Coalition wants to see Montreal police officers equipped with body cameras

An RCMP officer wears a body camera at the detachment in Bible Hill, N.S. on Sunday, April 18, 2021. No officers in Montreal wear them and one coalition would like that to change. (Andrew Vaughan/The Canadian Press)

A coalition of groups and individuals is asking Montreal Mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada when the city’s police officers will start wearing body cameras.

When in opposition, Ensemble Montreal called for the “rapid implementation” of cameras in 2020 after Valerie Plante’s Projet Montreal administration ruled out implementing them a year prior.

The coalition notes that the City of Montreal’s Jan. 9 budget, submitted by the Ensemble Montreal mayor, includes $38.3 million for body cameras, but without concrete information about how and when the program will be implemented.

“Most major police departments in North America have successfully implemented body cameras years ago and consider the equipment a key element in promoting more professional policing and building public trust,” says former city councillor Marvin Rotrand, who is now director general of United Against Hate Canada.

The SPVM said that the money will be spread out over 10 years.

“Technological issues, such as data storage, and legal issues, particularly regarding the use of filmed images as evidence in court, must be taken into account in this project,” the SPVM’s media relations said.

It added it depends on Quebec’s Ministry of Public Security and the Ministry of Justice.

Rotrand said he finds it hard to understand why the force would oppose using body cameras.

“The former city administration puffed up the potential price tag to make it seem too costly to implement,” he said. “We don’t want that mindset, which may still be prevalent among some civil servants and some police officers, to cool off.”

The group added that the price for body camera systems has gone down “significantly” and that the cost argument no longer holds the weight it may have in the past.

But the mayor of Montreal told journalists Friday that the SPVM has “always been favourable to body cameras.”

Martinez Ferrada said the city advised Quebec it was going to include money for the cameras in its budget, but a large chunk of funding must come from the provincial government.

“It’s important for the public to have trust in its police service and cameras are part of that,” she said.

The RCMP says that about 10,000 body-worn cameras were deployed beginning in 2024, and as of June, 2025, over 63 per cent of those were in operation.

“Body-worn cameras can help increase trust between police and the communities they serve because the video evidence collected provides an independent, unbiased, and objective way to capture interactions between the community and police officers,” the national police force said on its website.

• READ MORE: Thousand of body-worn cameras to be issued to RCMP officers

The cost of the RCMP program is reported to cost about $238.5 million.

The Toronto Police Service began its body-worn camera program in 2020. The Quebec coalition said that if Montreal and Toronto’s programs are compared, equipping the SPVM’s around 2,000 front-line officers would cost between $7 to $8 million.

“We would welcome grants from the higher levels of government to aid Montreal to catch up with other cities like New York or Toronto, which have had excellent results from the rollout of body cameras for their officers,” said Black Coalition of Quebec president Max Stanley Bazin. “However, the lack of such grants at the moment should not be used as an excuse by Ensemble Montreal to push back body camera purchases.”

Police forces in Calgary, Vancouver, Edmonton, Los Angeles, Chicago and elsewhere have all begun body camera programs.

“All the data shows that body cameras foster accountability, transparency and more professional policing,” former Cote-Saint-Luc mayor and coalition member Mitch Brownstein said.

The coalition has sent a letter to Martinez Ferrada.