Inspector Patrick Lavallée is a high-ranking police officer with the Montreal City Police Service (SPVM). He once thought it was a good idea to support the truckers’ convoy that occupied Ottawa at the start of winter 2022.
Mr. Lavallée paid $20 to the crowdfunding site which raised US$8 million for the protesters in early February 2022.
Then, in mid-February, a leak revealed the names and contact details of nearly 100,000 donors to the “freedom” convoy. Mr. Lavallée’s name was there.
The SPVM’s response was rapid: two weeks after this leak identifying him as a donor to the convoy, he was dismissed from the position he had just won, at the head of the Integrity Division. He was reassigned to the position of support advisor to the South-West sector gendarmerie.
It was a demotion, even though Police Officer Lavallée retained his rank and salary.
And Mr. Lavallée, despite his demotion, had submitted his candidacy at the end of 2022 to succeed the resigning leader Sylvain Caron.
As reported Monday in The Press1 my comrade Philippe Teisceira-Lessard, Patrick Lavallée initiated a legal challenge, arguing that this demotion was in fact a disguised dismissal.
The Administrative Labor Tribunal did not rule on the merits, returning the ball to the Court of Quebec. This is where the debate will take place. Mr. Lavallée can of course assert his rights. Was he the victim of constructive dismissal, even though he lost neither his salary nor his rank? I’m not going to speculate, the Court will decide.
However, I would like to submit a few observations to the court of public opinion.
By the end of January 2022, the individuals and organizations who piloted this convoy of heavy trucks heading to Ottawa were known2. The most visible of these were far-right conspiracy theorists and agitators. Like the small group Canada Unity, which even considered dismissing the elected government: it had detailed its ambitions in writing3.
When I wrote about the convoy leaders on January 28, 20224their affiliations were already known and commented on in English Canada.
That a private citizen decided to finance health deniers who included in their ranks elements who aspired to establish an authoritarian regime in Canada is one thing.
That a senior official in a police force responsible for enforcing the law decided in his heart and soul that it was a good idea to finance these crazy people is a completely different thing…
Which raises the question of the quality of Patrick Lavallée’s judgment.
I don’t know when Inspector Lavallée made his donation to the “truckers” crowdfunding campaign. If he knew who the organizers of the convoy were and still decided to donate, that’s distressing…
If he didn’t find out, it’s just as distressing.
But what is supremely ironic is to see that Mr. Lavallée invokes the rule of law to contest his demotion… While the demonstrators who paralyzed Ottawa and the Canadian-American border crossings did not care at all. Advocating a coup d’état is against the rule of law.
In short, I don’t know if there is in the Police law a crack in which police officer Lavallée will succeed in passing off his demotion as a disguised dismissal. But as a Montrealer, I am reassured to see that he has been ostracized by the senior decision-making bodies of the SPVM.
I also note that after his demotion, Patrick Lavallée decided to apply as chief of the Montreal police…
That he could have thought that the elected officials of the City of Montreal were going to select as leader a man who supported health deniers who have so often been a nuisance to public safety once again raises the question of Mr. Lavallée’s judgment…
Or maybe Mr. Lavallée behaved like a troll when applying.
What is a troll?
I quote the dictionary The Robert : “A person who seeks to create controversy on a discussion forum or on social networks. »
Trolls are sometimes rampant in real life, too. And this explaining this, we understand better why police officer Lavallée chose to support the Ottawa trolls: birds of a feather flock together.