(Quebec) For months, she has worn the clothes of the executioner in the public eye, but now she is determined to endorse those of the victim. Not the one who seeks to feel sorry for her fate, but rather the one who shows herself determined to fight to clear her reputation, preserve her sanity, save her skin.
Posted at 6:11 p.m.
In a long interview with The Canadian Press on Friday, following her decision announced earlier this week to reluctantly give up being a candidate in the next election, CAQ MP Marie-Eve Proulx emptied her heart. .
The former Minister of Regional Economic Development and outgoing MP for Côte-du-Sud, targeted for more than a year by allegations of psychological harassment, says he is a triple victim.
She poses as a victim of these ex-employees who are determined, according to her, to want to harm her, when she has nothing to reproach herself for. Victim also of a system that ensures that, even cleared, the managers find themselves empty-handed, their reputation in tatters, unemployed, without protection, without recourse, or compensation. Victim, finally, as a politician, taken with the double standard which makes cabinet employees much more demanding of their superior, if it is a woman. And quicker to let nothing pass.
Her decision to give up politics, she took it “out of respect” for her. “It’s the first time that I have really chosen myself,” said the MP, who defines herself as a “good person”, resilient and strong, who does not want “to hurt anyone”.
Lately, she felt that her morale was starting to be undermined and chose to preserve her sanity. “I didn’t see how I was going to be able to get out of it,” with this sword of Damocles hanging over my head throughout the election campaign, said this mother of three boys. She was too afraid that the situation would “degenerate”, and preferred to avoid the “people’s court”.
Before allegations of psychological harassment caused her downfall, Marie-Eve Proulx was an MP and minister, engaged in what she wanted to be a very long political career in the service of Quebec. But in May 2021, due to these allegations, she lost her job as minister, and in a month, when the present mandate ends, she will be unemployed, wondering what her future will look like.
Several times during the interview, she insists that her file is clean, that the two complaints formulated against her by two former employees and filed in the National Assembly were deemed unfounded, “after a long and difficult investigation”. .
“There was relentlessness. There was defamation on my case. There was a settling of accounts, “on the part of these ex-employees, a man and a woman, who, according to her, did not respect the agreements of confidentiality concluded by attacking their ex-boss in the media, on condition of anonymity, contributing to the perception, in the media and the public, that the name of Marie-Eve Proulx was synonymous with workplace harassment.
Why such relentlessness? She explains that these are people who, at the start, in 2018, should not have been hired, not having the profile to work in politics, nor the required skills. His version of the facts: they were fired, did not accept it and set out to get revenge.
Complaints have been filed with the National Assembly and the Administrative Labor Tribunal (TAT). A first case was settled out of court. In the other case, the plaintiff returned to the charge and the file is under study at the TAT.
Tired of having to defend herself again and again, she says she is “thinking” about the possibility of fighting back, by filing lawsuits for reputational damage against those who caused the hasty end of her political career.
Politicians on their own
She is angry with the protocols put in place, in the National Assembly or elsewhere, to examine complaints of harassment, and which do not provide anything to repair the harm suffered by an elected official who would be cleared at the end of the process.
I lost my job as a minister, I will not represent myself, I choose myself for my mental health. We are not compensated, there is nothing that will compensate for that, even if I have two investigations to my credit which (reveal that the allegations) are unfounded.
Marie-Eve Proulx, Member of the CAQ
“We leave to themselves lacking managers, and lacking politicians, in situations where we are falsely accused,” pleads the MP, worried about the legal vacuum in this area.
She is of the opinion that in Quebec we are currently witnessing a return of the pendulum, particularly in the political sphere, which favors employees, ready to file a complaint for harassment, for a yes or a no.
According to her, we have gone from one extreme to the other, “from one spectrum to another”.
Women are more vulnerable
Women politicians are, in his opinion, more likely to be the subject of such complaints. Traditionally, authority is embodied by men, who will be able to afford discrepancies in language or reprehensible behavior, without this being challenged by those around them.
Even today, cabinet employees are more “afraid of men” in power, according to her. Their anger is admitted, their decisions respected. But a woman minister, “we can afford to challenge her”, argues Mme Proulx, who says he has a lot of empathy and compassion for MP Marie Montpetit, who was expelled from the Liberal caucus, also following allegations of psychological harassment. In his case, there was never a formal complaint.
Despite setbacks, M.me Proulx assures that she will “bounce back” before long, even if she says she has no idea what the future will hold for her.
“I want to continue to contribute,” says the one who has a background in social work. “I have this strength. I have this resilience that lives in me, ”says the one who refuses to let herself be affected by her setbacks.