On Aug. 24, the Montreal City Council adopted a motion introduced by the Official Opposition, Projet Montréal, that expresses solidarity with the Palestinian people and civilian casualties under the Israeli siege.
Passed by a 54 to 6 vote, the approved motion diverges significantly from Projet Montréal’s initial proposition. The original motion called for the City of Montreal to suspend all institutional ties with the Israeli government, and to use the terms “apartheid” and “genocide” when referring to the Israeli occupation in Gaza and the West Bank—terms that the United Nations and Amnesty International uphold as legally correct.
However, before the City Council meeting adjourned, Montreal Mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada delivered a speech arguing that international affairs are not a municipal responsibility. She cited rising incidents of antisemitism in the province as further justification against Projet Montréal’s motion.
Following her lead, the Official Majority, Ensemble Montréal, proposed amendments to scrap provisions calling for Montreal to cut its institutional ties with Israel and change official terminology. The amended version of the motion now not only lacks concrete calls to action or any quantifiable economic or bureaucratic boycott of the Israeli government’s occupation in Gaza, but also fails to condemn the apartheid regime at all.
The amended motion—and the rationale that led to it—fails the city’s Palestinian and Jewish populations alike, reflecting a deliberate and hypocritical recalcitrance towards the city’s precedented responsibility to take a stance beyond just symbolic solidarity.
Ferrada’s leading argument for erasing the economic and institutional boycott provisions from the motion is that municipalities have neither a role nor a responsibility to engage in international affairs—despite her mayoral campaign’s emphasis on reviving multi-national diversity in Montreal and increasing the city’s international profile. While it is true that municipalities do not have independent constitutional jurisdiction over international affairs, municipal governmental intervention in global issues is politically and economically salient, and such intervention from Montreal’s government specifically has strong historical precedent.
Previously, the Montreal municipal government has independently cut economic and institutional ties both in the 1990s with the South African apartheid regime, and in 2022 with Russia for its war of aggression against Ukraine. During his tenure as mayor of Montreal, Jean Doré led the city’s government to adopt a resolution demanding that all city contractors end transactions with South African businesses, and established a committee tasked with auditing the city’s economic ties to the apartheid regime. More recently, after Russia invaded Ukraine, then-Mayor Valérie Plante publicly condemned the invasion, while members of Ensemble Montréal called for the city to cut economic ties with Russian businesses. The city also sent a donation to the Canadian Red Cross to aid recovery efforts in Ukraine.
These demonstrations of independent municipal condemnation and boycotting of violent regimes affirm that municipalities like Montreal can exert prominent political-economic power in international issues. It is a lack of political will, not constitutional constraint, that prevents Montreal’s enactment of similar boycotts of the Israeli state.
The municipal government is a Montrealer’s closest point from which their voice can be communicated to an echelon capable of real change. Yet if municipal politicians refuse to enact economic sanctions or explicitly condemn Israel’s atrocity crimes, there is significantly less pressure on the federal government to do the same. Municipal governments, as the first rung in the ladder between citizen and prime minister, have a responsibility both to amplify constituents’ voices, and to take legislative steps to reckon with any and all issues relevant to Montrealers—as Montreal residents and global citizens alike.
Further, if Montreal’s bilateral economic and institutional collaborations with the Israeli government are substantial enough to have been at the center of Projet Montréal’s original motion, their role in enabling this violence must be equally salient. The existence of these ties to Israel in the first place speaks to the city’s direct involvement in, and active promotion of, Israel’s occupation in Gaza. Ferrada’s argument that the city cannot and should not involve itself in human rights issues overseas, while garnering tangible financial and institutional benefit from the perpetrator of that violence, is violently hypocritical.
The amended version of the motion that the Montreal government did adopt is a symbolic gesture of solidarity—gutted of accountability infrastructure or actionable demands—that extricates the municipality from any real commitment. When an expression of solidarity is the beginning and end of a city’s stance on an apartheid regime, the scope of future municipal-level action becomes similarly limited to symbolism.
Ferrada’s second argument for the amended motion was based on the documented rise of antisemitism in Montreal—claiming that economic and institutional boycotts, along with the formal change in the bureaucratic language used to describe the Israeli occupation, would represent a failure on the part of the city to support its Jewish community. Ferrada’s argument is based on the fundamental conflation between antisemitism and anti-Zionism—a conflation that hurts Montreal Jews and Palestinians alike.
In fact, equating continued support for the Israeli state with support for Montreal’s Jewish population has the potential to exacerbate antisemitism, as it incorrectly aligns Judaism with the abuses enacted by the Israeli government. A growing population of Jewish Montrealers outwardly condemn Israel’s violence in Gaza, reiterating the distinction between their Jewish identity and the Israeli state. Ferrada’s appropriation of antisemitism as rationale for the municipal government’s inaction is a divisive non-sequitur that threatens the very Jewish Montrealers whose wellbeing she is claiming to champion. Condemnation of the Israeli state and support for Montreal’s Jewish community are not mutually exclusive.
More broadly, the acquiescent attitude towards Israel’s genocide reflected in the amended motion aligns with a long track record of hostility towards Palestinians in Montreal and Quebec as a whole. Palestinians immigrating to Quebec from Gaza, for example, receive provincial public healthcare for only three months before they are expected to fund their healthcare out-of-pocket.
Meanwhile, for more than two years, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada has refused to process the study visa applications of 130 Palestinian graduate students who have been accepted to Canada’s most competitive graduate programs but remain stuck in Gaza awaiting visa approval. Disproportionate police violence against pro-Palestinian protesters also persists, along with structural barriers to Palestinians’ participation in political conversations in the first place.
Even on the City Council discussion floor for this very motion, the city prohibited hijab-wearing attendees from wearing their religious garments in alignment with the province’s ban on visual religious symbols—a restriction that disproportionately targeted Muslim community members seeking to participate in the meeting.
The Montreal government has a responsibility to follow its own municipal precedent and enact economic and institutional boycotts of the Israeli state. Such legislation must also be explicit and condemnatory in its use of language: Israel is committing a genocide in the Gaza Strip, and Montreal’s legislation must address the conflict as such.
Yet even if the municipal government continues to ignore its imperative to act, no individual is helpless in stirring political action: Voting in municipal, provincial, and national elections is foundational to any future reform. Last municipal election, Montreal saw a mere 37 per cent voter turnout. Showing up to vote armed with an educated understanding of who is on the ballot is a necessary condition for constructive legislative reform. Finally, as students at an influential institution in Montreal with its own undeniable complicity in the Israeli genocide, we must not cede in this war of attrition. As inaction persists, incessant demands for a politically responsible municipal government are more important than ever.