The behavior of the father who physically attacked a young person who had bullied his son in a school in Berthierville is unacceptable, according to Bernard Drainville. Violence and intimidation are “zero tolerance,” he insists.
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“We all agree that we cannot condone the fact that a parent decides to take justice into their own hands. That’s the basis,” said the Minister of Education on Wednesday morning in parliament.
He then reacted to the video of the 42-year-old father who took it upon himself to avenge his son who was the victim of bullying at Pierre-de-Lestage secondary school, in Berthierville. In these images, we can see the man grabbing a teenager by the collar and telling him that he “is going to bury him alive”. “I don’t care if I go to prison,” he shouts at one point.
Saying he was “disturbed” by these images, Mr. Drainville said he had asked the Samares School Service Center to provide him with a “complete portrait” of the sequence of events.
“If the Samares School Service Center tells us: “We need help to manage this school,” we will support them and if we need to give them additional resources, we will do so,” a- he said.
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“But one thing is certain, the tolerance we have towards violence and intimidation is zero,” added the minister. We cannot accept this kind of event. And then we cannot accept that students engage in bullying or commit acts of violence towards other students.”
In recent years, the number of interventions carried out in the establishments of this school service center has increased considerably, from 150 in 2018-2019 to 371 in 2021-2022, according to CSS data.
The parties of‘opposition react
Also condemning the acts of intimidation, the opposition parties argued that the government must do more to prevent this type of event from happening again.
“I think that the Minister of Education, when he sees this, he must say to himself: ‘Okay, I haven’t done enough, I have to go further’,” said QS MP Sol Zanetti, at a press conference.
“What did each of the institutions do to prevent us from going there? I want answers on this because this is not normal. And before judging, we are going to look for all the facts,” added the PQ leader, Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, in a separate press briefing, admitting to having wondered how he himself would have reacted if it were one of his children who had been bullied.
“I think that school should not be a place of intimidation. I think we have to be very careful about this, and this is not the way to act,” said liberal MP Monsef Derraji.