Gatineau seeks to suspend warrants that could jail over 300 homeless people for unpaid fines

The City of Gatineau has asked Quebec's Superior Court to suspend hundreds of controversial warrants for imprisonment issued at the Gatineau courthouse that disproportionately target people experiencing homelessness.

For nearly three years, Quebec courts are supposed to have been verifying whether someone about to be issued a warrant for imprisonment for unpaid fines is actually capable of paying them.

If they can't pay, imprisoning them for nonpayment is prohibited. That's been the case since June 2020.

But twice a year up until December 2022, judicial officials at Gatineau's city hall issued hundreds of imprisonment warrants, including against people who did not have the ability to pay.

In an application filed April 6 with the Superior Court, the city wants to immediately suspend 1,669 warrants issued in recent years against people who have not paid municipal fines. A court date has been set for April 17 to hear the city's case. 

According to the city, 309 of the warrants are for people who were residing in a shelter or centre for people experiencing homelessness at the time of their offences. In many cases, they faced charges related to substance abuse or homelessness.

Hundreds of files to analyze

Other municipalities in Quebec haven't issued warrants like this against homeless people for years.

The City of Montreal, for example, has not applied them since 2011, and the cities of Drummondville and Quebec have not done so since 2017 and 2018, respectively. 

The City of Gatineau's application for suspension says it wants to analyze the circumstances in which the warrants were issued.

In all of its cases, the persons were not present or represented in court when the warrants were issued.

Its analysis is not yet complete, but the city said in its application that it can't delay responding to the growing concerns over its practices and about their impact on the people involved.

The city wants to prevent these people from being exposed to a risk of imprisonment which could subsequently be deemed illegal, it says in the document filed with the Superior Court.

To defend itself in this case, the City of Gatineau has called on three lawyers from the firm Norton Rose Fulbright Canada in Montreal.

A practice prohibited by Quebec

The Quebec government sought to end the imprisonment of people who could not afford to pay their fines by amending the Code of Criminal Procedure in June 2020.

On March 10, Justice Catherine Mandeville of the Superior Court of Quebec forced Gatineau to adhere to Quebec policy in an oral judgment.

In addition to cancelling 12 warrants of imprisonment for a citizen named David Bonfond, Mandeville denounced the fact that the city and Gatineau courthouse had not respected the rules by failing to verify his ability to pay his fines.

Marie-Ève Sylvestre, dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Ottawa, said the current setup of processing the files twice a year presents challenges for "several actors", including the judges of the municipal courts.

"[Municipal] judges should realize that they cannot simply go through [hundreds] of cases in one hearing without considering the application of the law, and in particular the litigants ability to pay," she said in French. 

"We talk about deprivation of liberty, we talk about incarceration in often horrible conditions. […] Before making a decision with such consequences, it is the minimum, I think, that the judges respect the law," Sylvestre added. 

Application for authorization of class action

In a class action petition filed last month, lawyers call the warrants of imprisonment issued in Gatineau a "completely illegal" practice and "a true vestige of the Dickens era."

The class action request criticizes the practice of processing these files in bulk twice a year, without even drawing up a report. This request is made jointly by the firms Kugler Kandestin, in Montreal, and JFB Avocats criminalistes, in Gatineau.

It appears that requests for the imposition of a jail sentence are processed administratively, without real judicial control, according to the 35-page document dated March 13.

"The city knew or should have known that imposing jail sentences [targeting people experiencing homelessness] was unfounded, unjustified and illegal, that it had not investigated or carried out even the most basic checks on their ability to pay their fines and chose to ignore reports indicating that the members of the group were vulnerable and destitute," the document also said. 

The plaintiffs' lawyers want to obtain compensation for each victim of such imprisonment in the amount of $10,000 per day spent in jail, in addition to paying each of them some $50,000 in punitive damages.

In response, the City of Gatineau points out that it is not directly responsible for requests for imprisonment, which are made by collectors responsible for collecting the amounts due in court.

"These steps are the responsibility of the collector of fines, who is an officer of the court, and ultimately of the Municipal Court, which issued the warrants referred to in your questions. It goes without saying that the city advocates compliance with all applicable rules in the context of proceedings before the Municipal Court," the City of Gatineau said in a written statement.