Racism versus culture: competing interpretations of racial inequality in Canadian public policy

ABSTRACT

The paper explores why the provinces of Ontario and Quebec devised contrasting policies in response to similar incidents of urban violence in the mid-2000s. In both settings, municipal police departments launched aggressive campaigns against so-called “youth gangs.” However, Ontario went one step further and created a new “youth policy” to expand out-of-school programs for children and adolescents. By examining the origins of the policies in each province, the paper concludes that Black political actors in Ontario were leading champions of the youth policy, whereas, in Quebec, police chiefs took the driver’s seat and advocated for a disciplinary strategy against “street gangs.” The contrasts in policy and Black political participation exemplify the distinct racial politics of the provinces. Race-conscious policy in Ontario grows out of a tradition of Black radicalism and multi-racial coalitions. In Quebec, minority nationalism turns race into a proxy for clashes over ethnicity and culture.

KEYWORDS:

• Racial politics
• public policy
• black politics
• racism
• policing
• positive youth development

Introduction

In the long history of Canadian settler colonialism, Black communities have engaged in countless acts of individual and collective resistance (Calliste 1995; Frost 2007; Whitfield 2006). Only rarely have their proposed reforms become legislation. When Black communities re-direct the course of policy, they bring more systemic perspectives to bear on discussions of racism that deviate from the standard of Liberal and neo-liberal policy. The present paper discusses findings from a comparative study of Ontario and Quebec and shows how the knowledge of Black political actors is critical to undoing patterns of policymaking that reproduce, rather than eliminate, anti-black racism. Across the West, Black political actors have been leading players in anti-racism legislation as community organizers, civil rights leaders, and policymakers (Bhattacharyya, Virdee, and Winter 2020; Hammond Perry 2015; Lieberman 2005; Stasiulis 1989). Understanding why Black political actors can effect progressive policy change in some contexts and not others is a vital research topic.

Cross-national studies show that political institutions exert the most decisive impact on the substance of legislation and Black political mobilization. In any context, Black political actors must have discursive and material means to make claims on the state, and race-conscious policy must be a legitimate object of public policy (Koopmans et al. 2005; Lieberman 2005). In moments when Black political actors have transformed public policy, they have used their legal rights to push the boundaries of citizenship, secured resources to run advocacy organizations, and exploited veto points in political institutions (Hammond Perry 2015: Lieberman 2005). Discourses of Liberal individualism, capitalism, citizenship, multiculturalism, racism, and Anti-Semitism also converge in ways that either stifle or facilitate debates about anti-black racism (Bleich 2003; Smith 1993).

The present paper extends the current literature by proposing that left-wing coalitions play a crucial role by lending or withholding their support for Black political actors. Progress in anti-racism in the Canadian context and other countries has been a product both of Black political leadership and multi-racial lobbies (Gillion 2013; Hammond Perry 2015; Solomos 1989; Walker 2002). The current study reveals that left-wing coalitions may be especially important in helping Black political actors break through the ideological barriers to anti-racism, such as discourses of “tough on crime,” colorblindness, and Liberal individualism. The paper concludes that bi-partisan support for cultural nationalism and colour-blindness in Quebec compounds the silence on racism and exclusion of Black political actors.

Using historical institutionalism, critical race theory, and Black studies, the paper explores how the interaction between political institutions, left-wing coalitions, and Black political mobilization has produced divergent race policies in Ontario and Quebec. For several reasons, one would expect race policies to be similar across the two provinces, as the two are sub-national states with large immigrant populations and a significant Black presence dating back centuries. However, the provinces could not be more dissimilar regarding anti-racism. While progress in anti-racism legislation in Ontario has been anything but smooth or satisfactory, it has progressed further than in Quebec. In Quebec, anti-racism has stalled for decades and improved little over time. The paper connects these divergent trajectories to a critical juncture in the 1970s when Quebec veered into a nationalist direction, and the voices of Black communities were drowned out. In Ontario, racism became an even more contentious political issue due to the influx of Caribbean and South Asian immigrants.

The long-term reverberations of this juncture were apparent in 2005 when Black political actors in Ontario steered the policy deliberations about urban violence onto its systemic causes and advocated for policies aimed at tackling racism and racial inequality. In Quebec, Black political actors were excluded from the deliberations and police chiefs lobbied for a disciplinary strategy against “street gangs.” Through interviews and archival sources, the paper describes the origins of the two policies. It concludes that race-conscious policy in Ontario grows out of a history of Black radicalism and multi-racial coalitions. In Quebec, minority nationalism turns race into a proxy for clashes over ethnicity and culture.

