Canada's Very Own Banlieues...?

Easy enough to feel smug, it's the Canadian way. We read about the slums in Paris and shake our heads in disgust that French business and society and politics has proven incapable of absorbing their immigrant population in a civil and fair manner. The resulting poverty and separation from the rest of society breeding resentment - particularly from unemployed youth who instead turn to lives of crime - and where the French police dare not enter the banlieues bespeak a massive societal failure.

Couldn't happen in Canada. Canadians are receptive to their immigrant populations, we offer equality of opportunity. In theory, at any event. Trouble is, with no Canadian experience and proficiency with language skills, no other skills professional or experience-wise, it's not quite possible to land those needed jobs. And then there's the little matter of Quebec accepting would-be emigrants solely on the basis of French-speaking sources from former French colonies.

People with few employable skills to begin with, whose work experience is as slight as their educational levels. People escaping endemic poverty and often worse, in their countries of origin. People whose cultural backgrounds and values don't quite mesh with the prevailing cultural and social mores obtaining in Canada. Making for a volatile and entirely unsatisfactory fit for Canadian citizenship.

Add that to the fact that a higher proportion of Haitians, Africans and other visible minorities in Quebec nurse a deep sense of grievance against Quebec authorities, particularly the police, than obtains in the general populace. In large part because it has been observed that disaffected youth from those demographics fall ready prey to gangs specializing in criminal activity. Profiling results, with the hand of the law coming down heavy on visible minorities.

Black and Hispanic youth may be stopped and questioned far more often than other, non-visible youth; clear harassment, but partially understandable given the high incidence of youth crime from those groups. Montreal has been the site of two riots in the past several months, one related to a sports event, the second related to the police fatally shooting a young man, part of a group that resisted police questioning and apprehension two days ago.

The six young men, gathered in a local Montreal park, aroused police suspicion. One of their number resisted police interrogation, when a male and female officer approached. He responded to questioning with apparent aggression, and the police attempted to arrest him. The group then circled the two officers threateningly, and the police fired, hitting several of the young men, killing one, the brother of the man whom they had been questioning.

The result was a protest followed by a riot, with youth setting cars on fire, taunting and attacking police, and running amok. Businesses were broken into and looted. Young men were caught on camera hauling television sets and other electronics from store fronts. As in the Paris suburbs, these areas are tinderboxes of resentment and aggravated aggrievement. Police venture there utterly disquieted, never quite knowing what they'll encounter.

Gang activity is widespread. Drugs and handguns readily available. In fact, a clone situation to what prevails in Canada's largest city, Toronto. Where similar communities of immigrants living the lives that official multiculturalism encourages, reflecting cultural values that discourage early discipline of young people to conform to the social and cultural environment that reflects Canadian values. Low value given to education; high unemployment. Gang activities are violent and horribly disrupting.

Community leaders and rights activists blame the police for harassing black and Latino youths, claiming most don't have ties to street gangs. "If you are male, a member of a visible minority and drive a sports car, you can be targeted." Trouble is, where there's smoke, there's fire. These things don't happen in a vacuum. The harassment due to what's termed racial profiling is a direct result of ongoing street crime, with gangs preying on one another and causing havoc.

The area in question, Montreal North, represents about 84,000 residents, many of whom live in various degrees of poverty and where street gangs flourish. High unemployment and discrimination fuel the anger and anti-social behaviour of the area, where young men consider the police their enemies, a detested special force out to oppress them beyond endurance. The ill feelings between the youth and the police are fiercely reciprocated, each out to exact revenge on the other.

Yet it's obvious to many that the riot that ensued from the demonstration was an organized gang event, taking advantage of an unfortunate and fatal incident, dreadfully damaging to the reputation of the police as heavy-handed and unfair adversaries of disadvantaged youth. In response, the police have stated they have every intention of rigid introspection into the behaviours they're being accused of, with a promise to halt racial profiling, if that's at all possible to begin with, given the record.

Sensitivity training for officers is in the works. More hiring of minority-representative police will move forward. Needless to say the police culture will be reflected by any of its members, whether they're drawn from the majority population or the minority culture that has given birth to street gangs, drugs, prostitution, theft and assaults. Let alone their predation of one gang on another. And the inevitable spill-over effects that trouble and threaten society at large.

The rioting was a serious affair. Someone among the rioters shot a female police officer in the thigh. Cars were torched, businesses looted. A fire hall was set alight. Strenuous efforts are made to target gangs. And when the gang composition is largely made up of members of minority and immigrant groups, it can be no unexpectedly huge surprise that they're sought out by the authorities in an effort to stifle their activities.

Which, claims the social activists, compromises good relations with specific communities. The police have issued an assurance to the city that they're aware of the problems and have every intention of taking steps to ameliorate the situation of distrust. Civil authorities have given condolences to the family of the youth who was fatally shot. But what of the responsibility deriving from minority communities toward the larger community? Claiming discrimination and basing blame on that; eschewing responsibility is no solution.

The simple fact is, immigrant populations have almost always faced discrimination of one kind or another in migrating to a new country where they find themselves struggling to master a new language, to learn the customs and values of the new country. All immigrants have in the past learned, with great difficulty and no little adversity, to cope and to make a life for themselves and their children.

The latest wave of immigrants must be held responsible to do likewise. Government at every level provides all manner of assistance to immigrants now that was simply not available in the early-to-mid 20th Century in Canada. Despite which the immigrants, many of whom faced intolerable hardships and dreadful types of discrimination, made a life for themselves and in the process enriched the country.

In those days if riots occurred they were based not on gang activities but on established unions fighting for the rights of workers. In the process changing Canada for the better.