“Baby Shark”: “It’s not humane,” says Minister Lionel Carmant

The Minister responsible for Social Services, Lionel Carmant, denounces the use of the song “Baby Shark” by the Complexe Desjardins in Montreal to scare away the homeless. 

“It’s not humane and it’s not the right way (to do it),” he said in a press scrum at the National Assembly on Friday. 

“I am here to take care of the homeless,” added the minister. 

But Lionel Carmant did not have a specific request to make to Complexe Desjardins. “The community needs to come together to take care of people,” he said instead. 

The downtown Montreal shopping centre is being criticized for using the popular children’s song “Baby Shark” to discourage homeless people from loitering on fire exit stairs.

Complexe Desjardins has been playing music in the stairwells for a year to address “security issues” involving homeless people, its spokesperson, Jean-Benoît Turcotti, said Thursday.

–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews.