Montreal needs to address systemic racism, should serve as an example for other cities, human rights commission says

MONTREAL -- The city of Montreal should implement policies to fight against systemic racism and be an example to other cities, Quebec's human rights commission said in a press release on Wednesday following the final hearing into systemic racism in the city.

The commission also presented a 125-page report that defines systemic racism and gives evidence for its existence in Montreal.

In the report, the organization issued a set of recommendations, notably to increase the availability of affordable housing in the city. The lack of which, the commission noted, tended to affect minorities and newly arrived immigrants more than other groups. 

"Living in unaffordable, unhealthy or inconvenient housing is a risk factor for the physical and psychological health of the occupants. Poor housing conditions can affect, among other things, children's development and educational success," said Philippe-André Tessier, president of the commission. "Racial discrimination and racism are some of the systemic barriers that increase residential precariousness that particularly affects newcomers, Aboriginal people and racialized people."

The city should also develop a policy to fight against systemic racism that takes into account the experiences of Indigenous people, racialized people and immigrants, the commission recommended.

Among the commssion's other recommendations:

• The SPVM, City of Montreal and STM should axe their current anti-discrimination policies and develop a new employment system. Seniority should not have a discriminatory effect, they said.
• The SPVM and the STM should facilitate the recognition of immigrants' qualifications.
• Municipal employees should be educated on systemic racism and evaluated.
• The City of Montreal should officially adopt the definition of racial profiling as proposed by the commission.
• The SPVM should use universal indicators when arresting or questioning citizens, develop metrics to gauge racial profiling and publish reports on racial profiling.
• The SPVM should stop street checks.

Systemic racism is "a social product of race-based inequality in the decisions people make and the treatment they receive. Racial inequality is the result of the organization of the economic, cultural and political life of a society," the commission said.

Activist and McGill law student Balarama Holness lauded the recommendations.

"Those recommendations will be a landmark, they'll be a benchmark to say this is what we want to achieve in Montreal," he said.

The commission's recommendations come in the wake of an October report that found Montreal police officers stopped people from visible minorities far more frequently than white people.

The study, which focused on three years from 2014 to 2017, found that in Montreal, an Indigenous person was 4.6 times more likely to be stopped for a "street check" than a white person and that a black person was 4.2 times as likely to be stopped. Arab Montrealers were twice as likely to be stopped as white Montrealers.