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A hit man offered C$100,000 ($71,400; £56,000) to kill a crime reporter for Montreal newspaper La Presse, the newspaper reports.

Convicted murderer Frédérick Silva admitted to La Presse that he had offered the contract to anyone willing to carry out the attack on Daniel Renaud, who was covering his trial for three murders and an attempted murder in 2021.

Silva was convicted in 2022 and became a police informant.

Quebec Premier François Legault condemned the plot. “It makes no sense that in Quebec – we are not in a movie – a contract is placed on the head of a journalist for doing his job,” he said.

“This is not the Quebec we want,” he said, adding that the province’s police must continue to target organized crime.

To become an informant for authorities, Silva had to confess his entire criminal past, La Presse reports. The newspaper said it became aware of the plot against Mr Renaud after reviewing Silva’s confession to police.

Silva admitted contacting two influential organized crime figures about Mr Renaud’s murder while he was on trial in 2021.

Silva said the numbers were hesitant and said it was a bad idea to target a journalist.

The ‘contract’ had a term of about two months, but was never executed, La Presse reported. Silva eventually canceled the order, he said, because he had “more important matters to deal with.”

Silva is now serving a life sentence.

Mr Renaud told La Presse he was “shocked” by the revelations.

“I don’t censor myself, but I always exercise restraint, so I don’t reveal details about the private lives of criminals and avoid endangering lives. So I never thought that I could become the subject of a contract like this.” , he said.

Vincent Marissal, a former colleague of Mr. Renaud and now an elected provincial politician with the left-wing Québec Solidaire, called the journalist a “very rigorous person — not the type of guy who makes a lot of noise in the newsroom, but apparently he can cause a lot of trouble .

“That means he’s doing his job, but that’s certainly no reason to see a price on his head.”