Here are 5 things to know about Joël Lightbound, the Liberal MP who attacks Trudeau and his government

His name has been on everyone’s lips since coming out in good standing against his own government, which he accused of dividing society by politicizing vaccination on Tuesday. But who is Joël Lightbound, the former president of the Quebec caucus for the federal Liberals? Here are five things to know about the MP.

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He was born in Ontario

In Toronto, more precisely, but he moved to Sainte-Foy when he was 6 months old and grew up there.

Raised by a single mother, he claimed “to have benefited from a society where the social elevator works”, in an interview with the Newspaper in 2015. He also said he had received help from the Municipal Housing Office, which gives a helping hand to households struggling to find housing, for lack of means, in particular.

The attack on the great mosque of Quebec took place in his riding

It was in his riding of Louis-Hébert, in Sainte-Foy, that the attack on the great mosque of Quebec took place on January 29, 2017.

A speech delivered in parliament to underline the attack, a few days after the event, earned him a standing ovation from all parties.

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“Today I want to ask for forgiveness [à la communauté musulmane]. Forgive me for having observed, in recent years, their ostracization and their stigmatization, for having seen fear, distrust and hatred taking root in the hearts of my fellow men, for having done my best to respond to them, but to not having done enough,” he said.

He is a lawyer by training

Before entering politics, Joël Lightbound was a lawyer. He studied civil law and common law at McGill University, then was called to the Bar of Quebec and that of the State of New York.

The deputy practiced administrative law at the firm Fasken Martineau, in Montreal, where he pocketed a salary of $ 95,000 a year, until he returned to Quebec to make the leap into politics, in 2013.

He then undertook a master’s degree in information technology law at Laval University, while working for the firm Immigration Keleny.

He just turned 34^and birthday

The day he delivered a speech castigating compulsory vaccination for federal civil servants and truck drivers, Joël Lightbound blew out his 34 candles.

It will certainly be an anniversary that he will remember for a long time…

He launched the Liberty of Oppression collective

With solidarity MP Catherine Dorion, co-founder of the Islamic Cultural Center of Quebec Boufeldja Benabdallah and national security expert Michel Juneau-Katsuya, he founded Freedom of Oppression Collectivewhose objective is to denounce the “media intimidation” exercised by certain commentators and Quebec media.

“Whether through misinformation […] by knowingly asserting false or inaccurate things as evidence, by creating false and defamatory amalgams, by using abusive and/or discriminatory remarks [certains médias] participate in the deterioration of the collective discussion of Quebecers”, wrote in a declaration the founders of the collective and about thirty signatories.

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When the collective was launched, Joël Lightbound deplored the lack of tools available to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) to regulate the media that disseminate such comments.