Title: Drainville Pompier Promane
Artist: K. Kersplebedeb
Medium: Image designed in CorelDraw
Bertrand Drainville was the PQ Minister whose job was to front and promote the idea of a racist Charter of Values in 2013-14; the main targets of this racism were Muslims, though others were not exempt. “Pompier Pyromane” is an expression sometimes used in French political commentary, to denote a (usually populist, right-wing) political strategy of proposing “solutions” to imaginary or exaggerated problems, which actually end up creating or aggravating the problems in question. A cynical strategy, playing political football with people’s lives. This is a big part of what Drainville and the Charter were doing; the human toll in terms of violence, harassment, and exclusion, is touched upon in the press clippings that form the background to this piece.
In many ways, 2013-14 was a really shitty winter in Quebec. There will be other similarly shitty times, in fact they will likely be even worse.