Black French-speaking federal employees seek class action against Ottawa

The Black Class Action Secretariat launched a French-language chapter on Monday as part of its efforts to seek compensation for people who have been discriminated against in the federal public service because they are Black.

The class action was launched in December 2020 and seeks $2.6 billion in damages for Black people who have allegedly been harmed by discriminatory hiring or promotion practices in federal institutions since the 1970s.

"Until now, few French-speaking voices have been heard in this country," said Quebec director of operations Alain Babineau at a press conference in Montreal on Monday.

The Black Class Action Secretariat is therefore launching a French-language chapter to make these voices heard as well.

"No, it's not settled, and not all cases date back to the 1970s or 1980s," said Babineau.

Babineau is a Black man, a perfectly bilingual francophone, who worked for the RCMP in Toronto, and describes the double discrimination, as a Black man and as a francophone.

"At one point, we couldn't speak French in the detachment where I was. We couldn't speak French because we had to 'speak white'! We were told that!" he said. "As a Black person, we also experience it internally, as a racialized person. This is a double issue. Often, when you get a promotion... one of the things I was told at the beginning when I joined the RCMP, my colleagues would say: 'You're going to be promoted easily, because you're Black and you're francophone, you're bilingual.'

"Immediately, there was this sort of 'you have a free pass, we'll make it easy for you,'" said Babineau.

Amnesty International Canada Francophone supports the approach and was present at the press conference.

Amnesty does not support the cause financially but has valuable expertise in advocacy.

"We were approached by the class action, and we gave our support. So we're supporting them in terms of recourse to international law," said executive director France-Isabelle Langlois.

"The people who are bringing the case are open to negotiation," said Babineau. "We hope that it will be settled before we go to court and expose to the whole of Canada and abroad to what the federal government has done to Black employees over the past 50 years. We are always ready to negotiate, to sit down."

Babineau said the federal government has already tried to argue that it is better to go to the Human Rights Commission or to proceed with grievances rather than a class action.

This will be debated in March.

As for the action itself, it will need to pass the certification stage next May, he said.

In addition to the collective action, a complaint on the matter has also been filed with the UN Rapporteur on Human Rights.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on Oct. 24, 2022.