Quebec Solidaire (QS) MP Vincent Marissal does not rule out pursuing a member of the staff of Prime Minister François Legault, whom he accuses of having made defamatory remarks about his past as a journalist.
Mr. Marissal was the target of the Prime Minister’s director of media relations and communications, Manuel Dionne, after reporting in an open letter that Mr. Legault called him a “national mud thrower” last week in the continuation of the controversies over the political financing of the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ).
“It was a festival of slander at the end of the week,” said the solidarity MP on Monday in an interview with Duty.
In a publication on the to be a QS candidate.
“Vincent Marissal, the guy who entered politics on a lie. The one who, “according to my sources”, cut corners quite a bit when he was a journalist,” he wrote before deleting his publication.
In 2018, Mr. Marissal admitted to having lied about discussions about a possible candidacy for the PLC, which he had initially denied.
Damage to reputation
The supportive MP invited Manuel Dionne to “move to another story” on Monday, emphasizing that voters in his constituency of Rosemont had elected him twice despite the PLC episode.
“We all have skeletons in our closet,” he admitted. We both have three pans behind our tank. What happened was what happened when I got into politics, I don’t deny it. I paid a heavy price for it. »
Mr. Marissal, however, attacked Mr. Dionne’s comments on his journalistic rigor, which he considers to be an attack on his professional integrity. “Calling my entire journalistic career into question, 25 years of journalistic career, if that’s not defamation, I don’t know what is,” he said.
The MP has not yet decided whether he will take legal action to restore his reputation, which he considers tarnished. “I’m not there yet, but I won’t rule out anything at this stage because seeing how quickly these people are sinking, I expect anything from them,” he said. -he said.
Mr. Marissal attracted the wrath of Mr. Dionne and other CAQ cabinet employees after publishing in The Montreal Journal an open letter where he says that Mr. Legault took him to task last Wednesday during an exchange in a corridor of the National Assembly.
“I greet him, to which he says, without even looking at me: “Hey, our national mud thrower!” »wrote Mr. Marissal.
In recent weeks, Vincent Marissal asked the Ethics Commissioner of the National Assembly to investigate the political financing activities of four CAQ deputies. Commissioner Ariane Mignolet responded to two requests and rejected the other two.
Stung to the quick
In an interview with DutyManuel Dionne explained that he was stung by a passage in Vincent Marissal’s letter where he suggested that there could be other cases of controversial practices in the financing of the CAQ.
“It’s easy to say that without proving anything,” he said. Especially since, in cases that he himself raised, the ethics commissioner decided not to investigate. »
Mr. Dionne decided to withdraw his publication because it “added nothing to the debate”. “I wrote out of anger when I saw his text, because I found that reporting corridor discussions, I found that there are worse things than that that are being said,” he explained.
Mr. Dionne did not specify whether he might apologize to Mr. Marissal. “If I had to do it again, I wouldn’t do it,” he said. If he felt offended, he made accusations against our deputies for whom the commissioner decided not to open an investigation. »
Mr. Marissal is not the only opposition MP whose exchanges with members of the government have caused sparks. PQ MP Pascal Bérubé demanded an apology last week from Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Transport, Geneviève Guilbault, following his comments regarding an ethics investigation of which he is the subject.
Pardon ? @GGuilbaultCAQ who claims in a press briefing that I use my email from@AssnatQc to invite people to questionable events?
I invite her to apologize without delay and I remind her that she did not have immunity when she said this maliciously.— Pascal Bérubé (@PascalBerube) February 8, 2024
“It would not be premature to do so,” he said Monday, deploring that the minister has not yet followed up on his request.
While she defended the CAQ’s practices in terms of political financing, Ms.me Guilbault recalled that Mr. Bérubé is the subject of an investigation. On Monday, the PQ representative maintained that she could not make a connection between this investigation and the others which target two CAQ MPs because of their financing practices.