The first debate held among Quebec party leaders had one moment that is being qualified by some as silly, even horrifying, and completely unnecessary.
It had to do with academic freedom and the title of Pierre Vallières’ controversial 1968 take on Quebec history.
“Are you capable of naming the title of the book?” Parti Quebecois leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon dared Quebec Solidaire’s Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois.
“Of course I can say the title of Pierre Vallières’ book,” Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois replied.
The spat had some wondering “why bring it up?” including Fabrice Vil, a social entrepreneur.
In a Facebook post he said in part: “what happened yesterday night at the debate horrifies me. On a TV station that is watched by all of Quebec, during a debate of the main party leaders, when we have important issues, men insist on their right to cite a work that contains the ‘N’ word? In front of the first Black female leader of a party?”
For Dr. Mirna Lashley, a McGill University associate professor at the Department of Social and Transcultural Psychiatry, the spat was “silly.”
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“I thought it was very silly, I don’t know what it proved. I don’t think it added anything to the debate and it seemed to me almost like two children in the playground trying to force each other on and say ‘you do it, you do it’,” Lashley remarked.
Lashley says she doesn’t have a problem with the name of the book being brought up. What bothered her, she says, is the fact there was no context and that it instrumentalized the history of Black people.
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“We’re being used as pawns for someone’s political ambition and I find that extraordinarily offensive,” Lashley said.
She added that Nadeau-Dubois handled it the best he could.
As for Nadeau-Dubois himself, he also wondered what the point was.
“I didn’t really understand what Mr. Plamondon was trying to do,” Nadeau-Dubois told reporters following the debate.
On the campaign trail Friday, St-Pierre Plamondon defended his challenge to Nadeau-Dubois.
“I think the topic is ‘should we be able to name any book or any word or debate any topic in our society?’ My answer is yes and so accordingly, we have debated that topic very freely,” St-Pierre-Plamondon said.
Meanwhile, Lashley says that politicians should focus on the things that truly matter instead, such as fighting systemic racism.
“We have to figure out a way together, to make this better for all of us,” she Lashley explained. “Let’s just stop the nonsense.”
-With files from The Canadian Press
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