The 1970s critical juncture between Ontario and Quebec

For much of the twentieth century, Black political mobilization evolved similarly across Toronto and Montreal. The same advocacy organizations existed in both cities, such as the United Negro Improvement Association, the Negro Citizenship Association, and the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (Gooden 2019; Ricci 2013). During the 1960s, the intellectual thought of Black Power and pan-Africanism flourished in both contexts (Austin 2007; Calliste 1995). In 1969, Black students attending Sir George Williams University (now Concordia) in Montreal staged the first mass protest against racism, and it became a symbolic act of resistance for Blacks across the country (Stasiulis 1989). Starting in the 1970s, conditions in the two cities deviated sharply. In Montreal, Francophone nationalism came to the fore and pushed Black radicalism to the background. In Toronto, the movement gained new followers with the arrival of Caribbean and South Asian immigrants, many of whom had agitated against racism in Britain (Harney 1996; Carrington and Bonnett 1997).

In the early 1950s, Ontario became the first province to outlaw racism in employment and public accommodations due to a campaign led by Black residents from Dresden and Jewish civil rights activists from Toronto. The partners came together in the late 1950s after the National Unity Association (NUA) of Dresden, founded by Black residents, failed to win support for a by-law against racial segregation. In the same period, the Canadian Jewish Congress (CJW) began a campaign against racism in employment. Together, the NUA, CJW, and the Toronto Joint Labor Committee (TJLC) formed a large coalition representing unions, religious denominations, feminists, and racialized and immigrant associations to pressure the Premier into enacting an American model of anti-discrimination (Lambertson 2001). Media coverage of the Jim Crow style of segregation in Dresden did much to dispel the myth that Canada was immune to colour-coded racism (Walker 2002).

The 1970s opened a new chapter in anti-racism as more Caribbean and South Asian immigrants arrived once immigration restrictions ended and stimulated the growth of Toronto’s multi-racial Left. Almost immediately, the city became the scene of a white supremacist backlash, and daily acts of racist violence exploded (Graham and MacKay 2019; Kieryło 2012). Drawing on Black radicalism and pan-Africanism, Black activists led mass protests against the death of Michael Habbid by a white vigilante and the police killings of two Black males in 1978 and 1979 (Graham and MacKay 2019; Stasiulis 1989). The Black Education Project and other like-minded organizations stepped-up the pressure for reform in education, policing, and other domains (Kieryło 2012; Stasiulis 1989). New multi-racial alliances arose, such as the Urban Alliance for Race Relations (UARR), co-founded by Black, South Asian, and Jewish activists in 1975 (Siemiatycki et al. 2003).

By the 1980s, the empirical evidence of systemic racism in Toronto had become overwhelming, and the terms of the debate shifted onto the limits of the Liberal “race relations” paradigm and multiculturalism (Kieryło 2012). Black political actors and their allies campaigned relentlessly for legislation against “institutional racism,” a concept inherited from Black Power (Kieryło 2012). In a 1987 report, the Provincial Advisory Committee on Race Relations criticized multiculturalism for neglecting racism and reinforcing over-simplified depictions of ethnicity and culture (Carrington and Bonnett, 1997). In 1992, the newly elected left-wing New Democratic Party (NDP) created the province’s first Anti-Racism Secretariat based on recommendations from Black and South Asian activists and anti-fascists (Harney 1996). The administration also conducted an inquiry into criminal justice that unambiguously concluded that anti-black racism was the root cause of racial disparities in law enforcement (Kempthorne 2013). The victories were short-lived, however, as the Conservative Party elected in 1995 swiftly abolished the NDP’s reforms.

The 1970s in Montreal took a different route, as the nationalist Parti Québécois (PQ) swept to victory in 1976, and the province became embroiled in battles over sovereignty and protection of the French language (Béland, Lecours, and Schmeiser 2021). As conflicts over language laws raged, many Black Anglophones left the province for Ontario or the United States (US). The Francophone Black community grew with new immigrants from Haiti, followed by Africa (Mills 2018). In the ensuing tug-of-war between Quebec nationalism and Canadian federalism, Black and other racialized communities were caught in between. When plans for the 1995 referendum were underway, a PQ politician declared, “They [racialized communities and immigrants] will support the position that is the least Québécois” (Crelinsten and Jebwab 1993). Black communities were drawn directly into the conflict when nationalists tried to cast Haitians as allies of sovereignty and so-called “Jamaicans” (a distortion of the Black Anglophone community) as foes (Mugabo 2019). As the popularity of Quebec sovereignty has waned since the 1990s, the nationalist discourse has shifted onto the supposed “cultural threat” of racialized communities and immigrants to the French language, gender equity, and secularism (Béland, Lecours, and Schmeiser 2021; Bilge 2013).

For decades, Quebec nationalism has perpetuated a symbolic conflict between the survival of the white Francophone identity and the claims of people of colour and immigrants (Labelle 2015). In 2017, the Liberal Premier cancelled a proposed inquiry into racism that a multi-racial coalition had called for, claiming it would deteriorate into a “trial” on white Francophones. Several days earlier, the Liberal party lost an election in a suburban riding, and party operatives believed it was a backlash to the inquiry (Parent 2017).

