Montreal’s cop-ification of transit constables

Metro officers push to be armed with the backing of their union confederation

Depiction of Juliano Gray's beating at the hands of Societe de transport de Montreal (STM) officers in 2019 –⁠ two years prior to the introduction of special constables with expanded powers within the STM. Illustrated recreation by Casper Slack from a still of a video posted by Nzo Hodges.

In the fall of 2025, the union of special constables patrolling Montreal’s metro network began publicly pressuring the Société de Transport de Montréal (STM) to allow its officers to carry firearms. 

This is in addition to the weapons that members of the Fraternité des Constables et Agents de la Paix de la STM (FCAP) already carry. In 2023, the constables added a gel form of pepper spray to their arsenal, which already included batons. This measure of added violence was disingenuously described to the media by the STM’s security director, Jocelyn Latulippe, as a tool to “facilitate peaceful outcomes by acting as a deterrent.”

More recently, FCAP, which is affiliated with Montreal’s second largest trade union Confédération des Syndicats Nationaux (CSN), is seeking to broaden its members’ access to deadly weaponry. In June, the FCAP union’s president, Kevin Grenier, argued that the lack of firearms and stun guns leaves officers vulnerable, claiming that it allows “people [to] feel justified in attacking us.” 

Grenier’s argument is supported by a report commissioned by FCAP and authored by a retired Sûreté du Québec officer, Mario Benriqué. According to reporting by CTV News, the report recommends that not only should special constables be armed, they should also be granted access to a confidential police database.

The campaign has gained the attention of the Quebec workplace and safety board which agrees that constables should be better armed. For now, the STM maintains that it has no plans to equip its officers with guns – instead favouring de-escalation – but the momentum behind FCAP’s demands, bolstered by a growing security apparatus in the metro, should not be ignored.

At the heart of this situation lies a troubling contradiction. How can a labour confederation like the CSN, which publicly promotes equality, justice, and democracy, support a movement within its own ranks that could further endanger Montreal’s poorest and most heavily policed residents?  

This push to arm constables raises serious concerns. It significantly heightens the risk of harmful or even fatal encounters with members of the unhoused community, who are regularly portrayed by the City of Montreal and the media as the biggest issue facing the STM. Racialized residents, who are up to five times more likely to be targeted by law enforcement in Montreal, also stand to be disproportionately affected. 

The current situation in the metro

Special constables are seeking to broaden their powers at a moment when the metro is already being modified through security measures aimed at creating an environment tailored to the comfort of paying customers and hostile to everyone else.

However, people who are unhoused or in crisis exist outside of these privileges and are often framed by the municipal government and the STM as threats to public safety. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, houselessness was a significant issue in the city, but has since greatly intensified. Despite this, the government has failed to address the rising need for more shelter spaces, mental health resources, and support for community outreach workers, choosing to respond with punitive measures instead. 

In March 2025, the STM introduced a month-long ‘move along’ order that banned loitering, gathering, and sleeping in metro stations. What was initially described as a temporary measure, however, appears to have been a test run for something more permanent.

In June of 2025, the STM abruptly announced that the order would be reinstated and extended until the end of April 2026. This decision was made with the support of then-mayor Valérie Plante, who said she supported the move in response to growing concerns about safety from metro clientele. The STM claimed that the data collected during the test period showed an increased “sense of safety” among metro users.

Community organizers and researchers agree that this paradox of promoting the feeling of safety – for paying customers, STM employees, and constables themselves – provides the veneer of comfort for some by criminalizing the presence of others without tangibly improving the conditions that reduce the need for people to shelter in the metro.

While the desire to feel safe is not inherently discriminatory, it becomes so when it is secured by displacing others who lack access to housing, public transportation, and other basic needs. In practice, the policy pushes unhoused people further from their communities and systems of support, and fuels FCAP’s agenda to carry more weapons. 

Nicolas Chevalier, a community organizer with Climate Justice Montreal, points out how the loitering ban actually erodes safety. “This ‘move along’ order is absolutely not making anyone safe, because it is the constant motion of displacing people who have [...] unmet needs,” says Chevalier. “Anybody who needs transit [...] deserves to be treated with the utmost respect.” 

To Chevalier’s point on safety, community workers have noted increasing displays of understandable irritation among those experiencing repeated displacement in the metro. This response has been met with excessive rudeness and violent, zero tolerance approaches from law enforcement, creating a cycle of tension. As a result, overall safety becomes less attainable for everyone involved.

Annie Savage, the director at Réseau d’aide aux personnes seules et itinérantes de Montréal (RAPSIM), called for a shift in perspective toward the “move-along” order during a June 2025 press conference. She emphasized that such directives make it nearly impossible for outreach workers to support unhoused people under already unworkable conditions. 

