BCRC Update September 5, 2022

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BCRC Weekly Update for the week of September 5th 2022

The Weekly Update presents information on the status, needs and priorities of the English Speaking Black Communities.

NEWS

Faced with inflation, Montreal groups call for higher wages
CTV News | September 5, 2022

On this labour day, Montreal groups are asking for better wages, as inflation has people worried about paying their bills.

Demonstrators gathered at Parc Lafontaine in the Plateau-Mont-Royal borough Monday afternoon to demand wages keep up with rising costs.

Atefa Akbary is with the socialism advocacy group La Riposte Syndicale.

She said the current system -- capitalism -- benefits few and disadvantages many.

The protest comes at a time when many large corporations have reported record-high profits.

"As long as we live under a capitalist society, we will continue seeing this: a minority of people getting richer and richer while the majority of workers are being pushed into poverty," she said.

Akbary believes the money is there to fix the housing, health care and education crises in Quebec.

Groups speak up for urgent needs of Montreal's unhoused
Montreal Gazette | September 6, 2022

Amid rising interest rates, unattainable home prices, climbing rents and soaring inflation, housing affordability has become an urgent issue party leaders are eager to address on the Quebec election campaign trail.

But there’s a risk the plight of the most vulnerable — the growing ranks of Montreal’s unhoused — could be eclipsed as housing becomes a middle-class preoccupation and politicians vie for the votes they need to clinch power in the regions.

Since people experiencing homelessness don’t tend to cast ballots, groups who work on the front lines of this social scourge are raising their voices.

The Mouvement pour mettre fin à l’itinérance à Montréal, made up of eight organizations serving as many as 90 per cent of the city’s homeless population, have joined forces to articulate a common vision and to press the next government to act on a file that has too often been addressed with stopgap emergency measures.

Report into systemic racism at MUHC includes chilling testimonials
Montreal Gazette | September 7, 2022

Systemic racism is a pervasive and longstanding problem in Quebec’s largest hospital network — with both staff and patients routinely discriminated against on the basis of their skin colour, religious background and ethnic origin, a major new report has found.

The Montreal Gazette obtained a preliminary draft of the 91-page report into racism, sexism and other forms of prejudice at the McGill University Health Centre, a bilingual network of five hospitals that treats patients from across Quebec, including Indigenous peoples and the Inuit of the Far North. Nearly two years in the making, the report is believed to be the first of its kind in Canada and comes months after repeated assertions by Quebec Premier François Legault that systemic racism does not exist in the province.

The report was commissioned by the MUHC board of directors following the death of George Floyd, a Black man, by a white police officer in Minneapolis, Minn., on May 25, 2020. The necessity for the report gained urgency following the death of Joyce Echaquan, a 37-year-old Atikamekw woman, at the Centre hospitalier de Lanaudière in St-Charles-Borromée. Echaquan recorded a Facebook Live video of her abuse and suffering by nurses shortly before her death on Sept. 28, 2020.

“A majority of the shared experiences and observations (by the study’s participants) may be classified as racism and to the wider extent as systemic racism,” the report concludes in unflinching language filled with chilling testimonials in both English and French of racism at the MUHC.

Montreal Mob figure arrested after alleged extortion of priest
Montreal Gazette | September 7, 2022

A leader in the Rizzuto crime organization has been arrested by Laval police following a complaint alleging he attempted to extort money from members of a religious order.

A police source confirmed to the Montreal Gazette that Francesco Del Balso, 52, was arrested Tuesday night and was detained overnight.

Another source familiar with the case said Del Balso was released on Wednesday on a promise to return to court at a later date if he is charged.

According to the Journal de Montréal, Del Balso recently approached members of a convent and claimed his ex-wife had donated clothing without realizing they contained expensive jewelry. The convent members reportedly told Del Balso they did not know what he was referring to.

The newspaper reported Del Balso is alleged to have confronted a priest on Monday and demanded $5,000 a week if the convent could not return the jewelry.

Del Balso was arrested in 2006 as part of Project Colisée, a lengthy investigation into the leaders of the Montreal Mafia and their associates.

Can Quebec’s 96,000 new citizens impact next month’s election?
City News | September 5, 2022

Thousands of new citizens concentrated in Montreal and its surrounding areas are eligible to vote in next month’s election – but will they? And could they have an impact on the result?

Political analyst Eleni Bakopanos, a former federal Member of Parliament, says the 96,000 new Canadian citizens living in Quebec are likely to influence especially tight races on the island of Montreal.