To date, anti-racism has never made it into Quebec policy. Black Francophone and Anglophone community organizations have lobbied against racism in the taxi industry, immigration policy, policing, and education (Mills 2018; Small and Thornhill 2008; Rutland 2020). Yet, their concerns have rarely reverberated at the provincial level (Rutland 2020). In 2006, the Liberal Party released what was intended to be the first province-wide strategy against racism, not long after ending a hotly contested inquiry over immigration and “reasonable accommodation” (Eid and Labelle 2013; Potvin 2008). The policy shows no sign of progress for it sidesteps the contradictions between nationalism and anti-racism and proposes a neo-liberal model of “diversity management” (Eid and Labelle 2013).

Racial politics and race-conscious policy

The cross-national literature sheds important light on the variations between Ontario and Quebec, even though the provinces are sub-national states. Wherever race-conscious policies have arisen, Black advocacy organizations have had a hand in their making (Hammond Perry 2015; Lieberman 2005; Peplow 2018). Rarely do governments initiate action on racism without external pressure, such as a social movement, a political crisis, or international law (Gehring 2009; Martin 2013; Peplow 2018; Sooben 1990). Consistent with historical institutionalism, studies show that a country’s political institutions exert the most decisive impact on the quality of legislation and Black political participation. Through discursive and material means, political institutions create constraints and opportunities for anti-discrimiation (Lieberman 2005; Bleich 2003; Hermanin and Squires 2012). Less consensus exists regarding the variables that are most critical for race-conscious policy.

One variable that emerges consistently across the literature is the role of citizenship in enabling people of colour and immigrants to exercise political power. In one quantitative study of European countries, Huddleston and Vink (2015) observe a significant positive correlation between access to citizenship for immigrants and the strength of immigrant integration and anti-discrimination policy (Huddleston and Vink 2015). In another European comparison, Koopmans, Michalowski, and Waibel (2012) find that as the electoral power for immigrants increases, so does the quality of anti-discrimination legislation.

When we compare the US, Britain, and Canada, the evidence shows that during and before the 1960s, Black political actors fought for corrective legislation by exposing the contradiction between Liberal ideals of equal rights and de jure and de facto racism (Hammond Perry 2015; Morris 1999; Waters 2014). As Liberal anti-discrimination proved wanting, Black political actors in each setting continued pressing for citizenship to be more than a rhetorical gesture but a concrete reality and called for more far-reaching remedies to “institutional racism” (Murji 2007; Sugrue 2004). Through a decades-long fight, Black civil rights organizations in the US infused once unpopular concepts of “racial proportionalism” and “disparate impact” into federal law and policy in the 1960s and 1970 (Lieberman 2005; Moreno 1997; Sugrue 2004). In Britain, the Race Relations Act (RRA) acknowledged “institutional racism” for the first time in 2000, after the MacPherson inquiry into the death of Stephen Lawrence, a young Black male killed by white youths in 1993 (Murji 2007). The inquiry arose from a long campaign by Stephen Lawrence's parents and supporters (Peplow 2018).

Findings show that legal citizenship may not be enough in settings where discourses about national identity obscure colour-coded racism or position people of colour as outsiders (Gehring 2009; Koopmans et al. 2005). Republicanism in France constitutes a prime barrier to race-conscious policy because it regards colour-coded racism and sub-group identities as incompatible with the right of individuals to be equal before the law and threats to national cohesion (Blatt 1997; Bleich 2003). France also bans racial constructs because they remind the society of its troubled history with WWII Nazism (Bleich 2003). It is worth noting that legal citizenship is not entirely equal for Black communities in France. While Caribbean migrants from French territories possess full citizenship, Black immigrants from other regions do not. Célestine (2011) claims this division in citizenship has caused Caribbean migrants to view their struggles as distinct from Black immigrants. The advent of the Conseil National des Communautés Noires (CRAN) in 2005 signalled the arrival of the first self-described Black organization to unite France’s diverse Black communities.

Previous research suggested that multiculturalism may enhance opportunities for anti-racism claims-making (Koopmans et al. 2005). However, findings from Toronto indicate that the relationship between anti-racism and multiculturalism has been more tension-ridden than smooth. Moreover, anti-racism legislation in Ontario began in the 1950s, two decades before multiculturalism. The post-1960s era of anti-racism activism in Ontario may be more accurately understood as the product of struggles for racial justice and the intellectual thought of Black radicalism (Bhattacharyya, Virdee, and Winter 2020).

