Writing on Tuesday’s Bouchard-Taylor hearings at the Palais de Congrès, News editor Nicholas Smith says,
Demonstrators tried to enter the hearings after protesting outside for 90 minutes, but security guards stopped them and 20 to 30 police were called to evict the protesters.
and relates from Leila Pourtavaf — “a member of No One Is Illegal and a coordinator of the Quebec Public Interest Research Group [QPIRG]” — that
when No One Is Illegal members entered the hearings in Côte-des-Neiges last week to protest, the commission chairs gave them time at the microphone and audience members clapped after demonstrators spoke.
“We weren’t expecting any police presence based on our reception in Côte-des-Neiges,” Pourtavaf said.
But Smith doesn’t say anything about whether the protesters did anything to disrupt the hearing, as opposed to protesting outside and then asking to speak. The Montreal Gazette mentions,
on the convention centre’s top floor, about 30 protesters bellowed into megaphones about “the racist commission,” broadcast feedback, played music and banged the walls to compete with the amplified voices in the meeting hall.
Ninety minutes into the forum, they tried to push through the doors. On the other side, commission staff pulled back on the handles with all their might to keep the protesters at bay.
Montreal police arrested three of the demonstrators.
If this happened as The Gazette says it did, we also assume there were more protesters still outside the building, picketing more legitimately. The Daily remarks on 4 arrests — not 3 — with Smith writing:
After being forced outdoors, Tuesday’s rally resumed across the street with fewer participants. Details of the event are unclear, but at some point police asked the crowd to disperse and arrested three people for loitering. Stefan Christoff, an independent journalist and activist,
(There’s no editorial note mentioning any association of Christoff with The Daily, even though he got a “with files from Stefan Christoff” in the interview of Tariq Ali.)
was arrested for assaulting a police officer and assaulting a security guard with a weapon – listed in court documents as a badminton racket.
But the CBC has a different account, and says 3 protesters were arrested, like in The Gazette, with one policeman facing charges:
Police arrested three protesters on Tuesday night who were attempting to disrupt Quebec’s public hearings in Montreal on the reasonable accommodation of minorities.
The demonstrators, who accuse the Bouchard-Taylor hearings of being “racist,” tried for close to two hours to interrupt the debates before police were called to intervene.
Along with the protesters, a police officer is reportedly facing assault charges in connection with the melee.
So Smith didn’t report on the police officer facing assault charges, he’s counting 4 instead of 3 arrests of protesters — was one person immediately let go? — and he doesn’t discuss whether the protesters may have been trying to “disrupt” the hearings, and for how long…
He seems to have gotten all his info from the No One is Illegal / QPIRG representative — is he a member of either? — and then to have given up on any alternative narrative of events . Maybe he got no response from the police or maybe he didn’t even ask them.
Are there just two narratives in any story in The McGill Daily, that of the protesters and that of “the Man”? The Public Editor’s column in this issue suggests that sometimes this is so, pointing out how Kelley Ebbels quoted a Dawson activist and allowed him to put an unrealistic spin on events — I myself was just bothered that the reporter didn’t say the group associations which would offer readers a look into how his bias may have distorted events.
Toward the end of his story, Nicholas Smith writes,
Bita Eslami from Montreal’s Immigrant Workers’ Centre added that even those who immigrate legally face problems far more severe than those highlighted in the reasonable accommodation debate.
“The real issues are not whether or not [immigrants] wear a veil or whether they’re allowed to pray. It’s about the condition of workers,” Eslami said. “They come here with degrees…and end up doing the shittiest jobs.”
“They are already cleaning our floors, caring for our children, driving our cabs,” she added.
This is an important point, and one highlighted by The Daily’s editorial this week on the subject. But what The Daily’s reporter didn’t say was that while the protesters were decrying and perhaps trying to disrupt the hearings inside,
During the hearings, several immigrants complained of having difficulty finding work after coming to Quebec despite holding professional credentials and being fluent in French.
“I slaved for a long time before finding work,” said Mehdi Rholan, a Morrocan immigrant who studied engineering in France before moving to Montreal in 2001.
It took him three years to get work in his field, he told the commission.
That’s according to CBC (and The Gazette also refers to Mr. Rholan’s testimony). The CBC continues,
Other speakers shared their experience of being forced to take menial labour work in spite of having professional training.
“I lost almost two years of my life,” said Lotfi Dahmane, an Algerian with a diploma in computer programming and transport logistics, who ended up working at a Value Village warehouse for lack of better opportunities.
“I’ve never gone on welfare, because for me, it would be shameful to come here and accept social assistance,” he said.
Immigrants need to be integrated economically, not just socially, Dahmane said.
And, according to The Gazette, an 11 year-old boy at the hearing contributed,
“French is a difficult language. When immigrants learn our language, they’ll understand us. … Immigrants who come here have trouble finding work and we have to help them.”
Did Nicholas Smith or the staff as a whole not think it was important to offer a three-dimensional view of the Bouchard-Taylor hearings now that this circus finally comes to Montreal? Did The Daily not even think to relate what was happening in the hearings, where immigrants to Montreal were speaking, instead of just outside? As a newspaper, aren’t the facts supposed to be more important than getting across the EdBoard’s theory about who’s wrong here — people like M. Bouchard and Mr. Taylor — in addition to the obviously wrong racists and ethnocentrists?
The more concrete question is whether The Daily or The Gazette and the CBC have a correction to publish about the number of arrested protesters.