But how exactly, is difficult to predict.

Bakopanos, who represented the Liberals in Ahuntsic for more than a decade, outlines four potential scenarios.

The first: the newly arrived immigrants vote Liberal, as had traditionally been the case with minorities in Montreal.

The second: the new citizens split their vote among the Liberals, Conservatives and two new Anglophone-centric parties – Bloc Montreal and the Canadian Party and Quebec. This would be at the expense of the Liberals.

“Now they have other options. And this is where this election gets very interesting,” said Bakopanos. “Because you do have now the Conservative Party, which is also appealing to them. There’s also the two parties, which are so-called, if I may say, Anglophone parties or minority-rights parties. Will they appeal to the new immigrants?”

Your Quebec election tool kit: where to vote, what to bring and why your vote matters
CBC News | September 6, 2022

Quebec's 43rd general election is just around the corner, and you may be wondering what that means for you.

Here are answers to some key questions about the big day to ensure you're eligible and well-equipped to cast your vote.

Am I eligible to vote?

Canadian citizens 18 and older who have lived in Quebec for at least six months can vote.

But make sure you're registered.

You can't vote unless your name is on the list of electors. You can check that your name is registered online. If your name is not listed, or if you find an error, you can register or fix it now.

You have until Sept. 29 at 2 p.m. ET to rectify the situation.

When is the election?

Quebec's 43rd provincial election is Oct. 3. Polling stations are open from 9:30 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Former worker at Quebec vaccination site charged with faking COVID-19 documents
CTV News | September 6, 2022

A worker at a COVID-19 vaccination site in Quebec City is facing charges for allegedly falsifying documents so that she and others could obtain fake vaccine passports.

Following an investigation by Quebec's anti-corruption agency (UPAQ), Carolane Fournier has been charged with breach of trust, production of false documents and fraudulent use of a computer.

Fournier is a former employee of the Capital-Nationale health and social services centre (CIUSSS-CN).

According to a UPAQ press release issued Tuesday, she allegedly made false entries in Quebec's vaccination registry while working at the vaccination site at Laval University between Sept. 8 and 17, 2021.

"Carolane Fournier is no longer employed by CIUSS-CN as of September 2021," the statement confirms.

Quebec election: Comments linking immigration to violence continue to haunt Legault
CTV News | September 8, 2022

Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) Leader François Legault is being accused of revealing his true feelings about newcomers by linking immigration to violence and extremism.

Thursday, the former premier told reporters he never meant to disparage immigrants when he said he wouldn't increase immigration because Quebecers don't like conflict, extremism or violence.

Speaking in Roberval, Legault said immigration is a source of wealth for Quebec, but all countries face a challenge when it comes to integrating newcomers into a set of values.

His clarification wasn't good enough for Liberal (PLQ) Leader Dominique Anglade, who told reporters she believes Legault revealed what he truly thinks regarding immigrants.

"What he said...is the essence of his thinking," she said. "He's saying that 'the other,' who is not like us, can be dangerous (...) He equated immigration to violence. We feed prejudice by doing this. We act as if the other is the bad guy."

Jamil Jivani sues Bell Media, alleging he was fired for not fitting 'Black stereotype'
National Post | September 2, 2022

A former talk show host is suing Bell Media Inc. claiming he was fired as the media conglomerate’s only full-time Black talk radio host because his views didn’t match a stereotype the company expected from a Black man.

Jamil Jivani was dropped from the airwaves of Bell’s iHeartRadio network and fired in January. He claims it became clear he was hired as tokenism and fired as wokeism.

“There was an expectation that because he’s Black he should have been saying and doing certain things — because in Bell’s mind he was checking this token box, and when they realized they weren’t getting the kind of Black man they wanted, that’s when he was out the door,” said Jivani’s lawyer, Kathryn Marshall, a partner at Levitt Sheikh.

'It was a war zone': Inside the most devastating mass stabbing in Canadian history
National Post | September 5, 2022

It was just before 6 a.m. on Sunday that the 911 calls began to flood in.

Two men armed with knives were kicking in doors on Saskatchewan’s James Smith Cree Nation, stabbing whoever they found inside and then moving on to the next address.

Grandparents were stabbed in front of loved ones who begged the killers to stop. Children were reported to have been stabbed while trying to protect their mothers. A 77-year-old widower, Wes Petterson, was murdered as his adult grandson hid downstairs.