Liberal and left-wing coalitions

Cross-national studies indicate that Liberal and left-leaning parties are more inclined to back progressive policies on racism and immigration than their right-wing counterparts (Howard 2009). However, left-wing parties can also behave unpredictably and lean towards the right (Solomos 1989). The crucial factor appears to be not parties but left-wing coalitions comprised of state and non-state actors who rally behind or oppose race-conscious policy (Bleich 2003; King and Smith 2005). Given their political under-representation, Black political actors have had to count on left-wing allies to mobilize enough political support for reform (Gillion 2013; Hammond Perry 2015). The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR) was pivotal in the American Civil Rights Acts (Chen 2009). Black Britons have fought against racism alongside and in coalition with South Asian and Jewish activists, Socialists, Quakers, and anti-fascists (Hammond Perry 2015; Lent 2001).

Left-wing coalitions that oppose race-conscious policy create more barriers for Black political actors and other anti-racism advocates. French Republicanism has been a powerful impediment because it rests on a bi-partisan consensus (Blatt 1997; Martin 2013). When the CRAN advocates for race-conscious policy, left- and right-wing elites accuse it of bowing to a divisive Anglo-American multiculturalism counter to Republicanism (Alzouma 2011). In Germany, Black political actors have been similarly unable to outflank the left- and right-wing opposition to race-conscious legislation (Roig 2016). Findings from Quebec confirm that a bi-partisan consensus favouring colour blindness and cultural nationalism compounds the ideological resistance to anti-racism.

Hierarchical relations between local and national politics

As Black political actors are under-presented in the top echelons of government and most active at the grassroots, decentralization creates openings for them to lobby political institutions. Lieberman (2005) shows how decentralization in the US allowed Black civil rights organizations to effect change through the courts when the federal government remained unyielding. Centralization concentrates power at the national level and reinforces the national-local hierarchy. Scholars note that decentralization and centralization can also be double-edged swords (Lieberman 2005). In the US, Republicans have manipulated the courts to undermine affirmative action. In Britain, centralization has been advantageous for race policy when the Labour Party has held a majority government, and the party's left-wing has held the balance of power (Peplow 2018; Sooben 1990).

Based on insights from the international literature and findings from the present study, the paper proposes that Black political actors influenced policymaking in Ontario in 2005 because of the combination of legal citizenship, left-wing coalitions, and decentralization. In Quebec, Black political participation and race-conscious policy have been impeded by cultural nationalism, a bi-partisan consensus behind colour-blindness, and centralization. The following section describes the methodology before moving into the findings.

Methodology

The study analyzes the policy process leading to Ontario's “Youth Opportunities Strategy” (YOS) of 2006 and Quebec's “Street Gang Intervention” (SGI) of 2005 (titled the “Plan d’intervention sur les gangs de rue” in French). It integrates data from interviews, media coverage, and governmental archives. In each province, interviews were held with the main authors of the policy and other government and non-governmental actors who either participated in the deliberations or observed it from the sidelines. In Quebec, several officials from the “Ministry of Public Security” (MPS) either declined to be interviewed or never answered emails. Ultimately, four interviews were completed with MPS representatives in Quebec, in addition to four Black community organizers, a Black public servant, a retired police officer, members of the child welfare agency's “street gang” unit, and the director of an NGO involved in the SGI. In Ontario, 11 interviews were completed with two senior policymakers who created the youth policy, two Black Liberal politicians, four directors of Black community organizations, a Black public servant, and two researchers associated with the 2008 “Roots of Violence” inquiry (McMurtry and Curling 2008).

Ethics approval was obtained in 2015 from the Institutional Review Board of Johns Hopkins University when the author was a doctoral candidate (HIRB00002203). Respondents signed a consent form in which they agreed to be recorded. Once completed, interviews were transcribed and analyzed line-by-line. The coding was first separated for each province to examine the actors, discourses, and events that shaped the policy. Then, the provincial findings were compared and grouped into overarching conceptual categories.

Press coverage from each province was studied to explore the larger backdrop of the policies and how the views of Black political actors came into play. News archives from the 1990s to 2006 were examined, using terms commonly used in the debates, such as “youth gangs” and “gun violence.” A higher volume of articles was generated for Toronto than Montreal, mainly from the Toronto Star. Moreover, articles featuring the voices of Black political actors arose only in Toronto, not Montreal.

The third data source included governmental documentation about the policies or policy deliberations. The goal was to assess how the problems were defined and diagnosed. A higher volume of material was uncovered in Quebec, including conference proceedings, police data on “street gangs,” and an evaluation of the SGI. A request for access to information was sent to the MPS for copies of reports about the SGI and minutes of meetings, and it was declined.

Findings

Several stark differences appear in the policymaking around incidents of urban violence in each province in 2005. As described below, Black political actors in Ontario played active roles in the policymaking behind the 2006 YOS. In Quebec, the MPS and Montreal’s police department, the Service de Police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM), excluded Black community organizations from the policymaking and turned instead to criminologists and a white-led non-profit who sanctioned the policy’s racial stereotypes of “street gangs.”

