(Quebec) The chief justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, Richard Wagner, is playing politics when he suggests that Quebec elected officials have sunk into disinformation, believes Paul St-Pierre Plamondon.
At a press briefing on Tuesday, the leader of the Parti Québécois (PQ) said he found Judge Wagner’s statement “worrying,” as he said he did not respect his “duty of reserve” and demonstrated “partiality […] against the positions of Quebec.”
On Monday, Justice Wagner suggested that the motion passed in the National Assembly denouncing the use of the expression “person with a vagina” in a Supreme Court judgment was “a clear example of misinformation.”
He criticized Quebec elected officials for not having read the judgment in question.
“I had read it, we read it, we discussed it, we did our homework, and in paragraph 109, there is indeed the use of the expression “person with a vagina”, instead of talking about a woman, and that opens the door to a whole ideological corpus,” reacted Mr. St-Pierre Plamondon.
“These assertions are not normal on the part of the judiciary, which, in principle, should maintain a duty of reserve and not play politics as it does, that is not its role,” he said. he insurgent.
The Minister responsible for the Status of Women, Martine Biron, who had the motion adopted last March, agrees. “Generally, each power remains in its own square,” she declared in the press scrum, ensuring that she had read the judgment carefully.
“I wanted to issue a warning about how we define women,” she explained. I made my point on that. I realize that I was heard by the Supreme Court, I find that very good. »
For their part, the Quebec Liberal Party (PLQ) and Quebec solidaire (QS) said they regretted having voted hastily in favour of Ms. Biron’s motion, which, according to them, misinterpreted the situation.
The motion requested in particular that the National Assembly “reiterates the importance of retaining the word “woman” and dissociates itself from the use of terms or concepts that contribute to making women invisible.”
However, the next day, experts suggested that the National Assembly had it all wrong: the Supreme Court’s 249-page decision reaffirms the rights of complainants in sexual assault cases.
Furthermore, the wording “person with a vagina” only appears once, in paragraph 109 very precisely. The word “woman,” meanwhile, appears 67 times. It is clear that the National Assembly “erred,” according to QS interim co-spokesperson Christine Labrie.
“The minister fell into a trap that day by not going to read the judgment. She dragged the National Assembly into this trap,” she denounced. “If we had to do it again, we would not vote in the same direction,” also declared the interim leader of the PLQ, Marc Tanguay.