(Quebec) The price on the head of the journalist from The PressDaniel Renaud, caused a stir in the National Assembly. Elected officials are “scandalized” and “shaken” by these revelations and offer their support to Mr. Renaud and his family.
Posted at 9:13 a.m.
The revelations of The Press wanting the hitman Frédérick Silva, an assassin who formerly rented his services to several criminal organizations in Quebec, to have placed a “contract” on the journalist’s head in 2021, caused a stir in the corridors of the National Assembly , Friday.
“I was shaken by what I read this morning about Mr. Renaud. My thoughts are with Mr. Renaud, with his family,” underlined the Minister of Public Security, François Bonnardel.
“You will understand that I will not be able to go further in my comments, in the sense that there will be a future trial. There is a very important informer in this case, you know him, everyone knows him, everyone has read him. So, I will not go any further in my comments so as not to thwart all the work that has been done by the police for this future cause,” he added, shaken.
Mr. Bonnardel believes that he is right to question whether the situation is not a symptom of a new reality of organized crime, which is much less so with the emergence of new clans. “The question arises,” said the minister.
“We affect families, we affect wives, women, and in this case the fact that we wanted to attack a journalist who follows legal affairs is extremely serious […] It’s a paradigm shift that is extremely worrying,” added Mr. Bonnardel, who ensures that the province’s police forces have the necessary resources to tackle it.
“Our first reaction is to express to Mr. Renaud, to his family, to his loved ones, that we are with him. It must be difficult times that he is going through, that he is going through with his loved ones. We are with them, we think of them and it must be stressful, it must be very difficult,” said Parti Québécois MP Pascal Paradis. He asks Quebec to quickly set up a parliamentary commission.
“Unfortunately, this is not the first time, but this time, it is part of a broader context. This broader context is a rapid evolution on the ground of the techniques, of the methods of these armed groups, of these organized criminal groups, sometimes less organized,” he lamented.
“I am stunned, stories like that, I read them in the 70s. I am scandalized that we are still experiencing this in Quebec,” reacted the member of Québec solidaire, Alexandre Leduc.
“The function of journalist is a fundamental function for our democracy. It is an important function that must be cherished, that must be protected and I expect that there will be police interventions accordingly. You must be able to do your job safely. It is an essential condition of our democracy,” he added to journalists.
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