Certain similarities between the provinces are important to note. In Montreal and Toronto, moral panics about so-called “youth gangs” had long pervaded the media and stoked racial stereotypes of Black youth (Saberi 2022; Salée and et Décary-Secours 2020). In neither city did any sound empirical proof exist in 2005 to confirm that “youth gangs” were responsible for the violence or that Black youth were the main perpetrators and victims. In October 2005, the two provinces received federal grants of over 40 million dollars to fight against “youth gangs” and the illegal distribution of firearms. The federal Liberal Premier announced the funding after the uprising over police violence in Paris in October 2005 and during an election year when all three party candidates were competing with each other to appear “tough on crime.” In both provinces, the federal grant gave way to a new generation of aggressive police squads that have caused irreparable harm to Black and other racialized communities (Livingstone, Meudec, and Harim 2020; Saberi 2022).

Ontario's youth opportunities strategy

The YOS was the brainchild of the Ministry of Child and Youth Services (MCYS) and embodied a consensus that emerged over time between senior Ministry officials, Black grassroots organizations, and Black Liberal politicians. In 2005, a Black female MP, Mary Ann Chambers, headed the MCYS and became the YOS’s main champion. Ms. Chambers decided to act after Toronto was hit by a spike in gun shootings in the summer of 2005, and asked her team of policymakers to look for models of prevention the Ministry could implement. Once the team came across the concept of “Positive Youth Development” (PYD), it seemed like a perfect fit because it resonated with the Minister’s vision and the department’s mandate. A co-author of the youth policy indicated that Minister Chambers was adamant the department must not stigmatize Black youth. In keeping with the PYD concept, the team believed that the MCYS should promote children’s strengths rather than fix their deficits (Sukarieh and Tannock 2011). The respondent explained, “We believed that we [the MCYS] needed to build these kids up rather than take a remedial or punishment approach.”

While Minister Chambers and her staff began developing a policy in the summer, the Liberal Premier only gave the green light for the YOS in December after a young white female was accidentally killed in a fight between youth in downtown Toronto. Public anger over the shooting exploded, and the clamour for action grew louder than ever (Saberi 2022). The press condemned the Black males involved in the shooting while the two white males remained hidden (Arvast 2016). The Premier asked Minister Chambers to devise a policy as quickly as possible. In February 2006, the Minister announced that the YOS would begin with a budget of $28 million dollars for Toronto before being expanded across Ontario (MCYS 2006).

The youth policy reflected the ideas of MPS officials but also a consensus that emerged between Black grassroots coalitions and Black Liberal politicians. An MCYS official explained: “It [the youth policy] came from above, but from outside as well. Some very active [Black] community organizations said the government needs to do something.” Black community organizations in Toronto started mobilizing in 1999, when the Black Action Defense Committee (BADC) grew alarmed by an apparent surge in violent incidents and founded the “Building Hope Coalition” to mount a collective response. The coalition held public forums across Toronto where residents consistently recommended improved educational and employment opportunities for Black youth (Palmer 2001). By 2005, the coalition had expanded to become the African Canadian Coalition of Community Organizations (ACCO), founded by over 30 organizations. In August 2005, the ACCO published a manifesto outlining strategies to curtail racism and racial inequality in Toronto that it planned to discuss with provincial and federal officials (Hepburn 2005).

Throughout the early 2000s, Black community organizations met alone and with Black Liberal politicians in Toronto to discuss the issues and organize collectively: issuing press releases, publishing editorials, and holding briefings with government officials. A Black community organizer recounted: “The key figures [individual names removed for reasons of confidentiality] would meet regularly to strategize and then to plan, and reach out to politicians, request meetings with ministers at the provincial and municipal level to advocate for additional resources or urge the government to act.” One respondent reported that the BADC was especially active, explaining, “They [the BACD] were making public statements, holding press conferences, challenging various government Ministers not only to talk but to act in the best interest of the Black community. So, they were at the forefront.”

As time progressed, the coalition reached the conclusion that it would advocate for strategies to support Black youth. A coalition member recalled: “[The] consensus was built around: “We need a youth strategy, it has to be provincial, and it has to address systemic issues.” In the press, the ACCO consistently denounced right-wing calls for “tough on crime” and blamed the Conservative budget cuts for heightening economic distress and violence. In an interview, a Black community organizer explained: “For many of us, we saw [the violence] as a symptom of larger systemic issues that were manifesting in that way. [It was] The culmination of the school-to-prison pipeline, unfair immigration, employment, criminal justice, housing problems.”

Quebec's street gang intervention

In Quebec, Black political actors were notably absent from deliberations over the SGI. The chief architects were police chiefs, the MPS, and Montreal's child welfare department. Of the $42 million in federal funds, over 90% went into police squads. A mere $1 million per year was allocated to “gang prevention.” The child welfare department received a seperate federal grant of nearly a million for “gang rehabilitation.”

