[LINK] On Peter Mackay seeming not to know that the Montreal Massacre was driven by hatred of women

[rfmcdonald]

This Saturday, the 6th of December, will be the 25th anniversary of Montréal's École Polytechnique massacre. In this event, a young man named Marc Lepine killed fourteen women at an engineering school associated with the Université de Montréal because they were women. They were "feminists", he said, people who stole jobs from men like him, people who deserved to die. He was very clear about this, both during his rampage through his actions (selecting women to be killed) and his statements (talking about his hatred for feminists, et cetera) and through his abundant writings found after his death.

As summarized by Global News' Amanda Kelly, during Question Period Justice Minister Peter Mackay said that the cause was unknown.

It all began when Marc Garneau, a Liberal MP from Montreal, asked Peter MacKay a question about Bill C-42, the federal government’s new firearms bill.

Garneau said survivors of what’s often been described as the Montreal massacre are opposed to the bill.

MacKay responded by saying that Canadians may never understand why the shooting took place.

“This week, we remember the horrific events that took place in Montreal at École Polytechnique 25 years ago, and while we may never understand what occurred — why this happened, why these women were singled out for this horrific act of violence, we have to stand together.

[. . .]

The head of the opposition, NDP leader Thomas Mulcair later pointed out that because of a manifesto written by the shooter, Canadians actually do know why the women were murdered.

“We know why this happened. We know why these women were singled out,” Mulcair said.

Mackay has written a post at iPolitics defending himself without actually engaging with Mulcair's point.