‘It’s ridiculous’: demands for better compensation for families of crime victims after Laval daycare bus attack

A Quebec woman is sounding the alarm when it comes to financial assistance for families and victims of criminal acts.

She is the friend of the parents of one of the young victims of the Laval daycare bus attack where two children were killed north of Montreal in February.

The families of four-year-old Jacob and five-year-old Maëva are not speaking publicly, but Josée Bélanger from Laval has launched a petition on Quebec’s National Assembly website, representing what she says those families and many others have gone through dealing with IVAC, the Compensation for Victims of Criminal Acts.

“They said it was difficult at times to get services, to get classes to get paid,” she said.

Bélanger is calling on the province to revise its 2021 reform of IVAC, which gave victims and their families, who were unable to work, 90 per cent of their net salaries for three years rather than for life.

She said her friends haven’t worked since the attack on Feb. 8.

“In two years, if they are not capable if they’re still in post-traumatic stress of losing their children, they won’t be able to go back to work, then what’s gonna happen to them?” she asked.

She says the families of the young victims only have $94 of therapy visits covered even when sessions cost up to $150. 

“It does put everybody in financial jeopardy,” she said. “Don’t you want them to get better and focus on something else instead of staying at home and crying?”

Bélanger herself is a an IVAC recipient, after her own family tragedy when she was five years old.

“I’ve been fighting with IVAC for over 10 years now to get what I should be allowed to get,” she said.

The CNESST – Quebec’s workplace safety board overseeing IVAC – could not respond to our request for comment in time for our deadline.

The office for Quebec’s Justice Minister, Simon Jolin-Barrette, says they cannot comment on specific cases, but in a statement they say: “[…] Before the reform of IVAC, a parent of a deceased child could only be recognized as a victim if the child had been murdered by the other spouse. We corrected this with the reform so that now all parents of a minor child who died following a criminal offence can be entitled to […] support services.”

The services include:

• Help for psychotherapeutic or psychosocial rehabilitation (no session limit)
• Help for social and professional reintegration
• Help with physical rehabilitation
• Help for medical assistance
• Assistance to compensate for loss of income (3 years + possibility of 2 additional years)
• Reimbursement of crime-related costs
• Death benefit ($64,738)
• Reimbursement of certain other expenses

The Minister’s office explained that if after three years, the parent of a child victim is still unable to work after undergoing a health assessment, they can benefit from an extension of two years of compensation for loss of income.

“The program is there to help them to go through what they need to go but it’s not normal that you have to keep on taking the phone and say, ‘I would like’ and [it’s] no, no, no,” Bélanger said.

She says she wants more justice for the victims, rather than the bus driver in the Laval case. 51-year-old Pierre Ny St-Amand is accused of the two first-degree murders and seven more charges.

“He is receiving all the services he needs, a psychiatrist, food, he has a roof over his head,” said Bélanger. “Meanwhile the victims cannot have any of those, it’s ridiculous.”