Aaron Derfel

1 day ago | montrealgazette.com | Aaron Derfel

Discord, an increasingly popular social media platform based in San Francisco, has deactivated a controversial channel used by Quebec medical school applicants that was overrun by antisemitic and other racist messages, including threats of violence, The Gazette can confirm. Hours after the newspaper reported last Friday about a virulent stream of hateful content on the 1,400-member Med serveur channel on Discord, the chat forum suddenly disappeared.

2 days ago | montrealgazette.com | Aaron Derfel

Warning: This story contains offensive language and imagery. Quebec’s Higher Education Minister, Pascale Déry, is denouncing a virulent stream of racist and other hateful messages on a popular social media platform for medical school applicants after The Gazette broke the story over the weekend. “The calls for violence and expressions of hatred in these exchanges are totally unacceptable in Quebec,” Simon Savignac, Déry’s press attaché, said in a statement on Monday.

5 days ago | montrealgazette.com | Aaron Derfel

Warning: This story contains offensive language and imagery. A group chat for Quebec medical school applicants on the popular social media platform Discord has been overrun by misogynistic, racist, homophobic and antisemitic slurs, provoking widespread condemnation by Jewish doctors’ groups across the country. One of the groups, Jewish Clinicians Against Antisemitism, has filed a criminal complaint with Montreal police against at least one Discord user, alleging he is a student at Dawson College.

2 weeks ago | montrealgazette.com | Aaron Derfel

For the second time in a row, McGill University’s flagship program in medicine has been put on “probation” by Canadian accreditation authorities for two dozen glaring deficiencies — including a failure to fully adhere to its anti-discrimination policy and an inability to meet diversity targets for the hiring of racialized and Indigenous individuals in leadership positions.

3 weeks ago | montrealgazette.com | Aaron Derfel

Despite Health Minister Christian Dubé vowing to stem the exodus of Quebec physicians from the public system to the private-for-profit sector, the number of family doctors quitting medicare has surged since last summer,The Gazette has learned. As of mid-April, 557 general practitioners have opted out of medicare and are legally allowed to bill patients directly for medical services. That’s up from 509 since last July – an increase of more than 9 per cent in the past nine months.