City will appoint commissioner to tackle racism
Opposition members and critics call for police chief to be fired
Montreal will appoint a Commissioner to Counter Racism and Discrimination, Mayor Valérie Plante announced Monday.
The new official, to be appointed by the fall, will report to the city manager and be responsible for creating and implementing an anti-racism action plan, she said at a press conference to react to a report on systemic racism and discrimination by Montreal’s consultation bureau.
Based on input from 7,000 participants, of whom 1,000 attended the consultations in person, the report by the Office de consultation publique de Montréal (OCPM) says the city has turned a blind eye to systemic racism and discrimination in police and the city administration. It makes 38 recommendations, including boosting the hiring and promotion of minorities, facilitating complaints against police, giving anti-racism training to all civil servants and police, eliminating racial bias in arts and culture, and making city politics more representative of Montreal’s demographic reality.
Plante said that in addition to the new commissioner, she would appoint a member of the city’s executive committee to be responsible for anti-racism efforts.
She also pledged to formally recognize the systemic nature of racism in the city and its departments.
“I would like to assure the thousands of participants in the consultation and all those who have been marching in our streets for the past Sundays, and people who have been sharing their testimony and bringing forward this issue for many years, that their voices are being heard,” she said.
Asked what response she expected from Montreal police director Sylvain Caron, Plante said the report’s conclusions are clear.
“The report says in black and white that systemic racism and discrimination exist within the city of Montreal and that means the different institutions of the city of Montreal, including Montreal police,” she said.
Caron was not available to respond on Monday, however the police force issued a statement in the evening reacting to the report’s findings.
“In response to the first recommendation of the report, the SPVM recognizes the systemic character of racism and discrimination and we are committed to combat it,” the statement read. “We acknowledge all the recommendations of the report, particularly those that imply a response from the police force.”
The statement added that the police force is pleased the commissioners took note of its commitments to date to tackle racial and social profiling.
The Montreal Police Brotherhood declined to comment. Alain Babineau, an adviser to the Centre for Research-action on Race Relations (CRARR), said the city should dismiss Caron in light of the report.
Among its recommendations is a proposal to make the hiring of a new police chief conditional on the candidate’s recognition and understanding of racial and social profiling and his or her ability to transform the police culture.
“Mr. Caron has not demonstrated that he possesses these competencies and therefore his contract should be terminated immediately,” Babineau said.
“If they’re serious about moving forward, that’s what should happen,” he added.
Opposition members also called for Caron’s dismissal.
“It’s unacceptable that we have a chief of police who was given the opportunity to recognize that there is systemic racism and declined to do so over the last couple of weeks,” said Lionel Perez, leader of the Ensemble Montréal party.
“The mayor has said that she recognizes it. If the chief of police can’t even recognize this elementary fact, then there’s a serious misalignment between the chief of police and the mayor of Montreal,” he said.
On June 5, while announcing that Montreal police would unveil a new policy to prevent racial profiling in street checks by police on July 8, Caron ducked the question of whether there is systemic racism in his department.
“Are there incidents of racism? Possibly,” he said, adding that the force is committed to the new street-check policy and changes to police training.
Peppered with questions on Caron’s future in council, Plante said she would give the police chief time to study the report.
“The chief of police and the whole police force definitely have some reflecting to do and I think that they will make progress in the next few days. We will await their perspective and their position when they are ready to give them, and I think that it will be soon,” she said.
Plante said her administration has already made efforts to increase diversity within the city’s workforce. Members of visible and ethnic minorities now account for 22 per cent of city workers, compared with 13 per cent 10 years ago, she said. In 2018, the administration created the Table sur la diversité, l’inclusion et la lutte contre les discriminations, an advisory body aimed at making the city more representative of Montreal’s diversity, she noted.
Visible minorities accounted for 34 per cent of the city’s population in 2016. A third of Montrealers are immigrants and another one in five have at least one parent born outside of Canada.
Balarama Holness, founder of Montreal in Action, which raised the 22,000-signature petition that forced the public consultations on systemic racism to be held, said Plante should not be taking credit.
“She was forced to have this conversation. She could have adopted a motion to mandate the OCPM prior to the collection of the signatures. So she did not do this by willingness. This consultation is because of political inaction,” he said
About 50 members of Montreal in Action raised 22,000 signatures on paper over three months in 2018 after Holness used the “right of initiative” enshrined in the city’s charter to petition the city to hold the consultations.
While Plante pledged to name a Commissioner to Counter Racism and Discrimination, she did not respond to many other recommendations in the report, he said, like proposals to require police to collect and make public race-based data on street checks, and to add two civilian members with expertise in racial and social profiling to Montreal’s public security committee.
Holness also said the administration is not doing enough to attack unsanitary housing, another of the report’s recommendations.