With the release of a new report on racial profiling today, the B.C. Civil Liberties Association is challenging the provincial and federal governments to demonstrate how they’re working to eliminate racial profiling from policing and law enforcement activities.

“These papers are updated from a conference held in 2007,” said law professor Reem Bahdi of the University of Windsor who wrote the introductory paper. “At that conference we challenged government to change policy and be responsive to the issue, but three years later the papers remain as relevant as when they were authored; the problem with profiling and stereotyping in Canada has yet to be adequately addressed.”

The report, launched today in Vancouver by Professor Bahdi, examines the phenomenon of racial profiling from a number of perspectives, including a paper the head of federal policing in B.C., Richard Bent. All of the papers have been updated to include developments since the conference.

“Racial profiling is bad policy,” said Robert Holmes, President of the BCCLA. “Although promoted as improving security, it has not been demonstrated to do that. To the contrary, it decreases security, including by undermining the respect to which each member of society is entitled.”

The report will be sent to the provincial, federal and municipal government levels to ask what active programs they have implemented in the last ten years to ensure that law enforcement and security initiatives do not target populations by race.