Faced with the violent ideas circulating at the approach of new demonstrations against sanitary measures, it was Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois of QS who was the wisest yesterday.
Remember that a report caused quite a stir in the morning on the hill. And with good reason. It quoted an organizer of the anti-sanitary measures demonstration in the National Assembly, who reported, on social media, having spoken to “desperate” people saying they were ready to “take up arms and go to parliament”.
This type of threat is not to be taken lightly. We have seen in the United States how a kind of indolence led to the ignoring of signals announcing the terrible riot in the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Result: five dead.
Seriously
Fortunately, at home, the elected officials all seemed aware of the risk: “We have seen it elsewhere in the world. This kind of threat can get out of hand very quickly, ”said Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, leader of the Parti Québécois, for example. While noting that there are “more and more people who are skeptical of government decisions”, Liberal André Fortin explicitly reproached the most “critical” for considering “extreme measures […] completely unacceptable, inappropriate, illegal”.
However, in wanting to explain the fed up of many with regard to sanitary measures, MM. Saint-Pierre Plamondon and Fortin almost seemed, at times, to justify their reasoning.
They gave the impression that the government was responsible (at least in part) for the threats that some address to it, Fortin argued that Quebec should be more “transparent”; which would reduce the frustration. PSPP for its part claimed to have warned the government for two years that “the absence of transparency, the yoyos” would have “an effect on the social climate, then on the mental health of people”.
Legault furax
A little more and you would fall into the fallacy of victim guilt. Are there threats against the government? Well “they looked for it”.
So much so that François Legault, in turn, added a little, accusing PSPP and Fortin of having “sanctioned” in an “irresponsible” way people with dark designs. It will be said that the Prime Minister then played a partisan game, and that is not false.
At the same time, we must make the effort to imagine the type of hateful message which he, as head of government, must be the object of every day. Ministers spoke openly about it yesterday, revealing that complaints have been made to the police. Thus, in the current hyperpolarized situation, when criticism borders on justification, we can understand some anger.
By the way, the only politician who clearly pointed the finger at François Legault in a frankly thoughtless way (in the context), it is the conservative leader Éric Duhaime: “When the dispute is taken in a class, it is the teacher who is responsible . It is not the student who pulls the tuque of the other side. »
Quite a contrast to GND. Back to him. Despite his young age, he has seen others, having been the standard bearer of a movement that has experienced its temptations and slippages. “To criticize the overpoliticization and polarization of the health crisis by pointing the finger at politicians would be, on my part, a bit paradoxical […] I will not do it. ” Well done.