family’s older daughter started receiving abuse six years ago when she was enrolled at College Bourget in Rigaud, Que.  Read More

The civil rights group Red Coalition has made public details of emails from the Quebec government telling Longueuil police to dismiss a court order regarding racial profiling. A 2020 ruling by Human Rights Tribunal Judge Christian Brunelle ordered Longueuil police to adopt a policy to collect and publish race-based data on people who are stopped by police. The race-based data collected would include the "perceived or presumed race of persons subject to police stops,” and was to be published in 2021.  Read More

An anti-racism group says it has copies of email exchanges to support its claims that Quebec told the City of Longueuil to disregard a court order on racial profiling. Joel DeBellefeuille, executive director of the Red Coalition, said he’s been pulled over by police a dozen times in the past 15 years. In 2012, Longueuil police followed him and his family as they were dropping off his son at daycare. As a result of that incident, he was awarded $12,000 in damages.  Read More

Documents obtained by anti-racism group, Red Coalition, show the former Longueuil police chief saying he was told by Quebec’s Ministry of Public Security to wait until a province wide approach to collecting race-based data was put in place before following through on their own mechanism to collect race-based data on all police stops – which they were ordered to do by a Quebec judge.  Read More