‘Living next to a nightmare’: Québec Human Rights Tribunal awards $10,000 to man repeatedly racially harassed by neighbours

Quebec’s Human Rights Tribunal has awarded Montrealer Clifford Serge Boucard $10,000 after he had been repeatedly racially harassed by his neighbours.

Boucard described incidents that spanned over years, ranging from racist insults, surveillance, false police reports, and obstruction. He faces constant stress and said, “that it’s not a life.”

“I got to watch where I park my car on the street, because she could call the cops for that too, saying I parked my car next to her house and I blocked the vision of her window,” said Boucard. “She always finds something to do. If I didn’t get a chance to cut my grass for two weeks, the city of Montreal, will come to see me. If I start my car before I leave in the morning, the next day, an environment person from the city will come see me saying, your car can’t be running for more than 15 minutes. If I was washing my car, the city will come see me and say I’m wasting water.”

In one instance, snow fell from his winter car shelter onto his neighbour’s property. He received a visit from the police shortly thereafter.

“This time [the police] said [to my neighbour], ‘Miss, this is a nature thing, this is an act of god’, we can’t stop the snow from falling onto your side,'” said Boucard. “It’s like living next to a nightmare.”

Fo Niemi of the Center for Research-Action on Race Relations (CRARR) says the case is among the few from the Tribunal that addresses explicit anti-Black racism in everyday life and underscores the need for stronger protections against hate-motivated harassment in Québec.

Niemi held a press conference alongside Boucard at CRARR on Monday morning.

“Montreal Police, both at the headquarter where the Hate Crimes unit is located, and at the local level, at the PDQ, where we want the Montreal Police to treat the case as a hate crime or at least as a hate incident,” said Niemi. “There are things that a hate crime unit can do if they treat this as a hate crime or a hate incident.”

Bouchard is an English-speaking man with Haitian origin, and moved into his girlfriend’s home in Pointe-aux-Trembles in Montreal’s East End in 2015.

The harassment began shortly after the couple had a child in 2016.

Additionally, they say false reports were being made to police, daycare authorities, and the SPCA that Bouchard had allegedly engaged in lewd conduct in front of children in the neighbourhood, and that he had allegedly made death threats.

In a video taken by Boucard’s partner in November 2020, he’s seen parking his truck and walking up his driveway. His neighbour–on the right, is holding a rake and walks away, then comes back with a phone in her hand. Clifford says he then received a notice that she fell and broke her leg and that he had tried to kill her. 

The Tribunal’s judgment written by Magali Lewis addressed the incident, stating that: 

During her testimony, [the defendant] stated that Mr. Boucard had tried to kill her with a vehicle. When asked what happened, she was forced to admit that he did not hit her with his vehicle, but only parked behind her car. She concluded that he wanted to kill her because she would have felt or heard behind her buttocks the “wind” that the car made. 

Boucard says the harassment hasn’t stopped, even after the tribunal’s judgement was rendered public on March 4th. Now he’s considering filing criminal harassment and intimidation complaints with the Montreal Police.

“I don’t know what to do at this point,” said Boucard. “We thought going would put an end to it but I think I’m wrong because the lady is still not stopping. She is still name calling and still making those gestures. It’s always me that has to watch my back because at the end of the of the day, she’s a 60 something year-old white lady and I’m a young black man.”