Montréal-Nord Riot: Bombardier’s Bastards
Why did Montréal-Nord catch fire?
Why did hundreds of kids spend the night setting cars on fire?
Because they couldn’t find any planes, trains or helicopters.
Because they say they are being treated like second class citizens. Because they are second class citizens
Three weeks ago Montrealers were congratulating themselves on Bombardier Aerospace’s decision to assemble it’s new CSeries aicraft in suburban Mirabel. Thousands of new jobs were coming our way. With Bombardier, it’s suppliers and competitors, there were now over 40 000 aerospace related jobs in Québec.
The people of Montréal-Nord knew they were not getting those jobs and that they would never get those jobs.
The thing is, with the government’s blessing (not to mention it’s money in the form of subsidies) and in total violation of Canadian law, many of Québec’s aerospace firms discriminates against Canadian citizens who have dual citizenship with countries like Haiti, Cuba, Venezuela, Lebanon and Viet Nam – over 25 countries in total.
Canadians born outside Canada. The type of Canadians who live in Montréal-Nord.
You see, if some of your employees have a passport from one of these countries, you’re not getting US Defense contracts, which are a big part of our “aerospace” industry.
Bell Helicopter Textron will not hire you and CAE will not hire you.
Bombardier’s Canadian operations are out of the defense business. For now. But some industry watchers suspect that many companies just don’t hire anyone born outside Canada or with multiple citizenship, just in case… You know, if something comes their way, it just makes things easier.
Unemployment in Montreal‘s Haïtian community – a very important community in Montréal-Nord – stands at a scandalous 18%. For North Africans, another important community in the area, it’s 28%.
Time and time and time again they watch the rest of Montreal, Québec and Canada celebrate the thousands of new high paying jobs that they will never get. They were expected to quietly sit this one out, close their eyes on a blatant, systematic and officially sanctioned violation of their citizenship and human rights and just wait for the next turn.
And you know what? That’s what they did. That’s what Freddy Villanova and his brother were doing the other night. Just chilling out and shooting craps like a million other ghetto kids around the world no one cares about. And then Freddy was shot.
It’s not cars they should’ve burned, it’s helicopters.
I dare anybody to lecture these kids about respecting the law.
AngryFrenchGuy 
You should all get over yourselves.
ABP
August 25, 2008 at 11:25 pm
“I am not talking about ridings here. I am not sure how competitive Wawanoloath’s riding is, but I assume it’s not since it is Abitibi. What I am saying is that one person’s party affiliations do not say anything about that person’s ethnic group’s relations with that party. I believe the only black MP in the French parliament (maybe in the last term, perhaps not in the current one) is/was a Front National deputy. I can assure you that most Africans do not vote, or have good feelings towards the Front National in France.”
The population makeup of a riding does matter though. Wawanoloath and Cleary’s ridings contained a miniscule number of natives. The same is true of blacks in Alfred’s riding and anglos in Payne’s riding.
But in the case of Mourani, Barbot and Kotto, their ridings’ demographics mean that they couldn’t have gotten elected without at least some support from non-francophones. Although old-stock francophones are at the very least a plurality or perhaps even a bare majority in these ridings, you never get anywhere near 100% of this group to vote for the BQ or the PQ. The vote of the francophone group does tend to favour the BQ/PQ, but not overwhelmingly so, and is generally much more segmented than the anglo vote, for example. All of which to say that, contrary to Wawanoloath, Cleary, Payne and Alfred, Mourani, Barbot and Kotto could not have been elected without at least some support from their ridings’ significant non-francophone populations.
Acajack
August 26, 2008 at 6:06 am
“The population makeup of a riding does matter though. Wawanoloath and Cleary’s ridings contained a miniscule number of natives.”
The number of Natives is not going to ever matter. One, they represent a very small portion of the population in most riding and two, many actually do not vote in provincial and federal elections.
“All of which to say that, contrary to Wawanoloath, Cleary, Payne and Alfred, Mourani, Barbot and Kotto could not have been elected without at least some support from their ridings’ significant non-francophone populations.”
I never said anything to the contrary.
Anonymous
August 26, 2008 at 10:31 am