The alleged attackers — identified as Myles Sanderson and Damien Sanderson — would strike 13 different locations, killing 11 and injuring at least 19. It is the worst mass-killing in the history of modern Saskatchewan. The body of one of the suspects, Damien Sanderson is now included among the dead, while the fugitive Myles Sanderson has been added to the tally of injured.

Bank of Canada hikes key interest rate to 3.25% and says it’s not done yet
Global News | September 7, 2022

The Bank of Canada raised its benchmark interest rate three-quarters of a percentage point on Wednesday and signalled that the key rate “will need to rise further” to tackle high levels of inflation.

The central bank’s policy rate now stands at 3.25 per cent.

This marks the fifth rate hike so far in 2022 — Canada’s key interest rate sat at just 0.25 per cent in January.

Markets and economists had largely expected the 75 basis point move, which followed a supersized rate hike of a full percentage point in July.

The Bank of Canada raises interest rates in an effort to take steam out of the Canadian economy and discourage consumer spending demand, dampening domestic fuel for inflation.

Canada is on track to welcome a record 431,000 immigrants
CIC News | September 8, 2022

As of August 22, Canada has welcomed about 300,000 new permanent residents.

Immigration Minister Sean Fraser boasted last week that Canada has hit the 300,000 mark earlier this year than any other year. Since Confederation in 1867, Canada has welcomed more than 300,000 immigrants in an entire year only six times: in the years of 1911 to 1913 and then in 2018, 2019, and 2021.

After pandemic-related travel restrictions caused a slump of newcomers in 2020, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) ramped up immigration in 2021, ending off the year with a record-breaking 405,330 newcomers. Even so, IRCC did not surpass the 300,000 mark until the fourth quarter that year.

Publicly available data on IRCC’s open data portal has so far reported the numbers of new immigrants up until June 2022. The results for July and August will be released in the upcoming months.

By the end of June, about 231,620 newcomers had immigrated to Canada. The difference between the figures from the end of June to August suggests Canada has welcomed some 68,000 permanent residents over the course of two months.

If this rate keeps up for the remaining four months of the year, Canada could meet or even exceed its target of 431,000 new immigrants in 2022. Should the immigration department reach this target, it would blow past the previous record set in 2021.

EVENTS

"Get the Word Out!” Literacy Festival
If you love to read & write and want to get involved building literacy in your community, or just want to improve your own literacy skills, check out the "Get the Word Out!” Literacy Festival taking place on Saturday September 10th, from 10 a.m. - 4 p.m. at Mill Dam Park in Shawville, QC.
For more info, contact Western Quebec Literacy Council (WQLC) at 819 648 2150, email info@wqlc.org, or check out their website.

Community Forum on Racial Profiling

This forum on November 6, 2022 (9AM-4:30PM) brings together speakers with expertise and personal experience to discuss innovative policy solutions and to foster community trust among marginalized and racialized communities Our goal is to raise the level of awareness and to provide a safe, transparent and supportive space for public and community leaders to explore, discuss and sustain anti-racism and equitable practice.

The forum will include specific guidance from experts in supporting the community in identifying and denouncing hidden racism, racial profiling and inequitable practices.

Outcomes will include:

Engaged research facilitating evidence-based action,
Enduring institutional networks that support communities,
Evolution in attitudes,
Building of social bridges resulting in increased social cohesion.

Remarks:

The activity will take place in English.
French simultaneous interpretation will be provided.
The conference setup will be hybrid.
In-person participate will gather at: Centre socio-communautaire Le 6767
The link will be emailed to online registered participants

Thank you to our funders

Register

MISC.

Black Girls Gather (A Book Club) is a bilingual program that is open to young Black girls and non-binary persons between 12 and 17 years old.
Registration period: August 1st 2022 to October 1st 2022
Duration of program: January 2023 to June 2023
For 12 to 14 year olds, register here!
For 15 to 17 year olds, register here!

On the Island of Montreal, more than one in five people struggles to eat a healthy diet, in part due to inflation. Eating well is a daily challenge for this population, especially for people who live in an area with no grocery stores.

The Collective Impact Project (CIP), operated by Centraide of Greater Montreal, supports neighbourhoods that have launched many projects to provide access to fresh, affordable food and create connections. Discover three of these projects developed in Saint-Michel, Lachine and Ville-Émard–Côte-Saint-Paul.

Discover these projects

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