Shortly after 10 p.m., on January 4, 2023, the atmosphere is particularly tense on the second floor of the Château Laurier, in Quebec.
On the third day of the simulation of the Quebec Student Parliament (PEQ), the “whips” of the Bleu party asked the members of the caucus to stay in their rooms. Corridor discussions in preparation for the televised debates the next day, against the Reds, are suspended for the rest of the evening.
In one of the rooms, a participant, Mme Bélanger, then aged 20, had a panic attack: maximum alert, shivering. It’s as if there was “imminent danger around her”, summarized in a judicial interrogation Marie-Pier Désilets, then secretary of the board of directors of the Student Parliamentary Assembly of Quebec (APEQ), which organizes the event.
The cause of her collapse: she believes she saw Mr. Bergeron, a 26-year-old participant, coming to meet her, in reality confusing him with another participant. Anxiety also gripped at least four other participants of the Bleu.es who “locked themselves” in the room. They say they no longer want to be in the same room as Mr. Bergeron.
The Bleu.es then requested the exclusion of the participant, a decision based in particular “on the expertise” of Samuel Vaillancourt, a legal technician from the Juripop clinic (specializing in domestic and sexual violence), who is part of the caucus. He is “qualified to put people at ease and then manage crises like this,” explains QPAT president Hilal Pilavci in her testimony.
Mr. Vaillancourt did not want to grant us an interview for this article.
Informed of the situation by the Bleu.es caucus, the QPAT board of directors then expelled Mr. Bergeron from the Student Parliament.
The decision is final. They move him in the middle of the night to another room, on another floor. Mme Pilavci forbade him from leaving his room, and even from being in the hotel lobby or in the street leading to the National Assembly the next day, his testimony reveals. “We asked him not to come into contact with the PEQ participants, period,” she explains.
“I was told that I had to leave Quebec,” Mr. Bergeron testifies.
Mme Pilavci, who was also political attaché to Québec Solidaire MP Vincent Marissal at the time of the incident, did not respond to our interview request.
Mr. Bergeron filed a lawsuit for $100,000 in damages against QPAT, and $50,000 against its six directors, for defamatory actions and comments.
“We don’t want publicity. We would have preferred that there were no newspaper articles, that there were no legal proceedings and that the names of all the parties were not found in the media,” insists M.e Jean Bergeron, lawyer and father of Mr. Bergeron, who represents him in the litigation. “But there is an injustice: my client’s fundamental rights were not respected by denying him procedural fairness,” he adds.
No investigation
In several legal testimonies, the administrators admit that, on the evening of January 4, QPAT did not do the slightest investigation before expelling Mr. Bergeron.
The complainants are never met by the organizers.
Neither does Mr. Bergeron. At the time of his expulsion, he had no idea what he was accused of. He then informs his father, who takes the road from Montreal to Quebec in the middle of a snowstorm with his mother, a psychologist, to join him at the hotel.
The next day, when the administrators finally explained their decision, Mme Pilavci sends QPAT’s Sexual Violence Prevention Policy by email to Me Jean Bergeron. “It was mentioned to me that [la décision a été prise à cause] of anecdotal events, but if these events were taken as a whole, we saw a form of pattern [qui] corresponded to the policy of sexual violence,” asserts Mr. Bergeron in his testimony.
Ten days later, the organization sent him a report explaining that his exclusion from the PEQ was intended to “ensure the comfort of the participants” and “the proper functioning of the simulation for all”.
“Establish a distance »
The document specifies that, in the days preceding the event, certain participants indicated to the officers of the Bleu.es caucus that they were uncomfortable being in the presence of Mr. Bergeron because of a “discomfort [qui] is based on a dynamic at the university.
Mme Bélanger, the participant who had the panic attack, reportedly expressed her wish to “establish distance” in her friendly relationship with Mr. Bergeron, after learning of the existence of a rumor concerning reprehensible behavior of a sexual nature.
A telephone call between her and Mr. Bergeron allegedly followed, “in which an unsolicited testimony is shared with the participant (trauma dumping),” the report said. Mr. Bergeron would have, on this occasion, spoken to him about his problems with depression.
