Honourable senators, I’d like to begin by offering my sincere condolences to Joyce’s seven children, to her husband, to the Echaquan family, and the entire Atikamekw community in Manawan.

Joyce’s death is a tragedy. She went to the hospital in Joliette Thursday because of stomach pain. She died Monday, tied to a stretcher, after being subjected to a torrent of insults hurled by nurses who were supposed to be caring for her.

You would never expect to see such behaviour in a hospital, a place of compassion and mutual respect. In Quebec, it is widely agreed that this incident was unacceptable. When are we going to root out these stubborn prejudices, which have such a powerful impact on a person’s behaviour that they will betray their professional duties? It is imperative that we speak out. Each of us has a duty to speak up whenever such incidents happen. Let’s stamp out systemic racism. All too often, racism starts at home and gets reinforced at school. Then it spreads through our workplaces and permeates social media.

As you know, weeding out racism is gruelling work. It takes constant attention and sustained action to keep prejudices from sprouting up again.

How many victims must there be before a government reacts and acknowledges that systemic racism exists? That is the question being asked by Paul-Émile Ottawa, the chief of the Atikamekw community of Manawan. No one should ever be treated the way Joyce was. There is no question that racism, which leads to dehumanization, contributed to Joyce’s death.

The members of Doctors Without Borders, an organization you are no doubt familiar with, have also witnessed daily discrimination against patients they were caring for.

I will close by sharing the conclusion from journalist Isabelle Hachey’s column in La Presse. She wrote:

Let’s hope that the seven-minute, twelve-second video will be as loud a wake-up call for Quebecers as the eight minutes and forty-six seconds it took for African-American George Floyd to asphyxiate under a white police officer’s knee in Minneapolis.

Thank you.