Montrealers demand public hearings on systemic racism

A dozen young people descended on Montreal City Hall Friday, each carrying stacks of papers containing thousands of signatures — 20,000 in all who signed a petition demanding public hearings on what they say is systemic racism and discrimination against visible minorities and others in various sectors of city life.

"Twenty thousand Montrealers said that the job that the current Montreal administration is doing in regards to inclusion and regards to diversity and regards to living together is inadequate," said Balarama Holness, the former Projet Montréal mayoral candidate for the borough of Montreal North, who spearheaded the initiative.

Under city regulations, the city is compelled to hold hearings on the subjects of any petition signed by at least 15,000 citizens.

'We need to be included'

Some 50 people spent the last three months gathering those 20,000 signatures.

"I'm a minority myself," said Elvira Rwasamanzi, who told CBC News she went to work "for the bigger cause, for everybody, for my kids, for my brother, for my sisters, for my friends."

"I think we need to be included in the society," she said.

As CBC reported in its Real Talk on Race project in 2016, visible minorities make up about 31 per cent of the population of Montreal, but just 11 per cent of the City of Montreal's workforce.

• City of Montreal falls short on visible, ethnic minority hiring targets
• Montreal police service struggles to hire visible minority officers

Visible minority hiring is even worse in the city's police service (SPVM). According to the SPVM's 2016 annual report, the latest to be published, just 8.5 per cent of its officers identify as Indigenous or as members of a visible minority.

City's roundtable criticized

​Mayor Valérie Plante campaigned on a promise to make her administration more representative of Montreal's diversity. However, she's been criticized for failing to name any visible minorities to her executive committee.

Last March, Plante created a roundtable to address discrimination and diversity issues, appointing some 15 people from various backgrounds to look at ways to make the City of Montreal's workforce more diverse, to combat racial profiling, to encourage diversity among business leaders, in politics and in culture.

However, Holness called the administration's roundtable underfunded and ineffective.

"Twenty thousand Montrealers said this is the new roundtable," Holness said of the petition.

The work of the roundtable is continuing, said Youssef Amane, a spokesperson for the city's executive committee, in a text message to CBC News Friday.

"Our administration is continuing its efforts to make our city more representative of diversity," Amane said.

He said the city's clerk will now study the petition to determine whether it is receivable and the steps that will follow.