How many times did the murderer of police officer Maureen Breau receive a “Get out of jail” card in the name of the principle of non-criminal responsibility for violent actions he committed between 2014 and 2018?
Five times.
Isaac Brouillard Lessard suffered from psychoses and he was explosive: at the slightest contradiction, he could hit you. Its consumption of jar amplified its violence. Talk to his concierge and his psychiatrist.
Having been declared not criminally responsible by the court, Brouillard Lessard was therefore “monitored” by the Commission for the Examination of Mental Disorders (CETM), which imposes “conditions” on violent patients to return to society.
I put the words “monitoring” and “conditions” in fluorescent quotation marks, because the Kamel commission confirms what we already suspected: the CETM imposes “conditions” which can be difficult to “follow” due to lack of resources.1and there are no consequences when a patient is deemed not to comply with the conditions of the Commission.
The president of the Order of Criminologists of Quebec testified before Me Kamel2 that all patients who are brought before the CETM should be subject to a dangerousness assessment…
We pinch ourselves when we discover that this is not already the case.
But I ask the question: it takes how many appearances before the CETM – therefore how many times must we commit crimes in a state of not criminal responsibility – for us to understand that certain patients are not made to function in Company ?
I am going to repeat the names of people who, in recent years in Quebec, have been murdered by previously violent patients whom society has worked hard to release.3 : James Jardin, Chantal Cyr, Annie Baillargeon, Gérard Lalonde, Suzanne Desjardins, Huiping Ding, Chong Soon Yuen, André Lemieux, Mohamed Belhaj, Alex Lévis-Crevier, Jacques Côté, Maureen Breau…
PHOTO ARCHIVES THE CANADIAN PRESS
Sergeant Maureen Breau, fatally stabbed by Isaac Brouillard Lessard in March 2023
This is a partial and incomplete list, made using keywords typed into Google. And I’m only talking about murdered people: I’m passing over those who were “just” beaten, mutilated or traumatized by psychiatrists who had nevertheless been judged capable of functioning in society.
I ask another question: in the name of what principle was Isaac Brouillard Lessard free, in society?
Here is a man who made many visits to the CETM, who repeatedly escaped justice in the name of the principle of non-criminal responsibility, who got angry as soon as he was indisposed…
And he was free.
Society tried hard to let him live in society even though everything indicated that he was a dangerous guy, incapable of controlling himself. For what ? Because the medical-judicial system allows these repeat offenders to remain in society despite their dangerousness.
And when we follow the work of coroner Kamel, we see this: when a patient falls under the control of the CETM, his file becomes confidential in many respects for many people…
Thus, if the police find the psychiatrist of an Isaac Brouillard Lessard to ask him who we are dealing with, to report that his cannabis consumption is perhaps a violation of the conditions of release imposed by the CETM…
There’s a good chance the psychologist will say, “Sorry, I can’t tell you about my patient.” »
For what ?
Because it is no longer about criminal justice, but about… health. The violent repeat offender is no longer a criminal in the eyes of the medical-judicial system, he only becomes a patient. And the right to confidentiality of a patient who has received a “Get out of jail” card under the principle of non-criminal responsibility is sacred in Quebec.
Not in Ontario, but that’s another story4.
So, when the cops knock on Isaac Brouillard Lessard’s door, they often don’t know who they are dealing with. And they have no way of knowing it. In the medical-judicial system which governs the release of people deemed more ill than criminals, the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing. I quote Coroner Kamel: “No one talks to each other. Everyone works alone. »
And when the police arrest a guy like Fabio Puglisi because he attacked a passer-by for no reason, they don’t know that the man has already been under the supervision of the CETM. They don’t know he’s a dangerous guy… because his medical records are confidential.
So, a guy like Puglisi is released on a promise to appear as if it were a stupid shoplift, no red flag is raised in the face of the dangerous state of mind of a guy who attacks a stranger he meets in the street for no reason5.
And a week later, oops, the police were called to this Mr. Puglisi’s mother and discovered a massacre there: two people murdered with knives, another massacred in the same way.
A tragedy, of course, but let’s put on rose-colored glasses as the Quebec medical-judicial system does: at least the sacrosanct confidentiality of Fabio Puglisi’s psychiatric past was respected by the system! Above all, he should not be “stigmatized” by society for his past violent crimes.
Same thing for Isaac Brouillard Lessard: the confidentiality of the medical-judicial file of this violent repeat offender was respected from A to Z, that, on that, the system was exemplary.
Policewoman Breau paid with her life for this beautiful principle.
1. Read “Death of police officer Maureen Breau: a psychiatrist who had already followed Brouillard Lessard testifies at the coroner’s inquest”
2. Read an article in News
3. Read the column “The open-air psychiatric hospital (4)”
4. Read our file “Police officers and mental distress: an hour to avoid the worst”
5. Read an article from TVA Nouvelles