Black and Indigenous men and women have been overrepresented in cannabis possession arrests across Canada in the years since Justin Trudeau became Prime Minister, according to a VICE News investigation based on police data obtained through freedom of information requests.
It’s the first public set of statistics of its kind, as national arrest and charge numbers broken down by race do not exist in Canada, and police are under no obligation to proactively disclose them. The exclusive data provides further evidence that racial disparities in cannabis possession arrests are an issue in Canada, just like in the U.S.
The racial divide in cannabis possession arrests from 2015 to the first half of 2017 in cities such as Regina, Saskatchewan and Halifax, Nova Scotia is especially striking, though research has shown that cannabis use is similar across different racial groups.
Indigenous people in Regina were nearly nine times more likely to get arrested for cannabis possession than white people during that time period. Meanwhile, black people in Halifax were more than five times more likely to get arrested for possessing weed than white people.
This year, Canada is set to become the second country in the world to legalize cannabis for recreational use. And the government is facing mounting pressure to promptly clear the criminal records of those who have been convicted of the offense and to ensure the legal recreational market provides opportunities for those who have been criminalized for cannabis possession. While Ottawa says it’s exploring granting amnesty for those crimes, it’s unclear exactly when or if that will happen. Currently, it’s up to individuals to apply for their own pardons five years after their sentence is completed — at a cost of more than $600.
VICE News submitted a freedom of information requests to 14 police services across Canada for single-charge cannabis possession arrest statistics from 2015 to 2017 broken down by race, age, the gender of the accused, and other categories. Data related to the offense of cannabis possession was requested because it will be legal to possess up to 30 grams of cannabis after legalization, and because of the wide discretion police have in arresting and charging people for this offense.
Only six police services disclosed data that successfully met the request: Regina, Halifax, Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver, and Ottawa. All cities provided data up until the middle of 2017, except Ottawa, which provided statistics for all of 2017. Some police services, such as Vancouver, indicated the amount of cannabis the alleged offenders possessed, while others just listed the offense as a general possession. These datasets were shared with University of Toronto criminologists Akwasi Owusu-Bempah and Alex Luscombe who reviewed them and provided analysis.
The Ontario Provincial Police said it could not provide a breakdown of cannabis arrests by race, as the records are decentralized. The Winnipeg Police Service said it did not capture race data, and instead provided a breakdown of arrests by neighborhood. And the Montreal Police said that while it could make statistics available, they would not include race or other requested categories. The Saint John Police Service provided statistics but did not include race as the force “only reports race where it is material to the incident (eg. Hate Crime.),” the records response letter states.
Datasets from St. John’s, Newfoundland and Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island provided only a couple dozen possession incidents since 2015, so they have been left aside. Freedom of information requests are pending with the Toronto Police and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
For drug policy and legal experts, the dataset further supports calls for the federal government to expedite criminal record pardons (known officially in Canada as record suspensions) for those convicted of cannabis possession, and for police to halt cannabis possession arrests leading up to legalization.
“This data is so powerful because it confirms the speculation or the idea that Canada’s war on drugs has been so heavily racialized,” Owusu-Bempah, the U of T criminologist, told VICE News. “We can literally see from coast to coast that there are pretty stark racial differences in terms of who is arrested for minor cannabis possession.”
A 2017 Toronto Star investigation showed that black people with no criminal convictions were three times more likely to be arrested for weed possession than white people in the city with similar backgrounds, but it has, until now, been unclear what the situation looks like in other parts of Canada.
“We know that rates of cannabis use are relatively similar across racial groups. So the fact that specific groups have been disproportionately targeted for drug law enforcement, especially black and Indigenous populations, strengthens that need for amnesty and for pardons,” Owusu-Bempah explained. “Because those groups have not only been disproportionately targeted, they have been disproportionately harmed by the consequences of having a criminal record.”
In many cases, it’s unclear how many incidents in the data resulted in charges or convictions, or whether they were part of other types of charges or arrests. VICE News has previously revealed that the vast majority of criminal charges laid against employees of illegal dispensaries in Toronto in recent years, for example, were either dropped or withdrawn. It’s also unclear how many incidents in these statistics may have involved the same person.
In response to requests for comment from VICE News on the findings, and the issue of overrepresentation in their cannabis possession arrests, the Regina, Halifax, Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver, and Ottawa police services said there could be a number of factors at play, and said that their officers aim to conduct themselves with professionalism and impartiality. Some also pointed out that cannabis possession charges are laid in conjunction with other types of criminal charges.
“It’s the presence of a crime, not a person’s race, that leads to their arrest,” Vancouver Police Constable Jason Doucette wrote to VICE news in an email.
Regina
Of the cities for which cannabis arrest race data was obtained, Regina has the starkest racial divide, especially when it comes to Indigenous men and women. The terms Aboriginal and Métis were used in this dataset.
White people, on the other hand, were significantly underrepresented in cannabis possession arrests when compared to their proportion of the city’s overall population.
Indigenous people in Regina comprise 9.3 percent of the city’s population but accounted for nearly 41 percent of marijuana possession charges laid by the Regina Police in both 2015 and 2016. That number went down to 36 percent during the first half of 2017.
This is the case even though cannabis possession arrests by Regina Police declined from 198 in 2015 to 142 in 2016, and to 91 for the first half of 2017. The race for about a dozen incidents was reported as “not available” and was subtracted from the total number of arrests in calculating percentages by race.
White people make up around 82 percent of the overall population of Regina but comprise only 43 percent of the possession arrests in 2015. In 2016, white people dropped to 36 percent of those arrests and went up slightly to 40 percent for the first half of 2017.
