“If we go from 19 to 10 boroughs, but these boroughs remain quasi-municipalities as they are now, we will end up in the worst of situations because we’ll have cities … an Italian city, a Haitian city, an anglophone city, an Arab city – Ville St. Laurent, a Jewish city, etc. We will no longer have this sense of one big city with boroughs that speaks with one voice.”

Louise Harel





I don’t care if you agree or not with the characterization of Ville-Saint-Laurent as an “Arab City” or if you feel that describing other Montreal boroughs as Haitian, Italian and Jewish is a bit of an oversimplification. There is no way you or anyone in good faith that thinks former municipal affairs minister Louise Harel meant anything offensive when she said the above on RDI last week.

Everyone very well understood that she was speaking out against ghettos and division and for a more diverse, multicultural and united city.

To imply anything else is bullshit. It is another example of the ignoble character assassination The Montreal Gazette and Québec federalists are willing to perform on anyone who has ever been associated with the Parti québécois. It is spreading lies, it is sewing the seeds of hate, it is one more desperate attempt to create ethnic division for political purposes.

To find the appropriately outraged quotes to give credibility to its malicious interpretation of Louise Harel’s quote, the Gazette turned to a Montreal imam who favours the implementation of Charia Law in Québec and one, two, three members of Mayor Gérald Tremblay’s Union Montréal party.

Oh yeah, Madame Harel is rumoured to be thinking about running for mayor in the next municipal election. Do you think this has anything to do with it?

Robert Libman, a former mayor of Côte-Saint-Luc, leader of the Equality Party and member of Mayor Tremblay’s party accused Louise Harel of “sowing the seeds of xenophobia by pointing to identifiable communities. It’s as if she sees bogeymen in everything that is not white and francophone.”

Hey Robert? Wanna know how your own electors identify your city? And by the way, for those who don’t know, Robert Libman is the former president of the Québec chapter of B’nai Brith, an organization so open to non whites and francophones that it actively campaigned for a separate network of publicly financed Jewish Schools in Québec.

Tony Sciascia, president of the Italian Canadian Congress, Quebec region, was also offended by Harel’s characterization of some boroughs as Italian. Wanna know how the kids of St.Leonard see their own city?

How far up their asses are these people’s heads?

After reading that Harel called his borough, Ville Saint-Laurent an “Arab City”, Alan DaSousa said: “I don’t think it’s appropriate for our community to be dissed in such a cavalier fashion”

Care to explain how being called an Arab is a diss, Alan? Really? I understand you are not an Arab and that Ville Saint-Laurent is more diverse that Harel implied. But what do you mean when you say being called Arab is a diss?

Montréal municipal politics have always been an upside down mirror of provincial politics: those associated with sovereignty movement usually in favour of a strong centralized metropolis and the federalist are the ones pleading for a very loose confederation of independent municipalities.

The only thing that doesn’t change is the willingness of the latter to use hate, lies and slander in their pathetic attempts to drive a wedge between francophones and other communities.