Overall, findings show that the SGI met the strategic and financial objectives of the province’s police chiefs’ association, mainly the chiefs from Montreal and Quebec City. A retired detective and lobbyist for the SGI described the policy as a carbon copy of a policy the SPVM had produced a few years earlier. The respondent explained that the police chiefs exert an overriding influence over provincial policy and meet regularly with elected officials to brief them on issues deserving of attention. In his/her words, “The association of police chiefs – at the level of the Ministry of Public Security and Ministry of Justice – is very, very, very present. It is they who must inform authorities about the urgent issues.”

The federal grant for “youth gangs” also played a substantial role in the SGI. Before 2005, the police chiefs from Montreal and Quebec City had lobbied the MPS for new police squads and had been turned down due to insufficient funds. When the federal transfer arrived, the province's Liberal Premier asked MPS officials if an uprising like the one in Paris could occur in Montreal. They told him it was unlikely but worth acting to avert a crisis. In the end, the SGI’s purported objective was to prevent [italics mine] “street gangs” from spreading, a sign that the issues did not warrant such a sizeable budget.

Previous studies have shown that police departments will fuel moral panics about “youth gangs” to shore up their legitimacy in the public eye and secure additional funding (Zatz and Krecker, 2003). In 2010, an SPVM representative told a journalist that the campaign against “street gangs” was less about fighting crime than responding to fears about public security (Le Devoir 2010). MPS officials conceded that their own assessment about “street gangs” and press coverage in the mid-2000s was overblown. In not so many words, an official suggested that by deploying more officers to the scene, the SPVM hoped to regain the balance of power in neighborhoods where officers were encountering resistance from residents. Tragically, the SGI directly or indirectly caused a Paris-like uprising in a neighbourhood where an officer fatally shot a Latino youth in 2008 (Rutland 2020).

Deliberations over the SGI remained rather secretive and restricted to government partners. Curiously, the MPS formed an inter-ministerial committee in 2005 that included representatives from education, health, and employment, but not the Ministry responsible for racialized and immigrant communities, then known as the Ministry of Immigration and Cultural Communities (MICC). The MPS invited the MICC in 2007 after the latter published a report about Montreal's Black community. In 2006, Quebec’s only Black Liberal MP, Yolande James, chaired a Task Force on the Full Participation of Black Communities in Québec Society that seems to have escaped the MPS’s notice.

Only one non-profit organization from Montreal appears to have been privy to the policy deliberations, and it was run by a well-connected white male recruited because of his “personal relations,” indicated MPS officials. Public records show the NGO collaborated with the MPS and SPVM in holding public forums about “street gangs” during the 1990s. With funding from the SGI, the non-profit established a branch in a neighbourhood where several Black community organizations were active. Two veteran Black community organizers from the neighbourhood said they had never heard about the SGI or been invited to any meetings. The MPS and SPVM likely excluded Black community organizations because they would have raised the alarm about police racism, as they had been doing for years (Rutland 2020)

The racial stereotypes of delinquency embedded in the SGI reflect the views of police chiefs and local criminologists who leaned on sensationalist depictions of urban gangs from the American literature (González Castillo and Goyette 2013; Salée and Décary-Secours 2020). MPS officials denied that racism played any role in the SGI except for one, who said, “At the beginning, we didn't know where it [incidents of violence] would lead. The worries were undoubtedly unjustified. Does the fact that it was mainly racial minority youth, did it provoke more concern? I would almost have to say yes.” In another interview, an MPS official asserted that police officers do not engage in racial profiling because they deal with “facts.” The respondent then contradicted him/herself by adding, “For the population of street gangs, it was Black people.” In a third interview, an MPS official claimed the SGI was kept colorblind for political and strategic reasons. S/he explained,

At the political level [the Premier’s office], there was no concern with visible minorities. It is certain that at the level of organizations, the application of laws against street gangs, it was helpful to the cause not to indicate that we were talking about Black youth.

Political ideologies of race and nation

As Ontario and Quebec belong to the same federal citizenship regime, the factors that most set them apart are cultural and ideological. One could argue that the provinces embody two distinct versions of nationalism: Ontario follows the Canadian model of multicultural nationalism, whereas Quebec espouses a minority nationalism in tension with federalism (Banting 2022; Salée 2022).

As described earlier, Black grassroots organizations in Toronto have lobbied continuously for anti-racism since the first 1950s legislation. Moreover, they and their allies have consistently articulated criticisms of state multiculturalism and Liberal individualism for overlooking systemic racism (Kieryło 2012). In 1992, anti-racism rose to provincial policy for the first time before being undone by a Conservative government. Hence, race-conscious policy in Ontario has evolved through a tension-ridden interplay between anti-racism, multiculturalism, and neo-liberalism. The YOS reflected these contrasting discourses.

