Quebec Rejects Federal Funding Meant to Encourage Courts to Consider Race in Sentencing

Quebec is upholding its rejection of federal funding aimed at having courts weigh racial factors in sentencing as pressure mounts by activists in light of a recent case. The province says the reason for its rejection of the funding program is that it doesn’t share Ottawa’s position that there’s systemic racism in the justice system.

“We are not party to any funding agreement involving Impact of Race and Culture Assessments, as Quebec doesn’t subscribe to the approach on which the funding program is based, namely systemic racism,” Quebec’s Justice Department Marie-Hélène Mercier told The Canadian Press.

Ottawa authorized $6.64 million in funding to provinces and territories for a five-year period starting in 2021, followed by $1.6 million annually, to encourage the use of Impact of Race and Culture Assessments (IRCAs) in sentencing, particularly to lessen the overrepresentation of black Canadians in Canada’s criminal justice system. Ottawa bumped the funding to $16 million over five years in 2024. Quebec has not accepted any of the funding.

IRCAs are pre-sentence reports that let judges assess the impact of “systemic racism” in the background and circumstances of an accused individual and have been used in Canadian courts for more than a decade.

In addition to Quebec, Prince Edward Island, Saskatchewan, Nunavut, and the Northwest Territories do not have agreements to accept the IRCA funds, nor does Alberta, which suspended its acceptance of IRCA funding in December of last year.

IRCA pre-sentence reports may still be used in Quebec and other jurisdictions that aren’t receiving the funds, but the associated costs are not supported by the federal government.

According to information from a 2022 Justice Department report, black Canadians had a 24 percent higher chance of being imprisoned after arrest or sentencing, along with 36 percent more likely to get two or more years behind bars compared to white convicts. In 2021, black Canadians were also accused of homicide at six times the rate as “non-racialized people,” according to the report.

In a recent Quebec case where IRCA was successfully used without federal funds, 52-year-old black Canadian Frank Paris had his sentence reduced from 36 months to 24 months after pleading guilty to trafficking cannabis and hashish. The reduction came about after Judge Magali Lepage considered the racism Paris faced as a descendant of enslaved people in his sentence.

Paris’s IRCA was brought forward by the Viola Desmond Justice Institute, whose board member David Nyarko said the institute has to do much of its work pro bono because of lack of Quebec provincial support and said “systemic racism is alive and exists in Quebec.”

Quebec’s anti-racism minister Christopher Skeete disagreed and criticized the Paris decision, saying that federal funding for IRCAs creates a two-tiered justice system and worsens inequality.

“What we’re trying to do is to correct the historical wrong, but the problem is we’re creating new injustices, and we’re creating two types of citizens: one that is racialized and one that isn’t,” Skeete told The Canadian Press. “Do we really want to formalize discrimination in the attribution of sentences for people who perpetrate crimes?”

Ottawa has defended the program as necessary and as a step forward in Canada’s justice system, with the Department of Justice saying that IRCAs “inform sentencing judges of the disadvantages and systemic racism faced by Black and other racialized Canadians and may recommend alternatives to incarceration and/or culturally appropriate accountability measures within a sentence of incarceration.”

The Canadian Press contributed to this report.