“We don’t want them inside, we don’t want them outside, we don’t want them near our home,” Savage said to The Rover, describing the prevailing public attitudes toward the unhoused community. “Everyone wants us to act, but no one is willing to compromise that their day-to-day could be impacted by the presence of people in vulnerable situations or even in distress in public spaces.”

Contradictions within the CSN

Understanding how these harms unfold requires a critique of the institutions that enable them. For the CSN, their stated commitments against injustice sit uneasily alongside their allegiances to the special constables who perform these often violent acts of displacement. 

[The Confédération des Syndicats Nationaux] are showing to their own members and society that they are only there for certain maintenance of the status quo, and for the rights of their workers to be priority over the actual safety, human rights, and justice for all other people,” [Chevalier says]. 

The CSN is a century-old union confederation, largely focused within Quebec, that brings together over 1,600 unions and represents more than 330,000 members. With a long-standing legacy and influence, the CSN is a powerful force supporting workers’ rights. Examples include fighting for better employment insurance programs and pushing for the Pay Equity Act. However, while the CSN represents working-class people like teachers and construction workers, they also represent individuals who are employed by the state to inflict violence toward those most exposed to oppression. 

Chevalier agrees that the CSN’s ties to special constables betray the confederation’s supposed progressive values. “They are showing to their own members and society that they are only there for certain maintenance of the status quo, and for the rights of their workers to be priority over the actual safety, human rights, and justice for all other people,” they say. 

This creates a predicament for workers who might otherwise benefit from unionizing and affiliating with a confederation like the CSN. Some will hesitate to join, unwilling to share membership with unions that also represent agents of state violence, like prison guards at the federal and provincial levels. 

In a 2021 Briarpatch article written in the wake of the 2020 surge of Black Lives Matter protests, Sophie Jin makes a case for how strengthening labour protections for police comes at the cost of increased violence toward already intensely policed communities. Jin interviews members of a non-profit that serves racialized, queer, and trans youth who considered joining the CSN, but decided against it when they heard that the CSN was poaching correctional officers from other unions. “Many of the non-profit’s staff, as well as the population they serve, are targeted by the police, making joining a union ‘family’ alongside law enforcement an affront to their values and a threat to their safety,” Jin writes.

A growing divide between maintenance workers and FCAP is also emerging within Montreal’s metro network as the STM, with the support of the City of Montreal, continues to expand its security agenda. The STM states that reducing maintenance is one of their top priorities. Yet, the transit network continues to address this issue through policing, displacement, and architectural measures rather than by supporting maintenance workers who are already employed for these efforts. Meanwhile, maintenance workers, station agents, and metro operators – all affiliated with the CSN – have spent much of 2025 fighting for better working conditions, to no avail. By late October, the STM announced it would cut 300 of those very jobs.

“To have them both under the same roof, is absolutely ridiculous,” notes Chevalier, referring to the fact that STM workers and special constables are both affiliated with the CSN. “We’ll see if tensions come to a head within [the CSN] itself.”

In the meantime, with an estimated 10,000 unhoused people in the city and only 2,072 shelter beds available, this approach fuels a tense and hostile dynamic between people who rely on the metro for shelter, and those tasked with cleaning or maintaining those spaces – one that FCAP can then use to further their argument for additional weaponry.

“The mixed squad may displace the person in a slightly softer way than the regular police […] but you’re still displacing them,” he says. “[...] The police will mostly harass and displace people in response to calls, but [mixed squads] are more actively patrolling areas. Even if no one calls, they will go around and make sure people leave.”

Treating the current situation in the metro as a security issue rather than as a social one created by lack of access to resources will only perpetuate this cycle of displacement, place more people at risk, and increase the number of unhoused people.

The danger of arming special constables

People in crisis in metro stations, who are often unhoused, are too often perceived by law enforcement and people passing by as dangerous. That perception can heighten the risk of harmful outcomes. Alarmingly, the STM is depending on its special constables showing “good judgment” in handling these situations.

Orlando Nicoletti, a PhD student researching public safety and policing in Montreal, points out that mixed squads – the City of Montreal’s strategy for patrolling the metro that often pairs special constables with police officers and social workers – are not the answer either. 

“The mixed squad may displace the person in a slightly softer way than the regular police […] but you’re still displacing them,” he says. “[...] The police will mostly harass and displace people in response to calls, but [mixed squads] are more actively patrolling areas. Even if no one calls, they will go around and make sure people leave.”

Nicoletti also suggests that STM constables are intervening in minor situations that would fall below the threshold of the Service de la Police de le Ville de Montreal (SPVM) involvement. “If you end up arming constables the same way as the police,” he notes, “you’re just extending policing to even more minor levels of interaction. So that’s definitely very dangerous.” 

