Laval daycare bus crash: High-risk offender status is unconstitutional, man’s lawyers say

Lawyers for a Quebec man who killed two children and injured six others when he drove a city bus into a Laval daycare in 2023 say it would be unconstitutional for a judge to declare him a high-risk offender.

A Quebec Superior Court hearing began in Laval Monday morning in the case of Pierre Ny St-Amand, 53, who was declared in April not criminally responsible for his actions because of a mental disorder.

The Crown is seeking to have Justice Éric Downs declare Ny St-Amand a high-risk offender, which would impose stricter rules on him — especially concerning absences — while he is detained at a psychiatric hospital.

“When you are designated as a high-risk accused, it is the Superior Court that has the final say as to whether or not the accused should be able to, for example, can go outside of Pinel alone,” explained Crown prosecutor Simon Blais. “And that’s the main difference. Because a regular, not criminally responsible accused would not have to go in front of the Superior Court.”

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Downs ruled in April that Ny St-Amand was likely in psychosis when he crashed the bus into the daycare, killing a four-year-old boy and five-year-old girl.

Ny St-Amand’s lawyers say applying high-risk offender status to people declared not criminally responsible violates several articles of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

They say in their legal briefing that the high-risk status assumes such offenders are irredeemable and reinforces the stereotype of the “criminal lunatic.”

At the Laval courthouse on Monday morning, the defence presented two witnesses, including Mathieu Dufour, a forensic psychiatrist at the Philippe Pinel institute. During his morning testimony, Dufour spoke about how certain patients are allowed to have accompanied and non-accompanied visits in the community.

Ny St-Amand was present in the courtroom; he appeared calm, wearing a long-sleeved brown shirt.

In September, the high-risk offender status hearing took place, but a decision about whether Ny St-Amand will be given this designation will not come until after the constitutional challenge hearing this week concludes, and after the judge makes his decision about this challenge, which likely will not be made until next year.

‘Future dangerosity’

Montreal lawyer Julius Grey, who is not part of Ny St-Amand’s defence counsel, agrees imposing high-risk offender status would be unconstitutional.

“There’s no doubt that in all countries, measures are present to control people who are mentally ill and commit offences,” Grey told CityNews. “The question is, these measures, do they go too far? Are they discriminatory if you compare them to the measures for ordinary offenders? And the answer is, I think they go too far. And it is possible for the government to fashion a rule, to draft a rule that will be less oppressive and nevertheless fulfill the purpose.

“And one of the questions you have to ask yourself is, is there always a connection between past criminally insane actions and future dangerosity? And the answer is not always.”

While Grey acknowledges it’s “fair” to have a provision that protests the public in certain cases, he says it doesn’t mean that it should apply to all cases.

“The issue is not to leave the public in danger,” he said. “The issue is to make certain that on the one hand the public interest is respected, but on the other that people who are no longer in need of restraint are not kept under these harsh rules.”