Immigrant Montrealers shared their frustrations and disappointment about Quebec's identity crisis at a highly-anticipated hearing on reasonable accommodation held Tuesday night.

Nearly 200 people packed a Montreal library where the Bouchard-Taylor commission held court on Tuesday.
(Radio-Canada)

Quebec has a contradictory attitude to newcomers that makes people feel like outsiders no matter what, said Farah Abdill, a Montrealer originally from Somalia.

"We immigrants, we're here because you say you need us," he told the standing-room audience at the Intercultural Library in Côte-des-Neiges, located in the city's most multi-ethnic community.

"But then we're labelled, and we're told we have to leave our baggage."

"I'd like to be a Québécois. I'll never be a Québécois. I'm black," Abdill said, concluding his two-minute presentation to hearty applause.

Expectations have been high for the Montreal chapter of the Bouchard-Taylor commission hearings on so-called reasonable accommodation, with many community groups anxious to rebut earlier testimony heard in outer regions that reflected xenophobic and intolerant attitudes.

Some Montreal participants urged old-stock Quebecers impatient with immigrants to give newcomers time.

Somalian-Quebecer Farah Abdill said immigrants get mixed messages in Quebec.
(Radio-Canada)

"It will take time for integration," said Jalal Hussein, who moved to Montreal 30 years ago from Pakistan. "We don't have to be impatient, we don't have to be intolerant, we just have to be patient. It takes time."

Other speakers urged the commission to listen to younger Quebecers, who they say have a different outlook on religion in society than the older generation that fought the Catholic church during the Quiet Revolution.

"Your fight is over. You won," said Alain Berger, a self-identified French-Canadian who grew up in Côte-des-Neiges.

"We, the generation that follows, we'll take what you've done and we'll deal with integration, and we have a way of doing it that is accommodating."

One speaker chastised Quebecers for being close-minded about their neighbours.

"We're ready to go to Marrakesh to an oasis to drink tea and eat couscous, but we're not ready to go to Little Magreb in Montreal where the couscous is just as excellent," said André Martin, a Quebecer originally from Belgium.

Montreal hearings a 'reality check'

The Montreal hearings will offer a good perspective on the debate brewing about accommodation, said Daniel Weinstock, director of the Research Centre in Ethics at the Université de Montréal.

"The issue of immigration and multiculturalism is based in Montreal, but it affects the whole of the society," he told CBC Radio. "Because as Montreal goes, so goes Quebec."

Weinstock, who is also a member of the advisory board for the commission, said Quebecers' perceptions of immigrants have been based on an "alternate understanding of reality" in the months since the debate over immigrant accommodation bubbled up in the public sphere.

"These hearings will serve as an important reality check," he said.

Protesters accuse commission of giving voice to racism

About two dozen protesters held a noisy demonstration outside the library to denounce the hearings, which they said are inciting racism.

They stormed the hearing brandishing a banner that read "One status for everyone," and chanted slogans until commission chair Charles Taylor asked them to speak at the microphone.

The protesters, members of an umbrella group of community organizations, are opposed to the commission's raison d'être.

Quebec Premier Jean Charest announced the hearings on the so-called reasonable accommodation of immigrants last winter after an often bitter, public debate on their religious practices.

But the hearings are biased towards the majority's needs and ignore problems faced by newcomers to Quebec, said members of Refusing Intolerance in Quebec.

"The way this is depicted is that it is a crisis, a dilemma that needs to be resolved. This is the real problem with this debate," said community organizer May Haydar, in an CBC News interview earlier on Tuesday.

The commentary heard so far at the commission has made immigrants living in Quebec feel uneasy, when they have real issues to address, said Nazila Bettache, an activist with Montreal migrants rights group No One Is Illegal.

"When there's so much emphasis being put on immigrants being a problem, it's fair to say that they're not going to go out to these forums and say, 'Hey listen to me, I'm having a problem here in Quebec,'" she said.

Certain groups are planning to stay away from the Montreal sessions because the tone makes them uncomfortable, Bettache said.

The umbrella group includes the Canadian Islamic Congress and the Montreal Immigrant Workers' Centre.

The commission travels to Sherbrooke later this week and will return to Montreal Nov. 27.