Paul St-Pierre Plamondon comes to the defense of two PQ candidates who made controversial comments on the Internet regarding visible minorities, immigration and Islam. The criticisms of the Muslim religion by its candidate Lyne Jubinville had nothing to do with “Islamophobe”, he says.
Tuesday, The duty unearthed three publications where Ms. Jubinville, candidate for the Parti Québécois (PQ) in Sainte-Rose, criticized the place of Islam in Quebec society. “Why are hijabs increasingly invading our public landscape? “, could we read, as well as “Islam, it is not us. »
On Tuesday, the PQ leader had agreed to have seen there “problematic remarks”, but had decided to keep Ms. Jubinville in his team because she had retracted. They are not, however, “Islamophobic”, argued Mr. St-Pierre Plamondon on the sidelines of a press briefing in Pointe-aux-Trembles the next day.
“You can’t put the word phobia on any criticism of religions, and there’s no way to interpret all of his comments as targeting a single religion. When you look at what she wrote, it definitely targets each of the monotheistic religions,” he said.
“It’s not aimed at Islam in particular. Its purpose is aimed at all religions,” he added.
On Wednesday, Mr. St-Pierre Plamondon also wanted to defend another candidate, Suzanne Gagnon, who is running in La Pinière. The Press raised in the morning that she had tweeted this, last year: “Why do visible minorities resist so much when they are arrested? I would like to get an answer from someone who is part of it. Thanks ! »
“The way it’s written, it’s so clumsy that I asked for it to be removed, then for her to apologize,” explained the PQ leader, who said in the same breath that it was ” important to read the entire exchange, because what she is saying is [que] racial profiling exists”.
“PSPP” denies not withdrawing the candidacies of Ms. Jubinville and Gagnon. On Tuesday, he said of the solidarity candidate Marie-Ève Rancourt – who stole a PQ flyer in the riding of Camille-Laurin – that he would not have kept her on his team.
“We are faced with completely different gestures. Theft, I don’t need to explain why it’s not legal,” he said.
According to Mr. St-Pierre Plamondon, comparing the two situations is like “comparing apples and oranges”. “These are two completely different situations that command different reactions,” he said.