The document adds that participants also denounced behaviors that “gave participants the impression that they were inferior because they were women (mansplaining) » during the simulation. Mr. Bergeron is said to have challenged the president of one of the parliamentary committees as part of the political contest and showed a lack of receptivity to “calls to order”. Another participant subsequently had “difficulty concentrating in the presence of [M. Bergeron] “. “She fears that he will engage in unwanted behavior in her presence (based on events that took place at university). »
“It’s a little blurry”
The court documents consulted by The Press show that in the weeks preceding the simulation, Samuel Vaillancourt contacted the secretary of QPAT to denounce Mr. Bergeron: “First of all, I would like to make a trauma warning regarding the subject of this conversation,” he wrote to her. It concerns VACS issues [violences à caractère sexuel] and harassment. » He then vaguely mentions, without naming Mr. Bergeron, events which allegedly took place “around three years ago”, based on the anonymous testimony “of a friend who witnessed and [a vécu] a situation of sexual violence” concerning him.
Marie-Pier Désilets specifies in his testimony that the denunciation is linked to an “initiation” to a chalet as part of student activities at the University of Montreal. “It’s a little vague,” she admits, acknowledging that she didn’t try to find out the nature of the gestures: “It’s none of my business. »
Lawyer member of the Bar, Mme Désilets also denies the fact that the decision to expel Mr. Bergeron is linked to the PEQ’s Sexual Violence Prevention Policy, for which she was responsible. “I relied a lot on my common sense,” she explains in her testimony. Whether or not Mr. Bergeron committed reprehensible actions is not relevant in her decision, she acknowledges. “What’s important is that at that point my simulation can’t continue because I have people who are really not feeling well. »
“Our decision is not based on any wrongdoing. [Elle] is based on the fact that there are a greater number of people who […] are uncomfortable with the idea that [M. Bergeron] remains as a participant,” explains Fanny Dagenais-Dion, another lawyer involved in the decision, who sat on the QPAT board of directors.
In the entire legal file consulted by The Pressthe explanations remain imprecise as to the university “dynamics” mentioned in the report, and even more nebulous as to the sexual violence which is accused of Mr. Bergeron.
The latter denies having committed any act resembling sexual violence and assures that he has never been the subject of a complaint to the University of Montreal.
Banned from another event
His expulsion from the simulation was not without consequences. A few days after the events, he learned by email that he was also banned from the Political Science Games at the University of Montreal. One of the Bleu.es participants contacted Games management to complain “unofficially” about Mr. Bergeron and to inform them of QPAT’s decision, alleges her lawsuit filed against QPAT and its administrators. Management then allegedly applied its own policy on sexual violence to exclude him, until the university’s Office of Respect for Persons overturned the decision.
Mr. Bergeron was “likened to a rapist and he had suicidal thoughts,” argues his lawsuit. He sometimes “isolates himself in the university toilets, for periods of up to an hour” when he is in classes attended by other QPAT participants, the document adds.
Trauma dumping
It is not a diagnosis, but rather a way in which one person conveys unsolicited emotional testimony to another. “It’s often very busy, very intense. The person who does it does not ensure that the other is capable of receiving it,” explains psychologist Geneviève Beaulieu-Pelletier, associate professor at UQAM. “Either she is not attentive to signs of non-receptivity, or she is not skilled at reading these signs, sometimes because she is emotionally overwhelmed. » This “outpouring of experience” can “put images” in the head of the person who receives it, but the use of the term trauma dumping can also “color” the understanding of an event “by raising the idea of trauma”, indicates the psychologist.
Traumawarning
Formula used to announce content that could be disturbing. “It’s a good thing if we address people who have not developed the necessary resources to receive this information,” explains Geneviève Beaulieu-Pelletier. “In issuing a trauma warning, there is a position taken, a form of labeling, which influences the reading of the events,” she adds.
Mansplaining
Neologism formed from the words “ man » (man) and “ explaining » (explain), describing the attitude of men who explain things to women in a condescending way.