Montreal police say they’re investigating a mock decapitation in effigy of Quebec’s labour minister at a Saturday protest.
A widely circulating video shows a crowd at a workers’ march cheering as a demonstrator decapitates an effigy of Jean Boulet with a makeshift guillotine.
The incident sparked outrage across the political class.
“I’ve just seen the images and I’m as disgusted as I am shocked,” Parti Québécois Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon wrote on social media.
“This gesture is unacceptable!” Ian Lafrenière, Quebec’s deputy premier and domestic security minister, said in his own post.
“This type of action has no place in our society,” Quebec Liberal Party Leader Charles Milliard said.
Montreal police spokesperson Samantha Velandia declined to provide further details on the investigation, saying it would risk undermining police efforts.
Demonstrators defended the action.
“This carnivalesque performance evoked a historic symbol of public anger against disconnected elites,” Alliance Ouvrière, the activist group behind the action, said in a statement on Monday.
“The real threat for democracy isn’t papier mâché puppets, but measures that first serve the interest of elites,” the group said.
“The CAQ government presents bill after bill attacking workers’ rights and fundamental freedoms,” the statement continued. “The working class is done apologizing!”
The union organizations behind the protest — the CSD, CSN, CSQ and FTQ — said in a statement that they “dissociate entirely from this isolated action.”
The protest “marked International Workers’ Day, uniting thousands of protesters from all the union organizations, from community groups, from citizen organizations and student associations, who marched peacefully through the streets of Montreal from beginning to end,” the statement said.
“Unions had the responsibility to denounce the actions undertaken at the protest, which they did quickly,” Quebec Premier Christine Fréchette said on social media. “I’m convinced that it’s possible to make progress constructively, without violence or threats.”
Reached for comment, a spokesperson for Boulet said only: “We’re evaluating the situation and aren’t ruling out any possibility.”
The labour minister has been criticized in recent months by Quebec’s unions, which have called his recent legislation an attempt at “muzzling” them.
Bill 3, which passed into law in April, restricts unions’ ability to fund court challenges and political activities.
The Barreau du Québec, which represents the province’s lawyers, has also spoken out against the legislation, warning that it risks undermining democratic rights.
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