The Green Party of Quebec says a petition it launched Monday proposing the disarming of police officers has already gathered several hundred signatures.
The Greens say the policing approach that works in Britain and some other places overseas could work here: patrol officers not routinely equipped with service pistols or Tasers, but with lots of back-up at the ready when it's needed.
Greens leader Alex Tyrrell says disarming some of Quebec's officers would require re- training and an investment in more manpower, but he thinks it would be worth it.
"If investing a little bit more money in the police force and in their training and in having them in larger numbers when they have to do dangerous work will lead to a reduction in violence and reduction of people being killed by police, I think that's something we should really aspire to," he says.
In Quebec in 2016, 11 people were shot dead by police, and 8 were wounded.
Tyrrell says reducing that number would involve taking the firearms away from some, but not all, of the officers on the street.
"What the Green Party is saying is not that every single police officer should be disarmed," he says. "It's just that the police officers that are on patrol, that are doing things in Montreal like directing traffic, for example, don't necessarily need to be carrying a firearm."
Tyrrell says the petition will eventually be presented to Quebec's Minister of Public Safety.
He adds that the Plante Administration at Montreal City Hall has already expressed an interest in discussing the idea.