When it comes to racism and the Quebec government, ‘systemic’ is still a dirty word

Allegations that an entire squad of police officers in Montréal-Nord engaged in repeated racist behaviour have reignited a long-simmering debate in Quebec over systemic racism.

Despite repeated calls to do so, the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) government under former premier François Legault steadfastly refused to acknowledge that systemic racism exists in Quebec.

Some thought with this new scandal, the new CAQ Premier Christine Fréchette — who has shown a willingness to break with some of Legault’s ideas — may now be more willing to acknowledge the problem.

Fréchette threw cold water on that when she was asked earlier this month about the allegations against officers in Montréal-Nord and whether they constituted systemic racism.

“That’s not systemic racism. If it’s a small group, it’s not necessarily systemic. For me, systemic means a larger scale,” Fréchette said in an interview with Radio-Canada’s Patrice Roy.

Under Legault and Fréchette, the CAQ has maintained that it doesn’t want to get bogged down in semantic debates and would rather focus on pracitical solutions to fight racism.

For many, the ongoing refusal to utter the word “systemic” is frustrating.

“It’s so obvious, right? It’s like the elephant in the room,” Nakuset, executive director of the Native Women’s Shelter of Montreal, told CBC.

Dardia Joseph, a lawyer and assistant executive director of the Clinique juridique de Saint-Michel, said it’s hard to swallow the CAQ’s pledge to combat racism when the party refuses to see it in a systemic context.

“[It’s] like if a doctor refused to diagnose a patient, can he treat that patient? I think no,” Joseph said.

A debate over the meaning of ‘systemic’

There are many reasons why the CAQ and some others in Quebec are reluctant to describe the problem as systemic.

For one, there’s a disagreement over what the term means.

André Lamoureux is a professor of political science at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) who testified before a provincial government working group against racism convened by the Legault government after the death of George Floyd at the hands of police in the U.S.

Using the term systemic is a “mistake,” he says. For Lamoureux, racism can only be defined as systemic when it’s deliberately built into the framework of government.

“In institutions, in laws, in procedures,” Lamoureux said.

But he said that’s not the case in Quebec, and that situations like the scandal in Montréal-Nord or the death of Joyce Echaquan are isolated incidents of racism by individuals.

Joseph said that’s a gross misunderstanding of the problem.

“I think a lot of people understand that racism and the way that it circulates in our society is based on things that predate us,” she said.

“It’s oftentimes subtle, non-conscious, done without malice, but the effects are palpable,” she said.

Nakuset said people who don’t experience systemic racism often have trouble seeing it, but that doesn’t mean it’s not there.

“I think that when we keep telling you that there’s an issue, whether it’s the Black community, the Indigenous community, or other communities that are racialized, you need to listen,” she said.

Is the term considered ‘woke’?

Donal Gill, a political science professor at Concordia University, said he believes the main reason the CAQ doesn’t want to acknowledge systemic racism is because they see it as a political liability.

“The concept of systemic racism is kind of in a bucket with a couple of other terms, phrases like ‘defund the police’ and ‘critical race theory’ that have been coded in a certain aspect of the political spectrum — we might call them ‘woke,’” Gill said. 

When it comes to the term systemic racism, Gill says the government will likely never acknowledge a concept like this.

“The CAQ would like to think of itself or present itself as a party that is not signed up to that agenda,” he said.

But several institutions have already acknowledged systemic racism.

That includes the federal government, most other provincial governments, the City of Montreal, the Quebec College of Physicians, the Quebec Human Rights Commission, major labour federations in Quebec, and, perhaps most notably, courts.

Yves Boisvert, a columnist for La Presse who often writes about the justice system, told CBC News courts have recognized systemic racism in Quebec and elsewhere many times over many years.

“It’s not even a matter of opinion. It is a matter of fact,” Boisvert said.

He said the most notable case is that of Montrealer Christopher Luamba, currently before the Supreme Court of Canada.

Luamba challenged the notion of random police traffic stops, saying it amounted to racial profiling.

A judge agreed and struck down the practice.

“If you read that decision, you have pages and pages and pages of what people in the Black communities have known for years, but it seems that many people are deaf to: that you are arrested for no reason just because you are a Black person driving a car,”  Boisvert said.

Gill said the fact that courts and other institutions recognize systemic racism may actually be the reason why the CAQ chooses not to.

“The CAQ basically created this political empire running against Montreal and all that it represented: anglophones, allophones, cosmopolitanism, diversity,” Gill said. 

Gill said resisting the call to acknowledge systemic racism helps the CAQ cement that status as a defender of Quebec’s uniqueness.

“It’s often a point of differentiation between ‘Quebec values’ and the Canadian multicultural mosaic,” he said.

Defensiveness complicates discussion

Another possible reason why some political parties in Quebec are reluctant to recognize systemic racism is that some Quebecers take it as a personal attack.

“The debate in Quebec has been sidetracked by some commentators who pretend that to have this discussion is a way to say that Quebecers in general are racist,” Boisvert said.

Haroun Bouazzi, a Quebec Solidaire MNA who saw his political career sidetracked when he tried to call out racism in the National Assembly, said this makes honest conversations about racism in Quebec more difficult.

“It’s very tough for us to actually talk about racism, because we have this defence mechanism that happens,” Bouazzi said.

He says some Quebecers are fearful of being deemed as “culturally inferior.”

Dardia Joseph says that’s not what it’s about.

“I think we recognize a great nation — and I think Quebec is one — by its capacity to name its problems and solve them,” she said.

“Saying that the nation has a problem with racism and discrimination is not an indictment of Quebec,” Joseph said.

 “It’s something that is everywhere.”