A proposed municipal bylaw prohibiting insults against police officers and other municipal employees in Montreal is expected to be voted on next week. The draft bylaw aims to protect municipal employees from behaviour deemed inappropriate — including intimidating, harassing, threatening, abusing or insulting — while they carry out their duties. First-time offences would carry fines of $350 to $1,000, with repeat offences doubled. The proposal follows viral videos from March showing a man hurling misogynistic comments at a female police officer. “We can’t stop giving protection to employees facing real situations that aren’t acceptable. Many police officers are women, almost 40 per cent, and they are directly impacted in their jobs by this,” Montreal Mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada told CJAD 800. Ferrada emphasized that the measure is necessary to protect employees and prevent situations from escalating, while acknowledging that the bylaw must be executed respectfully. “Let’s be clear, you can be mad and say, ‘Why the hell are you giving me a ticket?’ It won’t stop you from sharing your emotion,” she said. “But going to the point where you’re intimidating, and we saw that happening in the case where the police officer was a woman, very explicitly in a video, then there’s a line where it can be misogynistic and it can be hateful.” Similar bylaws already exist in Quebec City, Sherbrooke, and Laval. According to the draft, the measure builds on existing municipal mechanisms by explicitly prohibiting inappropriate behaviour and granting powers to impose administrative and criminal penalties for breaches. Civil rights groups have raised concerns over potential risks of abuse with the bylaw. The League for Rights and Freedoms, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, Hoodstock and the Saint-Michel Legal Clinic sent a joint letter to the mayor Thursday expressing concern with the draft. The organizations criticized the city for prioritizing this bylaw rather than addressing existing provisions that they say facilitate racial and social profiling, such as roadside stops and searches. They also called on the mayor for a public consultation to discuss the best ways to achieve the city’s objective while ensuring the law isn’t abused. CTV News reached out to the city for comment but did not recieve one in time for publication.
