(Quebec) MP and aspiring solidarity speaker Christine Labrie defends her former colleague Catherine Dorion in a long message on Facebook.
Posted at 1:52 p.m.
Thomas Laberge The Canadian Press
“What I feel most strongly is a mixture of sadness and guilt for not seeing the extent of Catherine’s grief,” she wrote.
“Like many of my colleagues, I underestimated his suffering and after reading the story of his time on the Solidarity Committee, I feel guilty,” added Ms Labrie.
The former Solidaire MP for Taschenreau has just published a “scathing” book in which she harshly criticizes the parliamentary leader of Quebec Solidaire, Gabriel Nadeau Dubois, the work of MPs in the National Assembly and journalists.
Christine Labrie also criticizes the work of the media in her message. She says that during a press conference about the Laurent Commission and autistic children, a journalist instead asked whether Catherine’s efforts to support the Maipoils movement had damaged the party’s credibility.
“It was Manon who answered. Maybe it’s better this way, because I wanted to tell him that he was the one who damaged his own credibility as a journalist with this question. “Obviously at that moment he wanted to feed the clicking machine rather than confront the way we care for vulnerable children in Quebec,” she says.
“However, the thought that Catherine was responsible for the lack of interest in our political work never occurred to me. It is journalists and columnists who are responsible for the issues they discuss or silence. […] We don’t have the slightest control over the issues that are reported in the newspapers or that go completely silent, and Catherine’s departure has not changed the fact that most of our work still goes unnoticed,” the supporting MP from Sherbrooke continues .
Christine Labrie admits she doesn’t have the same vision of a parliamentarian’s work as her former colleague.
His vision of representation is to provide a show that aims to generate emotion and evoke a social movement. My job is to communicate citizens’ concerns to influence decisions and create changes that improve life in the world. Both are absolutely necessary and feed each other.
Christine Labrie on Catherine Dorion
Last week, Gabriel Nadeau Dubois also responded to Catherine Dorion on Facebook, saying the story she told about her time in politics was “disturbing” and admitting that their relationship had not been easy.