For having “liked” two pro-Palestine publications on social networks, the employee, of which Radio-Canada preferred to keep anonymity, saw her contract at the office of the deputy Brigitte Garceau, of the Liberal Party of Quebec (PLQ), in Montreal, end on October 12.
The 26-year-old employee told Radio-Canada that during the attack on Hamas against Israel on October 7, she liked a publication on Instagram which mentioned a gathering of solidarity with the Palestinian people in Montreal.
The same evening, around 11 p.m., his boss sent him a text accompanied by a screenshot. “I have people who send me this post. If it’s you, you have to call me immediately, ”wrote Brigitte Garceau.
On October 10, the deputy would have had a conversation in person with the employee. “She reiterated me the party’s position in relation to the situation in Israel. I told him what was my position and I told him that it had never hampered my tasks in the office and that my online activity on a personal private account should not really be the subject of surveillance. ”
On October 11, the employee again liked, on her personal account, a publication of a group of students from McGill University. The text describes the Palestinian people as a besieged population, victim of an occupation, (which) has no other option than to resist.
The publication holds Israel entirely responsible for climbing violence, which originates in ethnic cleaning and the illegal occupation of Palestine, and qualifies the Gaza Strip as an open -air prison in the world.
The next day everything changed. The deputy told her that she thought that the message had been received and that there would be no more incident, says the employee. According to the employee, the deputy said to her “that she was free to love posts, but not things like that, being her political attaché and that it contravenes the position of the office and the party”.
The employee has been returned and does not exclude legal procedures.
