Montreal city council to discuss controversial bylaw banning insults against police officers

Montreal city council is expected to vote this week on a proposed bylaw that would allow members of the public to be fined for insulting police officers and other municipal workers.

The bylaw, which was drafted last month by Mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada’s administration, proposes fines of between $350 and $1,000 for citizens who intimidate, harass, threaten, verbally abuse or insult municipal workers. It also proposes doubling the fine for second-time offenders.

The city says the bylaw is needed, following years of increased incivility, aggression and threats of violence towards its staff.

According to Martinez Ferrada’s administration, between 2019 and 2025, the number of reported incidents involving those behaviours towards municipal employees increased by over 250 per cent.

Arguing for the need for stronger protections for police officers from verbal abuse and harassment, the mayor has pointed to the case of Mohamed Bekkali, a 24-year-old man who filmed himself hurling misogynistic insults at a police officer during a traffic stop in June 2025.

The video resurfaced online and was widely shared earlier this year, leading to Bekkali’s arrest for defamation in July. The situation led to broader conversations about the safety of police officers.

Rights groups, experts say bylaw goes too far

While the Fédération des policiers et policières municipaux du Québec (FPMQ) applauded the city’s announcement of the draft bylaw, it has been the subject of intense scrutiny from rights groups in the province.

In a joint statement, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association and the Ligue des droits et libertés denounced the draft bylaw, arguing that it infringes upon Montrealers’ rights to freedom of expression, and that it will create more problems than it solves.

“Allowing SPVM officers to issue fines for comments deemed offensive, but not threatening, significantly exacerbates the power imbalance between law enforcement and the public,” said Anaïs Bussières McNicoll, Quebec spokesperson for the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.

Ted Rutland, an associate professor at Concordia University who studies policing, says the bylaw is unnecessary.

“The police have a whole series of mechanisms that they can presently use when they believe they’re being mistreated by a citizen,” Rutland said, adding that Bekkali’s arrest earlier this year proves his point.

Rutland also says the bylaw could disproportionately affect members of marginalized communities, and exacerbate already tense relations with the police.

“We have a whole debate about how the police treat citizens and how to resolve some of these issues that we’ve been talking about for years, but also particularly since June of this year,” he said, referring to alleged cases of racial profiling by police officers at Station 39 in the Montréal-Nord borough.

“We’re not addressing any of these. Instead, we’re giving the police another tool to basically make it against the rules to be upset with the way that the police are treating them,” Rutland said.

Fo Niemi, the executive director of the Center for Research-Action on Race Relations (CRARR), wants the city to hold public consultations and study the potential social impacts of the proposed bylaw before adopting it.

“When one adopts a law with such an important ramification on citizens and residents, civil rights and civil liberties, one would expect that it should be studied,” he said.

If the bylaw is adopted, Niemi says it should include more precise language to define the types of harassment and intimidation it aims to ban.

“Let’s remember this battle is more than just about the insult,” Niemi said.

“It’s about intimidation and harassment, [which] can be nonverbal behaviours and conduct that can open the door to a lot of legal headaches, not to mention a lot of fines.

Bylaw could face legal challenge

Even if the draft bylaw is voted through by Montreal city council, Rutland believes it will be defeated if it faces a challenge in court.

“Jurisprudence on this question is very clear, that you don’t have the right to interfere with police work. You don’t have the right to threaten a police officer, but insulting a police officer is just as legal as insulting anyone else,” Rutland said.

“The courts have made that very clear.”

In a Facebook post on Friday, attorney Sibel Ataogul, a civil rights attorney who has represented clients in high profile constitutional challenges, expressed her opposition to the bylaw.

Ataogul wrote, in French, that anyone who wishes to contest it should contact her.

“I’m tempted to do it pro bono,” the post reads.