Executive Summary: Key Legal and Evidentiary Issues

• Legitimacy of the police stop and roadside detention, where the complainant alleged the intervention was triggered by racial profiling rather than genuine traffic or safety grounds.
• Credibility assessment between the officers and civilian witnesses on the U-turn, ability to see the driver and plate, alleged lane changes without signalling, and the driver’s conduct.
• Reliance on circumstantial evidence and grave, precise and concordant presumptions to establish racial profiling as discrimination under the Quebec Charter and article 5(4) of the police Code.
• Characterisation of the stop-and-hold as an illegal detention based on a prohibited ground, engaging article 7 and the threshold for a serious deontological fault.
• Findings that the two tickets and the breaking of a passenger’s health card were knowingly unjustified or malicious, engaging abuse of authority and probity under articles 6(3) and 8(1).
• Appellate deference to the Tribunal administratif en déontologie policière’s factual and sanction findings, applying the “erreur manifeste et déterminante” standard and upholding substantial unpaid suspensions.

Facts of the case

In March 2019, Stanley Jossirain, a young Black man of Haitian origin, drove his Nissan Altima east on Jean-Talon in Montréal-Nord with three friends, also young Black men, heading to a ball-hockey game. As he approached Lacordaire to turn left, a marked patrol car driven by officer Carlos-Antonio Flores, with officer Michael Mayer as passenger, passed in the opposite direction. Shortly after the vehicles crossed paths, the patrol car executed a U-turn, followed Jossirain and, after he turned and pulled over, stopped his vehicle. According to Jossirain and one passenger, eye contact was made between him and Flores, and the passenger immediately predicted that they would be stopped because they were Black.
Once stopped, Flores went to the driver’s side. Jossirain produced his valid driver’s licence, registration and insurance, all in order and in his name. Mayer went to the passenger side and began questioning front passenger Déreck Durand and the two rear passengers, Jaymal and Yoan Guerrier, about their identities, even though they were not suspected of any offence and had no legal obligation to identify themselves in this context. Durand, seeking to cooperate, handed over his provincial health insurance card; at least one of the others refused to identify himself.
Tension arose when Jossirain stated that his friends did not have to provide ID and Mayer leaned into the car to see the rear occupants. Flores told Jossirain that Mayer was not speaking to him. In response, Jossirain closed the passenger-side window while Mayer’s arm was partially in the opening. The officers would later treat this as obstructive. Two tickets were ultimately issued to Jossirain: one alleging he twice moved right without signalling and one alleging he obstructed a peace officer in the performance of duties under the Highway Safety Code.
A further incident involved Durand’s health card. When Mayer returned it, the card had a clean break across its length. Mayer claimed he had a longstanding compulsive habit of folding cards and that this was the first time one had broken; the complainants viewed the break as deliberate and accompanied by a nervous smile. In June 2019, Jossirain filed a complaint with the Commissaire à la déontologie policière and also approached the human rights commission, claiming discrimination. In September 2021, at the Montréal municipal court, the prosecutor withdrew both tickets, and no conviction remained against him.

Legal framework and issues

The proceedings were disciplinary, under the Code de déontologie des policiers du Québec. Four provisions were central. Article 5 requires police to preserve public confidence; paragraph 5(4) prohibits acts or comments based on race, colour, ethnic or national origin, among other grounds. Article 6 obliges officers to avoid abusing authority; paragraph 6(3) forbids knowingly laying an accusation without justification. Article 7 requires respect for the authority of law and cooperation with the administration of justice and covers illegal detention. Article 8 demands probity; paragraph 8(1) prohibits maliciously damaging another’s property.
Racial profiling was treated as discrimination under section 10 of the Charte des droits et libertés de la personne. The tribunal and the Cour du Québec applied the Supreme Court’s framework from Bombardier: there must be (1) a distinction, exclusion or preference, (2) based on a prohibited ground, and (3) that destroys or compromises equality in the exercise of a protected right. Racial profiling is a form of such discrimination, where an authority’s actions, ostensibly for safety or security, rely on race or colour rather than reasonable suspicion and result in differential treatment.
Direct evidence of discriminatory motive is rare, so proof typically rests on circumstantial evidence and presumptions that must be grave, precise and concordant. The complainant, here through the Commissaire, bore the burden to show on a balance of probabilities that the treatment was unusual, that race or colour was a factor, and that this impaired the right to equal treatment. If discrimination is established at first instance, the officers must justify their conduct under recognised exceptions.
On appeal, the Cour du Québec, sitting in its administrative and appeal division, used the usual standard of review: it could disturb findings of fact or mixed fact and law only where there was an “erreur manifeste et déterminante”, i.e., a palpable and overriding error. Sanctions were reviewed with the same deference as criminal sentences: appellate intervention is reserved for errors of law or principle, or a penalty that is manifestly unfit.

