Quebec minister calls on police to aggressively pursue people inciting hatred
MONTREAL — Quebec’s immigration minister urged police to aggressively target citizens who encourage hateful speech on Thursday, in reaction to a spate of racist and anti-immigrant incidents in the province over the past couple of weeks.
Kathleen Weil was in Montreal to talk about her government’s plan to launch public consultations on systemic racism, but her announcement came the same day a sign appeared in a small Quebec town describing the village as for white people only.
Also on Thursday, a Quebec nationalist group distributed anti-immigration stickers around the city of Sherbrooke, 150 kilometres east of Montreal. The group, which describes itself as a federation of old-stock Quebecers, had been passing around the stickers for the past few days.
“All these heinous acts are unacceptable in a society,” she said. “They are hurtful and affect me personally.”