Amnesty International has published a damning report on the Parti Québécois, saying members of the party breached international human rights laws by filing a series of complaints against psychiatrist Marie-Ève Cotton with the province’s order of physicians.
The report, made public Wednesday, says complaints from PQ general manager Génifère Legrand, current candidates Isabelle Blais and Pierre-Luc Brillant, and former PQ leader Jean-François Lisée “maintain a harassing effect on Dr. Cotton and represent a restriction on her ability to exercise her rights to political expression, academic freedom, and the right to human rights defence, as guaranteed by international law.”
The complaints “were made in succession” and show “strong evidence of targeting and a pattern of harassment” against Cotton, the report reads.
Last December, Legrand filed a 106-page complaint with the Collège des médecins du Québec alleging the psychiatrist’s frequent criticism of the PQ on her Facebook page “harms the image and reputation of the medical profession as a whole and constitutes an act derogatory to its honour and dignity.”
In her complaint, Legrand documented dozens of Cotton’s Facebook posts critiquing the PQ’s alleged rightward shift on issues including immigration and what Cotton called the use of “Trumpist vocabulary.” Legrand said the frequency of Cotton’s posts against the party and leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon was “problematic.”
Blais, the PQ candidate in Maskinongé riding, and Brillant, who is running for the sovereignist party in Rosemont riding, submitted a joint complaint against Cotton, alleging she used “psychologizing language” against the pair, who are a couple. The complaint further said Cotton deemed public comments by Blais examples of “Trumpism” and suggested Blais herself was an advocate of the Great Replacement theory, the belief that Jews and certain Western elites are engineering the replacement of the white race with people of non-European descent through immigration.
In his 2023 complaint with the Collège, Lisée alleged that Cotton “made a public diagnosis” of him when she critiqued Lisée’s take on sex education in the province.
Lisée’s complaint stems from Cotton’s response to his 2023 column in Le Devoir and subsequent radio interviews, in which Lisée denounced the province’s sex and gender education for teaching children as young as four that “the sexes don’t exist.” Cotton, an expert on LGBTQ+ education, accused Lisée of expressing retrograde views on sex education “worthy of a 1960s conservative.”
In his complaint, Lisée asked that the Collège sanction Cotton, that it be made public, and that Cotton be required to publish the sanction on her personal Facebook page.
The Collège dismissed all three complaints against Cotton. Legrand, Lisée, Blais and Brillant appealed the Collège’s decisions, which were also dismissed. The Collège received a fourth complaint from an anonymous member of the PQ, the Amnesty International report said. It, too, was rejected. The Collège wouldn’t comment on the complaints against Cotton.
Legrand, Lisée, Blais and Brillant did not return The Gazette’s requests for comment on the Amnesty report. In a post on his Facebook page published after Amnesty International released its report, Lisée criticized the Collège, saying it chose to protect Cotton “even though a reading of the code of ethics leads any reasonable person to conclude that several violations were committed.”
“It’s political intimidation, because if I had made mistakes, if I had lied or said things that weren’t true, they could have sued me for defamation. The PQ isn’t claiming that I said anything false. That’s why they can’t sue me for defamation, and they know it,” Cotton said to The Gazette.
The complaints were stressful and caused her to self-censure as she awaited the Collège’s decisions, Cotton said. “Are Legrand and the PQ going to keep sending complaints as long as I express myself publicly? And what if the party is elected? Just how far will it go?”
Amnesty International has been looking into Cotton’s case for roughly a year, said Amnesty International Canada Francophone executive director France-Isabelle Langlois, adding that other individuals have complained about the PQ.
“These individuals felt targeted on social media in a co-ordinated manner by people or accounts that were allegedly manipulated or co-ordinated by a political party — in this case, the Parti Québécois — but there were also complaints filed with professional orders and employers,” Langlois said.
As for precedent, Langlois said Amnesty International last received these types of complaints during Stephen Harper’s tenure as prime minister. “There are increasing attempts to control civil society and shrink the space available for dissent,” Langlois said. “It is not a huge surprise, but it’s a major disappointment.”
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