Although the YOS took racism and racial inequality into account, it arose under a Liberal administration that had campaigned for office by promising to fix public services without raising taxes (Evans and Smith 2015). The solution was “social investment,” in which the state replaces universal welfare with targeted programs for children and youth and shifts the focus of social policy onto human capital development (Jenson and Saint-Martin 2003). The PYD concept, while progressive-sounding, has been incorporated into neo-liberal policies that seek to turn young people into self-reliant and economically productive citizens while leaving larger inequalities untouched (Sukarieh and Tannock 2011).

In Quebec, there were traces of neoliberalism and nationalism in the SGI. The disciplinary discourse about youth gangs was not unique to Quebec but consistent with federal policy and neo-liberal regimes of discipline and punishment (Saberi 2022). What is specific to Quebec are the cultural politics of race flowing from nationalism. MPS officials spoke as though they believed the racial stereotypes about delinquency or mistook colour blindness for objectivity.

Since its inception, Quebec nationalism has propagated an image of the Francophone community as white and Euro-descended, thereby obscuring Indigenous claims to the territory and the longstanding presence of Black and other racialized communities in Montreal (Juteau 2002; Leroux 2013). Moreover, Quebec nationalism professes that white Francophones are not complicit in settler colonialism and racism because they were subjected to Anglo-European domination (Leroux 2013; Salée 2022). By hiding settler colonialism and racism, Quebec nationalism suggests that the boundaries separating white Francophones from people of colour are ethnic and cultural rather than racialized. When describing the SGI, MPS officials said the fear was that Black youth were importing an American culture of urban gangs, as if Blackness made them cultural and ethnic outsiders rather than young people whose formative experiences with racism have been on Quebec soil.

The ethnic and cultural boundaries of Quebec’s Francophone identity are more than just descriptive; they are also a source of political conflict. As described earlier, nationalists have depicted people of colour and immigrants as foils for Quebec sovereignty or threats to the survival of the French identity. The rise of a more strident white nationalism since the 2000s has only intensified the perceived zero-sum conflict between the interests of white Francophones and the claims of people of colour (Bilge 2013; Labelle 2015).

Contrary to other Canadian provinces, Quebec rejects multiculturalism and prefers to use its concept of “interculturalism.” When federal multiculturalism arose in 1971, nationalists believed it was intended to undermine the quest for Quebec sovereignty by placing Francophones in the same league as other equality-seeking groups (Nugent 2006). Under interculturalism, citizens are expected to unite around the French language. While the differences between multiculturalism and interculturalism remain debatable, both concepts have been criticized for using language to maintain white domination, obscuring settler colonialism, and depoliticizing racism through notions of cultural identity and integration (Leroux 2014; Bannerji 2000). Jacob (1992) and Symons (2002) claim that interculturalism causes Quebec policy to be “ethnicized” and “culturalist” because it reduces race to culture and ethnicity while overlooking racism. The same terms could apply to the SGI.

Unlike multiculturalism, interculturalism may do more to deprive Black communities of resources to organize collectively. In 1991, the PQ government banned provincial funding for race- and ethnic-specific organizations, claiming they were incompatible with interculturalism. To remain eligible for grants, organizations had to serve a multicultural clientele. Though the ban’s impact remains unknown, anecdotal evidence suggests it forced race- and ethnic-specific organizations to change their names to survive. One report reveals that the Latin American Centre became the Centre for Liaison and Multi-Ethnic Assistance, and the Portuguese Centre became the Centre for Social-Community Action (TRCI 2016).

Liberal and left-wing coalitions

The gaps in Black political representation in policymaking in 2005 in Quebec and Ontario mirror their relative positions in the province's left-wing. As described earlier, Black activists have been a major force in Toronto’s multi-racial Left for decades and have been integral to the NDP, the UARR, and numerous coalitions against racism. In the early 2000s, Black Liberal politicians drew on their leverage within political institutions to influence municipal and provincial policy. Alvin Curling, a provincial Liberal MP, co-authored the “Roots of Violence” report (McMurtry and Curling 2008). Black federal MPs were also active. Lincoln Alexander led the way in lobbying for police reform, and Jean Augustine arranged funds for youth programs in Ontario (Palmer 2001).

When Black community organizations blamed the upsurge in violence on the Conservative government’s neo-liberal cutbacks, other left-wing actors in Toronto echoed their views. For months, the city’s self-professed social democratic Mayor rejected the call for more police officers and maintained that the solution must be to fix inequality, arguing, “The police can deal with guns, but jobs are not something the police can produce” (International Observer 2005). The Mayor eventually relented and hired more officers after the Boxing Day shooting in December 2005. Between 2001 and 2005, Toronto’s United Way published research that exposed the yawning gaps in racial income inequality in the city. In reaction, a multi-racial network of community organizations founded the Colour of Poverty in 2001 to bring attention to the intersection between racial and economic injustice (Shakir 2011).

