Chance does things funny. The death of Yves Michaud, victim of an unjust motion by the National Assembly, almost a quarter of a century ago, coincided within a few days with a new slippage by the institution, which left its judgment at the door by thoughtlessly condemning a recent Supreme Court ruling.
On March 14, the National Assembly unanimously adopted a motion, at the instigation of the Minister of International Relations and the Status of Women, Martine Biron, denouncing a recent judgment of the Supreme Court on a case of sexual assault in from British Columbia (the R. v. Kruk decision). The scandal which justified the unanimous opprobrium of the National Assembly is found in paragraph 109 of a judgment which includes 249. “When a person having a vagina testifies credibly and with certainty…” The court adds further by deploring the trial judge’s “regrettable” choice to use the words “a woman.”
The National Assembly quickly criticized the Supreme Court for its “choice of words”, while dissociating itself from the use of terms or concepts “contributing to making women invisible”. One wonders if the elected officials took the trouble to read the decision. It is abundantly mentioned that the victim of this attack is, get this, “a woman”. This word comes up nearly 40 times in the court’s explanations (67 times including bibliographical references) while the person with a vagina only appears once. As for the “regrettable” choice of the words “a woman”, a careful reading of the passage rather reveals that the Supreme Court deplores, in a somewhat confused manner, a problem of generalization. She would have preferred that the trial judge substituted the words “a woman” for “this woman”, in this case the complainant, in his assessment of the evidence.
As a symbol of the invisibility of women, there are worse things in our society: the under-representation of women on boards of directors and in senior management positions, the salary gap for comparable functions, the inequity in the distribution of household chores, domestic violence, sexual misconduct, the rampant misogyny of social media and new gender influencers, sextortion, sexual exploitation… For a chivalrous National Assembly, there are injustices more shocking than a misunderstood ruling from the Supreme Court to express indignation and demand full equality rights for women.
This is the only point with which we agree with Minister Biron, who persists and signs with her motion. Despite significant progress for women’s rights, this fight for equality is perpetual. However, Minister Biron is losing her luster by using the bad pretext of a Supreme Court ruling to defend a good cause. This case stems from the vices of the news cycle and the paralysis of critical thinking that it sometimes causes in the world’s best-intentioned people. This is how a chronicle of National Post inspired another, even more alarmist and approximate, in The Montreal Journal. And the debate was launched, on very weak intellectual foundations. It is in itself distressing to see that the National Assembly can make such grand gestures on such poor factual basis.
Last week, the Liberal Party of Quebec (PLQ) and Québec solidaire (QS) recognized errors in the adoption of the motion. “It wasn’t a good day that time,” admitted the interim Liberal leader, Marc Tanguay. “It happened much too quickly last Thursday,” added the solidarity co-spokesperson, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois.
Conversely, the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) and the Parti Québécois (PQ) got bogged down in their stubborn defense of the motion. Prime Minister François Legault said he had not read the ruling before voting in favor of the motion. The confession makes his approach even more edifying. For the CAQ and the PQ, it seems that the aversion to wokism justifies many excesses. It’s a way of viewing politics as the sum of our divisions. How convenient it is to count on a scapegoat, real or imagined, to act as guarantor for the nation.
It is in this context that the “Robin of the Banks”, journalist, diplomat and ardent defender of the French language, Yves Michaud, died on March 19. The National Assembly never corrected the affront of a unanimous motion of censure pronounced against him, in December 2000, based on remarks that he had not made and without having given him the chance to ‘explain. The Prime Minister, who sat as a PQ MP at the time, does not regret his vote in any way.
There are these lessons that elected officials will never learn, in order to avoid unfairly trampling on facts and reputations in the pursuit of the common good. What is a motion worth? No more than the judgment of the people who wear it, unfortunately.