Regina criminal defense lawyer Noah Evanchuk said he and his colleagues deal with a high volume of drug prosecution cases, most of which involve Indigenous people.
“What you’ll see is the simple possession of cannabis charge is the gatekeeper to get into another charge. I call it the ‘breach machine,’” Evanchuk told VICE News in a phone interview.
Robert Innes, head of Indigenous studies at the University of Saskatchewan, described the possession numbers as “shocking but not surprising.”
“People in Saskatchewan don’t like to talk about the level of racism in this province and the perceptions that non-indigenous people have of indigenous people … it’s really entrenched,” Innes explained.
In response to the data analysis and questions from VICE News, Regina Police spokesperson Elizabeth Popowich wrote in an email that alleged offenders self-identify their race when they are held in the detention area.
“We have long known that the percentage of Indigenous persons involved in the criminal justice system is higher than the percentage of Indigenous persons in our province and our cities. There is not a simple explanation for this,” Popowich wrote.
“The effect of this social phenomenon is often manifested as crime and investigation into the crime results in over-representation of the minority group in the justice system. Addressing the over-representation requires addressing the root causes of the marginalization itself. While we can be part of the solution, developing and delivering effective interventions is not necessarily the work of police, who largely respond to crime (the symptom),” she continued.
Ottawa
In the nation’s capital, Indigenous and black people, and people noted as “Middle Eastern” by the Ottawa Police Service, are notably overrepresented in cannabis possession arrests for 2015, 2016, and 2017.
Overall cannabis possession arrest rates have declined there since 2015, dropping from 771 in 2015 to 680 in 2016, and to 522 last year, according to the police data.
Black people comprise 6.3 percent of the city’s population but made up 22 percent of weed possession arrests in 2015. Black men and women also made up 18 percent of those arrests in 2016, and 23 percent in 2017.
Statistics Canada reports that “Arab” people make up 4.2 percent of Ottawa’s population. The Ottawa Police data shows that Middle Eastern people made up 15 percent of the cannabis possession arrests in 2015, 13 percent of the arrests in 2016, and 16 percent of the arrests last year.
Indigenous people comprise around 4.2 percent of Ottawa’s population and made up seven percent of weed possession arrests in both 2015 and 2016, and five percent of the arrests in 2017.
People identified as “unknown” in the data — of which there were 16 in 2015, and 65 for both 2016 and 2017 — were subtracted from the annual totals.
The Ottawa Police provided VICE News with the complete set of data, which includes all cannabis possession arrests for the last three years. Ottawa Police spokesperson Carole Lavigne could not say by deadline exactly how officers there identify the race of the accused, only that such information is collected “when someone is charged and fingerprinted.”
When asked about the issue of overrepresentation in the police service’s data, Lavigne wrote: “[T]he Ottawa Police Service, like many police services, is aware of the overrepresentation of individuals from racialized backgrounds in the justice system overall.”
Lavigne pointed to a number of steps the Ottawa Police has taken to “ensure that policing is bias neutral” including an “anti-racial profiling policy review” and the “development” of a new Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Officer.
Vancouver
Vancouver enjoys a worldwide reputation for its cannabis-friendly environment and has been home to some of Canada’s most prominent and vocal pot advocates. It was also one of the first cities in Canada to regulate cannabis dispensaries — in spite of the federal ban prohibiting them. The Vancouver Police Department also prides itself on taking a “progressive” approach when it comes to drug policies.
However, there have been hundreds of arrests for cannabis possession in the city since 2015. And, again, Indigenous and black people are overrepresented, according to an analysis of the police data. White people were arrested at rates roughly in line with their overall percentage of Vancouver’s population: around 48 percent.
It was one of the only datasets that denoted the quantity of cannabis, and so only possession under 30 grams was analyzed. There were 109 incidents where the person’s race was noted as “unknown” from 2015 to 2017. Those were subtracted from the totals to calculate the race percentages.
In 2015, there were 822 arrests for cannabis possession under 30 grams made by the Vancouver Police, 17 percent of which were identified by the department as involving an Aboriginal man or woman. According to Statistics Canada, 2.5 percent of Vancouver’s population reports having “Aboriginal identity.”
While cannabis possession arrests dropped to 609 in 2016, the percentage of those identified as Aboriginal remained steady at 16 percent. The police reported that Aboriginal people made up 11 percent of the 364 possession arrests for the first half of 2017. While black people represent around 1.2 percent of Vancouver’s population, they comprised four percent of the possession arrests in 2015, eight percent in 2016, and five percent in 2017.
For Simon Fraser University criminologist Neil Boyd, the overrepresentation of Indigenous men and women in cannabis possession arrests could have “something to do with visibility on the street, and the lack of access to private spaces.”
“I dont think it’s because police go out of their way to arrest Aboriginal and black people, but because of what disadvantage creates and the extent to which disadvantage draws into a public situation,” Boyd said in a phone interview.
While it’s unclear how many of the Vancouver incidents resulted in charges or convictions, Boyd says even a record of arrest can cause trouble for people at the border, or when attempting to get work or volunteer positions.
Therefore it’s critical for companies licensed by Health Canada to produce legal cannabis to include people who have been targeted by weed possession laws, said Boyd. “A failure to do that will mean they will continue to compete with the black market.”
Vancouver Police spokesperson Jason Doucette continued: “As for the imbalance of the per cent of a certain race being arrested for cannabis possession, I don’t have any information showing that race played a role. It’s the presence of a crime, not a person’s race, that leads to their arrest.”