The night when cosmopolitan Montrealers vocalized opposition to the racist Bouchard-Taylor Commission

by Clare Raspopow

	The youngest protestor of reasonable accommodation.

The Bouchard-Taylor Commission was a sea of raised hands of all colours when Montrealers had volunteered to speak at a Bouchard and Taylor Commission hearing in response to months of perceived anti-immigration sentiments and racism.

The night began in early December 2007 dramatically when a member of the Mohawk nation stood up and began to give her statement in her native tongue.

“You set up your corporations called Canada and Quebec and the United States on our land and committed one of the biggest holocausts in all of history,” the unnamed woman said after switching over to English mid-statement. “You are all squatters. All of you!”

The lack of acknowledgement given to the place of the First Nations in the Reasonable Accommodation dialogue was a thread throughout the evening’s discussion.

“I would like to remind everyone that we, as Quebecers, are colonizers. We colonized this land. We killed the people that were here before us,” said Montreal resident Natasha Mann. “Who are we, as colonizers, to expect newcomers to this land to adapt to us?” she demanded.

“I think these commissions are counter-productive. I think encouraging people to come and air out their racism is not a solution,” Mann continued. “To me the agenda of this commission has not shown any goals of eliminating or reducing racism-it has only been encouraging it.”

Other speakers echoed this concern.

“Listening and reading about this commission, especially the meetings “dans la region,” it was very anti-immigrant, very anti-Muslim, very anti-‘non-Québecois,’ ” said Bobby Ansari, a community organizer.

“Too much time is wasted on endless discussions on hijabs and prayer rooms […] we need to concentrate on solving the more serious problems facing immigrants,” insisted Eva Schreider, a Montreal resident. “The most serious difficulty for working with immigrants is finding employment.” She said new Canadians cannot be expected to integrate properly if they are blocked from the job market. “The cycle of ‘no job without experience and no experience without a job’ can continue for years.”

Not everyone saw the commission as a socially destructive force. David Oliver, an Anglican priest, said “This commission is an example of the fundamental dialogue that is necessary for us to grow.”

This meeting echoed sentiments of earlier hearings. Silence followed Susan Kipran who began her statement “do you know what it’s like to live near three mosques?”

Some came to consultation and gave their statements in French, extolling the belief that institutional bilingualism was to blame for immigrants’ difficulty to integrate fully in Quebec society.

“French needs to be not only the official language, but the communal language that is spoken between citizens,” stated Sophie Beaupré of Mouvement Montréal Français.

Many wanted to know how new immigrants eager to learn French could be expected to learn the language when, due to the government’s unilingual status, all of the resources were provided exclusively in a tongue they could not yet speak.

Despite diverging opinions on the reasons for the province’s linguistic and ethnic divides, there was a unanimous concern for the future of Quebec society.

“This is an age of globalization. You can’t be isolated anymore. That’s to invite suicide: cultural and economic suicide,” said Ansari. She said people from emerging economies have dynamic approaches to problems facing society that Quebec desperately needs to compete in the global market. “If you’re going to hold it against people, just because they look different-or speak differently or dress differently-you’re going to lose out on what they have to offer.”

In the words of Dawson College professor George Farkas, Quebec faces a choice between a world “filled with pluralism, acceptance of others and respect for others. Or the other choice is right here: a world that’s going to be insular, that’s not going to be accepting of anybody else.”

At the end of the two-hour hearings, scores of people still wanted to speak their minds and implored the Commission heads to extend consultation. But they were met with a firm “no” and darkness when the lights were turned off.

About the writer:

Clare Raspopow is a reporter with Concordia's The Link. LINK

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