Purpose: The city’s Fearless Access to Municipal Services policy allows all residents and their families to access all municipal services, such as libraries, sports facilities and day camps, regardless of their immigration status. Specifically, the city has relaxed the rules and requirements for personal identification and residency for immigrants who cannot provide the documentation normally required.
Stimulus: To make migrants without legal status or awaiting legal status, including asylum seekers, feel safer.
Process: The city issues a card on a confidential basis to prove identity and residence. It gives access to libraries, sports facilities and day camps, and allows the holder to register at various municipal service centres. The policy applies only to municipal services, with the exception of the Montreal Police Service (SPVM). To ensure that the policy is properly implemented, the Ville de Montréal has committed itself to ensuring that all its administrative units make the necessary changes to the identification requirements for access to its programmes and services, to raising awareness among its staff and service providers and to improving their knowledge of the different immigration statuses and the challenges they pose through training, while adapting their interventions to this specific target group.
Remedy in the event of abuse
Montreal has also tasked the CAVAC (Crime Victims Assistance Centre) with setting up and coordinating the first intervention and protection unit to provide confidential assistance to people without or waiting for legal status who wish to file complaints or who have witnessed abuse, for example by employers or landlords, or who have been victims of crime.
Impact:
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Over 500 cards have been issued.
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More than 2,000 municipal employees have received training on migration status and the methods for implementing the policy.
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More than 1,000 migrants have been assisted by the Intervention and Protection Unit.
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