Laval daycare bus crash: Judge hears closing arguments on ‘high-risk offender’ status for Pierre Ny St-Amand

The hearing to determine high-risk offender status for Pierre Ny St-Amand, the Quebec man who killed two children by driving a bus into a daycare in Laval in 2023, is on track to end Thursday, with both sides offering their closing arguments.

Quebec Superior Court Justice Éric Downs says he does not know when he render his decision, but said it would likely go to the new year.

In April, the judge ruled that Ny St-Amand was likely in a psychotic state when he crashed into a daycare in Laval, killing a four-year-old boy and a five-year-old girl.

Ny St-Amand’s lawyers have argued it would be unconstitutional for a Superior Court judge to declare him a high-risk offender, a designation that would impose stricter rules on him during his confinement in a psychiatric hospital.

They are asking the judge to invalidate the section of the Criminal Code that allows courts to classify certain individuals who are found not criminally responsible as high-risk offenders, which they claim violates articles 7, 12 and 15 of the Canadian Constitution.

They say high-risk offender designations only claim to protect the public but are actually designed to punish the offender.

The Crown argues Ny St-Amand’s actions were so brutal that he should be considered a high-risk offender, but his lawyers say this status reinforces the stereotype of the “criminal madman” who cannot be rehabilitated.

“To be declared a high-risk offender, you can either demonstrate that an accused is at high probability, a marked probability of committing a violent crime, or that the nature of the acts that he committed are of such brutal nature that in themselves they create a risk,” explained Crown prosecutor Simon Blais. “And so in this case, we are (claiming) that Mr. St-Amand corresponds to both criteria.”

Because Ny St-Amand’s lawyers are contesting the actual existence of the law, it’s the Attorney General of Quebec that’s defending it — not the Crown prosecutors.

“It’s technical, but basically we have different clients,” Blais told reporters. “So we are the DPCP (Directeur des poursuites criminelles et pénales), so we are applying the law. We are the ones who charged the accused… and goes through all the procedure while applying the law. And the Attorney General of Quebec, their client is the government themselves who are trying to defend the law that they edicted.

“So it’s really a question of we are applying the law and they are defending the law that we are applying.”

The lawyers for the Attorney General of Quebec argued that each of the articles being challenged are not violating the Charter. They reinforced that the high-risk offender status is for the protection of the public while also treating those with this status equitably.

The chair of the province’s mental health review committee testified Wednesday that 17 people have been designated high-risk offenders in Quebec since 2014, and 12 of them still have that status.

Julien Lespérance-Hudon, one of the lawyers for Ny St-Amand, spent part of his final arguments on Thursday referring to other cases of accused who have been found not criminally responsible with high-offender status in Ontario and Quebec psychiatric facilities, and how this status has been applied in different institutions.

Blais called Thursday’s hearing “the last steps of a marathon” and offered a though to the victims and their families.

“I wish for them that it is a major weight lifted off their shoulders,” the Crown prosecutor said. “They are the ones that have to live every day with this. And we know that every time this file comes back in court, it brings back terrible, terrible emotions. So we hope that today that this case being ended, that it will lift a considerable weight from their shoulders.”

–With files from La Presse Canadienne