2023-04-30 04:00:00
Detainees in Montreal prisons will be able to claim $2,000 for each illegal strip search they have suffered, while Quebec will have to pay them more than $7.6 million due to a class action.
• Read also: Class action against strip searches in Montreal
• Read also: Compensation of $1,000 per illegal strip search
“The rule […] sends a strong message, through the amount imposed and the substantial individual compensation to members of a vulnerable population, to Quebecers and to the government, that the systemic practice complained of is unacceptable,” said Justice Catherine Piché of the Superior Court.
The magistrate approved, last February, an agreement resulting from a class action against the Attorney General of Quebec.
She was making sure to compensate the detainees who were strip searched and released after a videoconference at the Rivière-des-Prairies or Bordeaux detention facilities.
The action came to life in 2018, after the arrest of a man, Mathieu Barbeau, for driving while impaired.
Rather than being taken to a police operational center or the courthouse, where searches for those awaiting appearance are summary, he was sent to the Rivière-des-Prairies prison, where he underwent a total inspection.
Mathieu Barbeau had thus decided to launch a collective action on behalf of all those who have experienced “humiliating strip searches, needlessly violating physical integrity”, with the help of the law firm Trudel, Johnston & Lespérance.
6000 excavations
In November 2022, an agreement was reached with the Attorney General of Quebec, at the dawn of a trial which was to extend over eight days.
The lump sum of $7,650,000 to be paid by the authorities concerns 6,000 searches that took place between October 11, 2016 and March 20, 2020. Each of them represents an individual compensation of $2,000.
Photo d’archives
People who suffered illegal strip searches in the prisons of Bordeaux and Rivières-des-Prairies (photo) between October 11, 2016 and March 20, 2020 will be able to receive compensation of $2,000.
The settlement “achieves the objectives of the class action since not only will the members be compensated in generous proportion, but the systematic practice has already ceased since the pandemic, and has not resumed”, writes judge Catherine Piche.
The magistrate also justifies the approval of the agreement by considering the “substantial reduction in the duration of the litigation”, as a trial was avoided.
Such an outcome implies a “faster distribution of compensation to members of the group”, she underlines.
public interest
To cover its fees, Trudel, Johnston & Lespérance will collect $1.9 million, plus taxes, or 25% of the amount owed by the Attorney General.
Nearly 1100 hours were devoted to this case by his lawyers.
“The request for fees is justified by the file in question, which serves the public interest and is important from a societal point of view”, analyzes Judge Piché.
Let us recall that in 2001the Supreme Court of Canada had pointed out that “strip searches are fundamentally humiliating and degrading”, and that it should not be made a generalized policy.
This controversial practice is still being challenged in court elsewhere in the country. In March, the Ontario Superior Court authorized a class action against Canadian authorities for hundreds of thousands of strip searches of detainees over the past 30 years.
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