The City of Saint-Constant has had to pay nearly $600,000 in legal fees to date to prevent a citizen, Michel Vachon, from harassing, assaulting and intimidating elected officials and city officials. The sum will reach $700,000, or nearly 1% of the municipality’s annual budget, to ban him from city hall for life.
The story so far
2016
Michel Vachon has been harassing, insulting and intimidating elected officials and civil servants of the City of Saint-Constant relentlessly since 2016, in addition to multiplying frivolous requests for access to information.
2022
He followed officials and even attacked the clerk in the street, hitting her in the face and throwing her violently to the ground.
2024
The Quebec Court of Appeal sentences the 64-year-old man to 30 days in prison for numerous contempts of court.
“That’s a lot of money for one man. It defies belief,” laments the mayor of Saint-Constant, Jean-Claude Boyer.
Michel Vachon is the 64-year-old man who was sentenced to 30 days in prison by the Court of Appeal on Tuesday in connection with several counts of contempt of court.1 He was declared a vexatious litigant last March, in a decision that prohibits him from taking any legal action in Quebec without the approval of a chief justice or from filing ethics complaints against municipal professionals.
Since 2018, the citizen has been the subject of 16 judgments from the Superior Court and the Court of Appeal, totaling 341 pages, ordering him in one way or another to stop harassing employees and elected officials of Saint-Constant.
Mr. Vachon, who lives a few metres from city hall, won’t listen. Convinced that he plays an essential democratic role by “asking disturbing questions” to elected officials and civil servants in the municipality of 27,000 souls, he has multiplied frivolous requests for access to information (nearly a hundred requests since 2010), written dozens of insulting emails to civil servants and filed dozens of baseless ethics complaints against various professionals.
Despite injunctions from the Superior Court prohibiting him from approaching city hall for a year, he followed elected officials, noted the license plates of employees’ vehicles and even attacked the city clerk in the street, charging at her on his bicycle and punching her violently in the face.
PHOTO DOMINICK GRAVEL, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
Jean-Claude Boyer, Mayor of Saint-Constant
We’re at almost $600,000 in expenses, but the expenses continue. We’re a bit resigned to paying.
Jean-Claude Boyer, Mayor of Saint-Constant
Mayor Boyer is pleased with the 30-day prison sentence handed down by the Court of Appeal to force Michel Vachon to comply with these orders, but says he has no illusions: “He will do his 30 days and start again immediately,” he predicts.
The City therefore intends to obtain a new court order prohibiting Mr. Vachon from accessing City Hall and harassing its representatives for life.
The request will be made as part of a seven-day trial scheduled for September 2025. These new steps will increase expenses to nearly $700,000, estimates the municipality, whose annual budget is $68 million.
Help from the Union of municipalities from Quebec
In 2022, it was a heartfelt plea from the mayor of Saint-Constant to the Legault government that prompted the government to release an envelope of $2 million to help municipalities defend themselves against intimidating or harassing citizens. With this sum, the Union des municipalités du Québec (UMQ) and the Fédération québécoise des municipalités (FQM) enhanced their legal assistance programs by adding a component for this type of dispute.
The City of Saint-Constant thus benefited from $50,000 in assistance from the UMQ to defend itself against Mr. Vachon, the maximum granted to date under the “harassment and intimidation” component of its Municipal Legal Action Fund.
Mercier, Léry and Oka also received financial support of up to $25,000 from the UMQ under this same program.
“This type of individual derives a kind of personal satisfaction from harassing elected officials,” says Oka Mayor Pascal Quevillon, whose municipality is pursuing a former defeated mayoral candidate with a $25,000 contribution from the UMQ program. “What they are doing has nothing to do with the ordinary citizen who wants to ask questions at the citizens’ assembly. It becomes personal attacks,” adds Mr. Quevillon. The trial in this case has not yet taken place.
The Quebec Federation of Municipalities indicates for its part that it has granted aid to around twenty cities with its share of the government’s $2 million envelope.
“The crux of the matter in this type of case is the financial aspect,” says Mayor Jean-Claude Boyer.
1. Read “Saint-Constant: a harasser of elected officials sentenced to prison”