“I am a threat? It is in these words that the daughter of the incumbent deputy and Liberal candidate for Viau, Frantz Benjamin, asked her father for explanations about François Legault’s recent statements on immigration.
Posted at 8:34 p.m.
Frantz Benjamin addressed the issue while talking with journalists after a visit by liberal leader Dominique Anglade to her electoral office in the Saint-Michel district (Viau). “When I’m at the table with my children and my daughter talks to me about these issues because she felt offended, it worries me,” explained Mr. Benjamin, who is of Haitian origin.
“These questions” are the statements of the leader of the Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ), who made an amalgam between violence and immigration last week. François Legault has since apologized. He later also asserted, in another event, that non-Francophone immigration is a threat to “national cohesion” if not limited.
She said to me: “Listen, what is this statement by François Legault, dad? What does that mean ? Does that mean I’m a threat? That I am violent? What does it mean ?”
Frantz Benjamin, outgoing deputy and candidate in Viau
The Liberal candidate explained that he had comforted his daughter, who had just turned 18, by assuring her that her grandparents had chosen to settle in Quebec “with the sole obsession” that their children could aspire to a better life. “I reminded her that her home is here, no offense to those who might see her as a threat,” he added calmly.
A call for a sense of responsibility
Frantz Benjamin called on the entire political class to “handle” sensitive subjects such as immigration so that “the other does not feel excluded”, nor with a view to “dividing” people. The Liberal leader, Dominique Anglade, accuses François Legault of dividing people on the question of the French language and on the issue of immigration, in particular.
“Our responsibility, when we are party leader, is to measure our words, it is not to attack people’s sense of belonging in Quebec society. My Quebec to me, it is not the Quebec that François Legault presents today, ”added the outgoing deputy, who affirms that the citizens of the Saint-Michel district have been many to have challenged him on this question since.
The riding of Viau is made up of a population with a high rate of immigrants. According to Elections Quebec, 55.7% of private households in Viau belong to a visible minority.