Findings of the police ethics tribunal

The Tribunal administratif en déontologie policière (TADP), formerly the Comité de déontologie policière, held a hearing on culpability in June 2023. In file C-2021-5353-3, it convicted both Flores and Mayer on four counts. On Count 1, the tribunal found a breach of article 5(4): the stop, questioning and treatment of Jossirain and his passengers were driven by their race and colour and constituted racial profiling. Count 2 found an article 7 breach: the detention that began with the stop and continued throughout the encounter was illegal, because it flowed from that discriminatory motive and lacked genuine, credible grounds. Counts 4 and 5 involved article 6(3): the two tickets (for alleged unsignalled right-hand lane changes and for obstruction) were issued knowingly without justification, amounting to abuse of authority.
The tribunal’s analysis turned heavily on credibility. It rejected the officers’ explanation that they had read the plate and checked it before the stop, and their claim that a visible “sagging” rear suspension had prompted concern. It did not accept that the driver twice moved right without signalling, noting that the complainant’s testimony on his driving, including use of signals, was not undermined in cross-examination. The tribunal characterised the officers’ purported reasons as after-the-fact pretexts to justify what was, in reality, a racially motivated intervention.
The tribunal also considered Mayer’s insistence on questioning and identifying passengers who clearly had no obligation to identify themselves, coupled with a comment suggesting that refusal meant having something to hide, as distinct from normal practice in similar traffic stops. It weighed the damaging of Durand’s health card and the manner in which it was returned. In all, it identified a series of “indicators” of racial profiling: the U-turn after seeing a racialized driver; absence of a credible safety rationale; unusual focus on passengers’ identities; the broken card; two groundless tickets; and a pattern of implausible testimony.
In file C-2021-5354-3, the tribunal convicted Mayer alone on Count 1 of breaching article 8(1) by maliciously damaging Durand’s card. After examining the card’s clean fracture and Mayer’s explanation that this was the first time a card had broken from his supposed folding habit, the tribunal found his account not credible. Coupled with the wider discriminatory context, it inferred malice.
A separate sanctions hearing in March 2024 led to significant unpaid suspensions. For file 5353, each officer received a 25-day suspension without pay on Count 1 and a 3-day suspension on Count 2, to run concurrently with each other. On Counts 4 and 5, each received 8-day suspensions per count, concurrent with each other but consecutive to the suspensions on Counts 1 and 2. For file 5354, Mayer was given a further 3-day suspension, consecutive to all suspensions from file 5353. Flores thus faced an aggregate 33-day suspension without pay; Mayer, 36 days. The tribunal deliberately placed the sanctions at the higher end of the range seen in earlier profiling cases, citing the increased recognition of racial profiling as a serious social problem and the need for dissuasive, exemplary penalties.

Appeal to the Cour du Québec

Flores and Mayer appealed both guilt and sanction to the Cour du Québec. They challenged the findings on racial profiling, illegal detention, unjustified tickets and malicious damage to the card, arguing that the evidence did not meet the required thresholds and that the TADP misapplied the discrimination framework and evidentiary standards. They relied on the Court of Appeal’s Lambert decision, where racial profiling had been rejected on a record that showed a clear legal basis for the initial intervention and video evidence undercutting the complainant’s account.
The Cour du Québec distinguished Lambert. There, the initial stop was justified by a visible seatbelt infraction, and the only alleged discriminatory act was handcuffing, which the Court of Appeal found properly grounded in safety concerns. By contrast, in Flores and Mayer’s case, the very decision to stop the vehicle and continue the intervention was unsupported by credible safety or traffic reasons, and the tribunal had documented multiple improbabilities and inconsistencies in the officers’ version. The appellate judge held that the TADP had correctly applied the three-part discrimination test and reasonably concluded that race and colour were factors in the officers’ actions, based on a set of grave, precise and concordant presumptions.
On the illegal detention issue, the court accepted that the detention began as soon as the patrol car stopped Jossirain and persisted until the end of the interaction. Because the stop itself was found to result from racial profiling and the purported traffic justifications were pretextual, the detention was unlawful and serious enough to constitute a deontological breach of article 7. The court stressed that racial profiling by police undermines trust, causes fear and humiliation, and is a serious form of fault, not a mere technical misstep.
Regarding the two tickets under article 6(3), the Cour du Québec endorsed the TADP’s conclusion that the officers knowingly issued them without justification. Since the tribunal had rejected the factual basis for both alleged infractions, it was open to it to characterise the tickets as part of the discriminatory intervention. The court also accepted that Mayer shared responsibility for the tickets, noting the documentary evidence and the fact that the officers acted together throughout.
On Mayer’s liability under article 8(1) for the health card, the court found no reviewable error in the TADP’s inference of malice. The physical condition of the card and the surrounding circumstances, viewed in the context of the entire incident, supported the conclusion that the card was intentionally broken. The court held that this was a factual inference squarely within the tribunal’s role.
As to sanctions, the officers argued that the TADP erred in finding a high risk of recidivism and that the suspensions were manifestly excessive. The Cour du Québec noted that the tribunal had considered that they had no prior deontological record but had significant experience, and had shown little introspection or awareness of the seriousness of racial profiling. It emphasised that appellate bodies may not substitute their own assessment of how much weight to give to each factor; intervention is reserved for errors of law or clearly unfit penalties. Given the number and seriousness of the faults—including discriminatory motivation, knowingly issuing false tickets, and maliciously damaging property—the aggregate suspensions, while severe, fell within the range identified in comparable cases and were not manifestly unfit. The decision to order some suspensions consecutively was upheld as a legitimate exercise of discretion where distinct faults were involved.

Outcome and monetary consequences

The Cour du Québec dismissed the appeal in full, confirming all findings of deontological fault against officers Flores and Mayer and upholding the suspensions without pay imposed by the Tribunal administratif en déontologie policière. The successful party is the respondent, Me Michel Desgroseilliers in his capacity as Commissaire à la déontologie policière. The judgment expressly states that the appeal is rejected “sans frais de justice” and does not award damages or any other monetary sums; accordingly, the total monetary amount ordered in favour of the successful party is zero, and the consequences of the case consist solely of non-monetary disciplinary sanctions in the form of unpaid suspensions.