In Quebec, Francophone leftists kept in dialogue with Black activists during the 1960s and lent their support to campaigns against the deportation of Haitian immigrants, racism in the taxi industry, and police brutality (Mills 2018; Rutland 2020). However, these relations faded after the PQ came to power (Mills 2018). Since the 1980s, Francophone leftists have been allied with Quebec nationalism and have generally overlooked issues of racism and racial inequality (Beaudet 2018; Desrosiers 1998; Salée 2022). When feminist and anti-poverty coalitions negotiated with the PQ to expand the welfare state in the 1990s, they centered the analysis on gender and class inequality, but not race (Noël 2013). In recent years, some left-wing nationalists and feminists have openly defended reactionary policies, such as the xenophobic Charter of Values, which stigmatizes Muslim women for wearing the veil (Dobrowolsky 2017).

Between 1976 and 2005, the PQ paid little or no attention to racism. The party's chief priorities have been sovereignty and nation-building (Desrosiers 1998). Only the Liberal Party has been inclined to act on racism, though it has gone no further than proposing a neo-liberal brand of “diversity management” (Eid and Labelle 2013; Potvin 2008).

Centralization and local-provincial linkages

Relative to Montreal, Toronto wields more autonomy vis-à-vis the provincial government and greater influence on public policy. Hudson and Graefe (2011) write that policy innovations often begin in Toronto before they spread throughout the province. The seat of government is located in Toronto, which allows non-profit organizations to “jump scale” and meet directly with policymakers, as Black community organizations did in 2005 (Hudson and Graefe 2011). In comparison, the municipality of Montreal played no role in the deliberations over SGI and essentially acted as a sub-contractor for the MPS, distributing grants for “gang prevention.” Due to minority nationalism, the provincial government symbolizes the heart of political power in Quebec. Policymaking tends to be centralized in the capital Quebec City, miles away from Montreal, where most Black communities reside.

Conclusion

The paper has sought to explain the policy variations observed between Ontario and Quebec in 2005 by matching the empirical evidence with the cross-national literature on race policy. It concludes that the discrepancies in Black political participation and policymaking are a function of the distinct racial politics of the provinces and the ways by which they shape the interaction between political discourses, left-wing coalitions, and entry points into the provincial state. The paper further proposes that the divergencies in political institutions and Black political representation were set in motion by a critical juncture in the 1970s, whose effects persist today. As shown, Toronto’s Black community and multi-racial Left expanded in the 1970s and drew on Black radicalism to lead a movement against systemic racism. Ever since, Black political actors and their multi-racial allies have advocated for policies that centre on anti-racism and move beyond the limits of liberal anti-discrimination and multiculturalism. In Quebec, Francophone nationalism rose to the fore in the 1970s, and the province was thrown into a battle over the French language and culture. For decades, minority nationalism has fueled a seeming zero-sum conflict between the survival of the Francophone identity and the claims of people of colour and immigrants.

The contrasting role of the Left in Ontario and Quebec confirms that left-wing coalitions may be especially important in lending political support to Black political actors and countering right-wing discourses, such as “tough on crime” in Toronto. In Quebec, the bi-partisan consensus behind nationalism drowns out the voices of Black political actors and reinforces the silence on racism. To this day, the campaign for anti-racism in Quebec remains trapped at the ideological level; activists must constantly “prove” that racism exists and that it is incumbent on the state to act. Race-conscious policies have made relatively more headway in Ontario, though neo-liberalism and multiculturalism have stunted their growth.

Research findings further indicate that Black political actors in Ontario have influenced policy by using their legal rights to stretch the boundaries of citizenship, creating advocacy organizations, and working with decentralized political institutions. Quebec nationalism erects more barriers to Black political participation because of centralization, a ban on funding for race and ethnic-specific organizations, and race-neutral interculturalism.

Overall, the study illustrates the power of Black political actors and multi-racial coalitions to effect progressive policy change, though they must do so under profound political constraints. The fact remains that in both provinces, governing institutions approach racism as an isolated problem, rather than one constitutive of capitalism, settler colonialism, and white domination. It is not by accident that multiculturalism and interculturalism enjoy broader popular support than anti-racism because they do not challenge power relations. Future research on anti-racism could continue to explore the ever-evolving interplay between Black politics, left-wing coalitions, and hegemonic discourses of neo-liberalism and nationalism. It is also important to remember that citizenship is not an unalloyed good because it inevitably limits our conception of rights and who is and is not deserving of them. As Black political actors have demonstrated, it may be best to view citizenship as an unfinished project rather than a fixed endpoint. Finally, research must go beyond the accepted storylines about the movers and shakers in history and pay greater attention to how Black, Indigenous, and racialized communities have transformed the fabric of social justice.

Acknowledgements

The Fonds de recherche du Québec (FQR) provided for the study. The author is grateful to the two anonymous reviewers and Dr. Tina Fetner at McMaster University for their constructive feedback on earlier versions of the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Fonds de Recherche du Québec (Société et Culture) [Grant Number Graduate Scholarship].