A Quebec woman says her son, who is Black and has autism, is being treated differently because of the colour of his skin after being routinely sent home from school over the last three years due to his behaviour.

Desperate to get her son, who is non-verbal, the support he needs, Marie Ismé is appealing to the education minister and the province's minister responsible for youth protection to step in.

"When he goes there it's their job to ensure his security, not my job. So right now the stress is too much for me so that's why I'm going public because I'm pretty sure if it would be a white child that it wouldn't have the same treatment," said Ismé, who lives in Terrebonne.

She said her son, Brandon-Lee Paris, was first kicked out of school when he was 14 years old and since then it's been a constant battle with the École des Érables of the Centre de services scolaires de la des Mille-Îles (CSSMI) to ensure he gets the education and services he needs.

But the school says her son is a safety risk and even called youth protection on the mother, which found no grounds for any follow-up. 

The Centre de réadaptation en déficience intellectuelle (CRDI) in Mascouche also threatened to have her son committed to a psychiatric hospital.

Ismé said during a virtual news conference Tuesday that she knows of other students with intellectual disabilities who are white and aren't sent home for similar behaviour.

"I have other mothers that I know and she even said three years ago her daughter has way more challenges. She's been violent, she's done a bunch of different stuff, she sent people to the hospital and they're doing everything in their power to keep her in the school," she said.

The centre de services scolaire denies the allegations of racial discrimination, saying in a written statement that "all of the measures put in place over the past several years and the approach followed by the CSSMI to meet the real needs of this young autistic child have always been done without regard to race, color or ethnic origin."

"It is important to mention that this is a complex situation in which several stakeholders from different backgrounds are actively working to find solutions to meet the specific needs of this child."

Over the past three years, Paris has only been enrolled in school for about 90 hours instead of the regular 700 hours. This time away from the classroom is a concern for his mother.

"It's very frustrating because he would have been way further than he is now. And they say Brandon is a really smart kid, he can learn, so those years — they're critical. So, he's not going to regain [them]. He lost them forever," she said.

The Center for Research-Action on Race Relations (CRARR) has supported Ismé to plead her son's case and is now taking it to the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Children.

"This is a case of abandonment of a Black man with autism and a mother and in spite of all the effort she has taken to ensure he has adequate schooling and adequate services support, she still has not had that support she and her son are entitled [to]," said Fo Niemi, CRARR's executive director.

CRARR filed a complaint with Quebec's human rights and youth rights commission, but after two years its investigation "left out the the aspect of racial discrimination which is at the heart of the problem," Niemi said. 

Ismé and CRARR are hoping Education Minister Jean-François Roberge, and the minister responsible for youth protection in Quebec, Lionel Carmant, will intervene.

A spokesperson for Minister Carmant said he only learned of the situation Tuesday and needed more time to review it before commenting, while the education minister's office did not provide a comment to CTV on Tuesday.

-- With files from CTV News' Matthew Gilmour