A decade, already, since the Metropolis attack which targeted Pauline Marois the evening of her ascension to the head of the Quebec government. Ten years later, the former PQ leader finally sees the event for what it was: a political attack.
“I did not name the event when it happened, confides the former premier of Quebec, in an interview with The duty. It was my decision. It was first in the judgment delivered in court that the attack was officially named. “It was really a political attack which I had escaped and which the militants of the Parti Québécois had escaped”, she believes today.
On September 4, 2012, Richard Henry Bains broke into the Metropolis Theater in Montreal where he attempted to shoot the Prime Minister-elect as she gave her inaugural speech and celebrated her victory. A victory in two stages: as a woman and as a PQ member. She is then interrupted by two bodyguards who escort her off the stage.
The shooter had approached the back door of the building, without police surveillance, an assault weapon in hand, and opened fire. With a single bullet, he killed stage technician Denis Blanchette and seriously injured his colleague Dave Courage. But his weapon jams after the first shot and Bains resolves to flee. Quickly apprehended by the authorities, he did not go very far.
At the time of his arrest, the man had launched in French: “The English are awakening”.
Once out of danger, Pauline Marois went back on stage “with a view to calming things down”, she explains. Then quickly, she wanted to move on.
“As I was well aware of the challenge I had to take up — I was at the head of a minority government, I had a lot of projects to implement — there was an urgent need to put myself at the task. I turned the page,” says Ms. Marois, the first woman elected as head of government in Quebec.
“Perhaps I should have named him more when it was happening, but I had decided that I did not want to exacerbate my relations with the Anglo-Quebec community,” she continues.
Richard Henry Bain was convicted in 2016 of one count of second degree murder and three counts of attempted murder for the shooting.
Take threats seriously
Pauline Marois had been the target of several threats made on the day of the attack. Six, to be exact, one of which is particularly worrying.
Four other stage technicians present that evening filed a lawsuit for damages against the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal and the Sûreté du Québec. They blame several faults on the two police forces, including the lack of staff around the Metropolis, and a lack of coordination and planning, in particular the lack of analysis of the various threats made the same day to Ms. Marois.
The police did not carry out an analysis to predict what could have happened if Pauline Marois was elected, a sovereignist who would become the first woman to hold this position, pleaded their lawyer, Ms.e Virginie Dufresne-Lemire.
This kind of threats made against political figures are more and more common in Quebec, as in Canada, and typically target women in positions of power. Last month, Deputy Premier Chrystia Freeland was herself the subject of verbal harassment in Grande Prairie, Alberta.
“There have always been threats, while I was a minister, in the electoral campaign or prime minister”, drops Ms. Marois on the phone.
“It’s as if we were imagined to be relatively fragile and that our fragility authorizes the machos of this world to attack us. We also know very well that the attacks on women use a lot of sexist and vulgar remarks related to sex, ”adds the former premier of Quebec, who was also entitled to it.
Towards possible solutions
Ms. Marois also notes that the threats are also more and more numerous, ten years after the attack which targeted her. “That we are still there today, I find that it is reprehensible in all respects. It’s democracy that loses in all this, ”she laments.
“It’s worse than it was,” she adds, believing that social networks and recent conspiratorial movements that have grown lately have a large part of the responsibility.
The solutions are not numerous, for the ex-politician. It is first of all education that has a fundamental role to play in this fight against hatred and violence. It also insists on the need to put in place a better supervision of social networks, in order to prevent threats and avoid slippages.
“With these hateful messages appearing everywhere, I think we have to [aussi] protect public figures who are in authority and who have responsibilities, ”she adds.
The federal government is also evaluating the possibility of providing its ministers with a bodyguard or a driver who would be armed and trained to protect them, like those who accompany all ministers of the Quebec government.
“I avoided situations that could have been dangerous for me because bodyguards secured the scene,” continues Ms. Marois. Of course there is a cost that comes with that, but at the same time, it seems to me that these personalities who are at the service of the public and who have great responsibilities should in return have better security. »
With Stephanie Marin