The “Accommodate This!” campaign launches a counter-report to that of the Bouchard-Taylor Commission, rejecting its racist and sexist premises and content

Download a PDF version of the press release here!

Montreal, May 22, 2008 – Undertaken in parallel to the Bouchard-Taylor Commission, the “Accommodate This!” campaign unveiled its own report on the so-called “reasonable accommodation” debate. This counter-report is framed by a campaign which began in the fall of 2007, and whose intent is to denounce the Bouchard-Taylor Commission for its basis in racist, sexist, and xenophobic premises.

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To download a zipped copy of the documents included in the report, click here! (4 MB ZIP)

To see a copy of the poster, click here! (1 MB JPEG)

For a low definition pdf version of the poster click here. (19 MB PDF)

For a high definition pdf version of the poster click here. (41 MB PDF)

This report is the culmination of the « Accommodate this! » series of anti-racist events and discussions in Montreal, that aimed at challenging the xenophobic climate surrounding the so-called “debate” on Reasonable Accommodation in Quebec.

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“Reasonable Accommodation”: A Feminist Response

As anti-racist, anti-colonial feminists in Québec, we have serious misgivings about the Commission de Consultation sur les pratiques d’accommodement reliées aux différences culturelles. The Conseil du statut de la femme du Québec (CSF) has proposed that the Québec Charter be changed so as to accord the right of gender equality relative priority over the right to religious expression and to ban the wearing of “ostentatious” religious symbols in public institutions by public employees. Our concern is that the Commission and the CSF’s subsequent intervention pave the way for legislation that will restrict rather than enhance the rights of women. We invite you to join us in questioning the exclusionary structure of the Commission, the assumptions it supports, and the negative impact it is likely to have on women’s lives.

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The “Reasonable Accommodation” Commission and Debate: Statement by No One Is Illegal-Montreal

The No One Is Illegal-Montreal collective is publishing and distributing the following statement in opposition to the racist “reasonable accommodation” debate in Quebec, and the related Bouchard-Taylor Commission. We encourage groups and individuals who agree with this statement to endorse it by contacting noii-montreal@resist.ca. We also encourage allies who would like to help organize against the hearings, or support the organizing of No One Is Illegal, to get in touch as well.

The “reasonable accommodation” debate in Quebec, and the related “Consultation Commission on Accommodation Practices Related to Cultural Differences” (the so-called “Bouchard-Taylor Commission”), are fundamentally rooted in xenophobia, racism and sexism.

From the outset, the “debate” fails to recognize that Quebec and Canada are built on stolen Indigenous land, and constituted through the dispossession and genocide of Indigenous peoples who have been forced into “accommodating” colonization. Moreover, it completely ignores the fact that racism and white supremacy were intrinsically tied to the creation of both Canada and Quebec, and throughout their histories, have been instrumental in defining who “belongs” and who does not.

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1900- Head tax on Chinese immigrants was increased from $50 to $100.

1901- Census. Of the 5,371,315 population in Canada, 12.7% were immigrants (i.e. born outside Canada) and of those 57% of immigrants were born in the British Isles. 96% of the population was of European origin.

1903- Head tax on Chinese increased to $500. From 1901 to 1918, $18 million was collected from Chinese immigrants.

1906- Immigration Act. According to Frank Oliver, Minister of the Interior, the purpose of the Act was “to enable the Department of Immigration to deal with undesirable immigrants” by providing a means of control. Grounds for deportation included becoming a public charge, insanity, infirmity, disease, handicap, becoming an inmate of a jail or hospital and committing crimes of “moral turpitude”.

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BASIS OF UNITY:
Accommodate This! Mobilizing Against Racism, Sexism and Colonialism

A struggle against racism must be one that attacks the reasons why racism exists, and the concrete ways that racism affects our daily lives. The struggle against racism is not a fight of the past since “race” –and the process of “racializing” cultures and peoples -continues to be used to determine who belongs and who doesn’t, who suffers greatest from poverty, who is most criminalized, who has the least mobility, whose labour is the most exploited, who suffers most from state violence and control, and whose voice is the most marginalized. The false notion of “race” –-and the very tangible reality of racism -continues to determine how much actual power we have to change our lived conditions.

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There are a number of interesting videos on Citizenshift that cover a lot of material on immigration and security measures.

You can find another video entitled “Reprendre les jours : pas à pas vers Ottawa”, by Eylem Kaftan, on Citizenship, covering the 2005 Solidarity Across Borders / No One Is Illegal march to Ottawa.

Another video entitled “This Is Solidarity” that follows a day of action against the detention and deportation of “illegal” immigrants to Canada, entitled “This Is Solidarity” can be found on Google Video.

An audio piece from Radio Tadamon!, with host Stefan Christoff, can be found on the Rabble Podcast Network. It features Gada Mahrouse, an academic and social justice activist, who offers an anti-racist view on the issue of reasonable accommodation.

This audio piece from No One Is Illegal Radio with host Jaggi Singh includes two spoken-word excerpts from the speak-outs against reasonable accommodation: a poem by ALIYAH (aka TruTh), and a piece called “Hurray for Herouxville” by MALIK (aka TuThree).

Pronounced on November 29th 2007, at the Palais des Congrès de Montréal
Bouchard-Taylor Commission in Montreal

Bonsoir. Sophie Le-Phat Ho. Rive-Sud de Montréal. I’m a graduate student in anthropology (if that makes a difference). I have a few question I’d like to bring up at this Commission…

As the Commission reaches its end, I think it has become evident (even to the Commissioners) that it presents serious problems. As someone who was born and grew up in Quebec, I have been disgusted by the racism and sexism broadcasted on prime time TV the past couple of months, to be then depicted as “malaise” by journalists and analysts. To not be able to call racism by its name demonstrates a huge prevailing problem in our society and reveals the power discrepancy that racialized communities (including racialized women) are forced to deal with on an everyday basis.

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(excerpt from Threads – Publication by South Asian Women’s Community Centre)

Gita was brought to Canada as a domestic worker by persons with diplomatic status in Canada. Due to the sensitive nature of her case, the name of the country from where she was brought has been omitted.

I was born in Sri Lanka, but moved to (country’s name omitted) in 1994. I stayed there with my husband for about 7 and a half years. We had a daughter and she was just 9 1/2 months old when I left them. I had been searching for jobs and I met a diplomat who said that they could take me to Canada. They promised me that I would only be gone for three years and that I could have a one month vacation every year to travel back to visit my family. They promised me that I wouldn’t have to spend anything… they were diplomatic people. but this was not what happened.

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