Montreal city council

By Dan Laxer
The Suburban

Montreal City Council has agreed to revise its new DEI and antiracism policy to include hate crimes, antisemitism, and Islamophobia.

Initially the policy had left them out, a glaring omission that echoed a similar exclusion of antisemitism from the city’s anti-racism report last year.

The Centre for Research-Actin on Race Relations (CRARR) had originally held a news conference last weekend to denounce the omission, and to call on the City of Montreal to revise the policy. CRARR was joined by four other organizations representing racialized communities: The Black Community Resource Center, the Chinese Association of Montreal, the Canadian Council of Muslim Women – Montreal Chapter, and the Filipino Family Service of Montreal.

CRARR Executive Director Fo Niemi underlined that hate crimes and extremism have become “major threats to community safety and public security in Montreal,” saying it needs to be acknowledged in the policy. Leaving it out would send “a deplorable message of disrespect and dismissiveness to individuals, families, and communities in Montreal who have been badly hurt by hate.”

The original policy was adopted on August 14 by the Executive Committee, and was supposed to have been ratified – as is – the following week by Montreal City Council. In its original form, Niemi says, the policy listed just about every form of discrimination except antisemitism and Islamophobia, which Niemi says was “rather shocking.” Niemi could only speculate that it may well have been an oversight, or a deliberate omission to avoid controversy. Either way, CRARR and the other groups were calling on the city to “be explicit about these challenges.”

Then, at last Monday’s council meeting, opposition councillor Sonny Moroz (Snowdon District, CDN-NDG Borough) tabled a motion to include antisemitism, Islamophobia, hate crimes, and hate incidents in the policy.

Council voted in favour. It’s a major development, Niemi says, because “in the past there has always been some sort of pushback on the issue of antisemitism,” likely because of the difficulty, Niemi suggests, in defining it.

The currently-accepted definition of antisemitism is the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition. The federal and provincial governments have both adopted the definition, as has the CDN-NDG borough. The City of Montreal has not.

Moroz is on the Commission sur le développement social et la diversité. He says that every time they looked at the policy as it was taking shape, he noticed the “lack of a plan to deal with the rise of hate crimes and hate incidents,” a lack that had not been amended by the time it got to the Executive Committee. So, in council he suggested what he says are very simple amendments: Islamophobia, antisemitism, and all forms of discrimination based on religion. The amendments also include hate crimes and hate incidents.

“I was very pleased that when it came to the negotiation table at City Hall, that the person responsible for racism and discrimination, the mayor of Côtes des Neiges-NDG (Gracia Kasoki Katahwa), for the first time saw it in her benefit to include antisemitism in her plan.”

“We get to build on that,” Moroz says. “And we get to say that the City Council of Montreal unanimously agreed to this, which is something that I think is fantastic.”

Niemi agrees, saying “people have to understand the magnitude of the inclusion and the explicit recognition of these things that were finally integrated in the policy. Now,” he says, “no one can deny that these things exist. No one can trivialize them.”

CRARR has since written to Maty Diop, the City of Montreal’s new Commissioner for Fighting Racism and Systemic Discrimination. He would like to arrange a meeting with several groups present, including the Jewish community, “to talk about the need to have a united approach to tackle hate,” particularly for English-speaking communities. At the time of this writing, CRARR had not yet received a reply. n