The leader of Canada’s New Democratic Party, Jagmeet Singh has again called for a ban on the police practice of stopping people for no apparent reason. The practice is also called racial profiling or carding and has been denounced by people in several racial communities.
Singh was visiting a predominantly black neighbourhood in the eastern city of Halifax on April 5, 2018 with local activists. He called carding a form of systemic racism which he himself has experienced 11 times. It first happened when Singh was 17 and continued when he was studying law in Toronto.
In July 2017, Jagmeet Singh tweeted his reaction to being carded as a law student. (Twitter)
‘Racism results in life and death situations,’ tweeted leader
On July 13, 2017, Singh tweeted: “The practice of carding sends people of colour a destructive message; that our existence is threatening. That we don’t belong.” And in another tweet that day: “This culture of racial bias & anti-black racism results in life and death situations for black, brown & Indigenous people.”
The comments coincide with recently-released research by the public broadcaster, CBC, which shows that black victims are overrepresented in lethal encounters with Toronto police and Indigenous people are overrepresented in such cases in the western Prairie provinces.
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