The risk of harm is greatly heightened, as constables are legally allowed to inflict violence. The Rover has reported instances where metro users have witnessed police and constables using excessive force toward individuals that they are allegedly “moving along.” Bystanders filming or asking officers questions about their actions have been answered with rudeness, or even detained. Just recently, The Rover published a story about a precariously housed Inuit woman who reported being sexually assaulted by an STM constable in early 2025. Neither FCAP nor the CSN have issued a public comment.

“With the added political and bargaining power of their unions, officers have won contracts thick with protections, and their disciplinary standards are so lax it has resulted in increased police brutality,” writes Jin in their Briarpatch article.

“The state has a monopoly on violence. Who exerts that monopoly? The police at a daily level,” argues Nicoletti. “So, when you are using the police to solve an issue, you are deciding to address that issue through violent means.”

Nicoletti argues that arming constables will only deepen this logic. “The people whose job it is to address things through violence, they’re going to want to have all of the means of violence at their disposal to address the situation, because that’s the thing they know how to do. It’s just logical that they will mentally reach for the tools for their job.”

“The whole problem is that we shouldn’t use violence to address these situations – it’s totally inhumane and also counterproductive,” Nicoletti says.

The STM has defended its “move-along” order and increased enforcement by citing concerns about overcrowding, lack of cleanliness, and drug use in stations. Yet the rationale for escalating force remains unclear, particularly because the stated purpose of enforcing the order, according to the STM’s own data, was a reduction in loitering and public urination.

Nicoletti warns that arming special constables would endanger not only the unhoused community but also racialized people, and more specifically, racialized youth. “A huge part of racial profiling by the police and the STM cops happens in the metro, by using the same sort of bylaws that are being used to harass homeless people,” he says. “[...] So, if you give STM constables guns, then that means a whole dimension of racial profiling that happens in the metro becomes much more dangerous, because now they have weapons.”

Although special constables fall under Quebec’s Police Act and are theoretically subject to investigation by the Bureau des enquêtes indépendantes (BEI), officers are rarely – if ever – disciplined for discriminatory profiling or improper use of their weapons. Since BEI’s creation in 2016, 42 people have died due to the actions of the Montreal police, but not one case has resulted in charges against an officer. As of December 2025, four of the deaths that occurred within the last year remain under investigation. However, given that cases in previous years were closed without charges, there is limited reason to expect a different outcome.

Taken together with the backing of a powerful union confederation, there’s a risk that special constables will act with impunity.

Alternate visions of safety 

Just as abolitionist movements imagine alternatives to policing and prisons, there are also many ways to rethink what safety could mean in the metro – approaches that move away from special constables and heavy securitization toward solutions that are less violent, more affordable, and that improve working conditions. 

Chevalier notes that many of the supposed “safety and security” issues used to justify arming special constables are actually needs-based issues. Making the metro free to use, they argue, could directly address many of these concerns. For them, this is where a confederation like the CSN, which claims to promote a democratic society, could be focusing its efforts. 

“If we have services in the metro [including] more janitorial staff that are better paid, sanitary services, funding for street outreach teams – you would actually improve the situation vastly, not just for unhoused people, but for everybody in the metro,” says Nicoletti. “That would make cohabitation much smoother and also address some of these long-term issues.”

“The STM and the CSN should be working at deconstructing and countering the narrative that says not only does the STM have to run at a profit – it doesn’t, it’s a public service – and that anybody has to pay, because we shouldn’t,” says Chevalier. “Not only is it our right to the city, it’s the justice aspect of getting around the city that should be for everyone.”

Beyond this, there are already community-based services in the city that support unhoused people and others in need and crisis: street outreach teams, needle exchange programs, and food and clothing services. Yet, these programs are chronically underfunded and scattered across the city – making them largely inaccessible to those unable to afford transit fares.

Reimagining safety in the metro could also manifest through locating those services near metro stations, or within the structures themselves. Infrastructure could also be improved to address sanitation and accessibility for all, including access to washrooms and spaces where people can rest comfortably.

“If we have services in the metro [including] more janitorial staff that are better paid, sanitary services, funding for street outreach teams – you would actually improve the situation vastly, not just for unhoused people, but for everybody in the metro,” says Nicoletti. “That would make cohabitation much smoother and also address some of these long-term issues.”

If the STM and its special constables are serious about safety in the metro, the CSN has a clear opportunity to lead the way. As the union confederation representing not just constables, but also workers on strike in the metro, they could advocate for investment in care-based approaches rather than the expansion of surveillance and policing. By doing so, the CSN could help redefine what safety means in the metro – not as the suppression of perceived disorder, but as the active presence of care, accessibility, and support for everyone who relies on the public service.