Man appears on video shouting racist slurs at Montreal family, hate incident report being filed

By Alyssia Rubertucci, Posted Aug 16, 2022, 2:38PM EDT, Last Updated Aug 16, 2022, 4:29PM

“Go back to where you came from,” said a man in French, seen on video insulting a family in front of their home in Montreal’s Lasalle on August 11, as he was walking by.
“We’ve never experienced anything like this ever in our lives,” said Nadisha Hosein, who was in the car with her eight-year-old daughter when this happened.
They were about to leave their home and head to tutoring when Hosein says she was accosted by the man.
“He said, ‘You people have to learn to keep your car in the driveway or on the street,'” she recounted. “My husband was outside with me and he was the driveway and he said, ‘What’s your problem? She’s just waiting for you to pass. and then she’ll continue backing up.’ And he said this in English and to which the guy responded, ‘We live in Quebec. You have to learn to speak French. Don’t talk to me in English.'”
This was when Hosein started recording.
“He was like, ‘you don’t speak any French?’ And I responded to him in French, I said, ‘Yes, I speak French. I was waiting for you to pass and then I was going to go,”” Hosein said. “And then he started with, ‘you have to go back to India, to Pakistan. You weren’t born here.'” And to which my husband replied, ‘”Yeah, I was born here. You want to see my birth certificate?'”
After minutes of the heated exchange, the man took off and police were called. They said a crime didn’t take place since the man didn’t utter threats.
“It’s not an isolated incident,” said Alain Babineau, Director of Racial Profiling and Public Safety at the Red Coalition. “The only thing is that, unfortunately, far too few people report those incidents and then we’re shocked when when something more violent occurs.”
In a statement to CityNews, Montreal Police say: On August 11, patrol officers responded to a call about a possible hate incident in neighborhood station 13. An incident report was drawn up at the scene. The file was forwarded to the Hateful Incidents and Crimes Module, including the video of the incident circulating on social media. […] The message we send is clear: hateful acts are unacceptable and we invite anyone who is a victim to report them to us.”
The family is now trying to file a hate incident.
“We’re going to file right away,” Babineau said. “Then it’ll be up to the specialized units to investigate and they need to find that man and have a serious conversation with him.”
Hosein says the incident traumatized her daughter.
“My eight-year-old, when we were leaving to go to her lesson, she says to me, ‘Mommy are we the wrong colour?'”
Hosein says she believes Quebec’s religious symbols ban for public sector workers in positions of authority, Bill 21, along with the province’s tightening of French language laws, Bill 96, are promoting hate.
“‘I've never had to experience this when I was growing up in elementary school or in high school,” she said. “It’s only as we’ve gotten older that this has become an issue of the language that you speak and the color that you are.”