Yesterday my room-mate was beaten up in Verdun, our neighbourhood.  He is Chinese.  He was stopped by four young thugs who yelled at him in French.  He did not understand them.  They spit in his face.  He got mad and yelled something.  In return, they punched him repeatedly.  I asked my room-mate had anything like this happened before.  He said yes.  Twice, and also in Montreal.  In both incidents, it was again Francophones who taunted him and called him a chink.

The racist rhetoric that engulfed the reasonable accommodation debate, and the bigotry that  underpins the so-called reporting in the Journal de Montreal, in my opinion, have made such attacks more likely.  I think it is time to stop pandering to racist Quebec nationalists.  Let’s call a spade a spade.  They see a culture under threat.  I see a culture refusing to adapt.