Canadian Human Rights Commission urges police forces to start collecting data on who and why they stop individuals for investigation

The Canadian Human Rights Commission and Canadian Race Relations Foundation issued a joint statement this week calling for Canadian police and security officials to start documenting who they stop for an investigation including tracking race, age and gender.

The call for such data collection follows the release of report commissioned for the Canadian Human Rights Commission entitled "The Effectiveness of Profiling from a National Security Perspective" which concludes that there is no evidence to support the reliability or moral legitimacy of profiling based on race or other prohibited grounds of discrimination.

The Ontario Human Rights Commission is already on record in support of race-based data collection by any institution or agency where there is evidence of racial profiling or other evidence of racial discrimination. See "Policy and Guidelines on Racism and Racial Discrimination" (Ontario Human Rights Commission, 2003) at 43-48.