Ex-NFL player gets prison time in death of 5-year-old girl in Las Vegas

MONTREAL – The family of a Quebec provincial police sergeant who was stabbed to death by a mentally ill man who wasn’t taking his medication says it welcomes the coroner’s report into her brutal murder.

But coroner Géhane Kamel says that health-care workers must do a better job of communicating with each other about potentially dangerous mental health patients if tragedies like the one that took the life of Sgt. Maureen Breau are to be avoided.

“I invite all partners to talk to each other,” Kamel told a news conference Tuesday, a day after she released her report that included 38 recommendations.

“We still have the right to talk to each other in Quebec and I understand that there is sacrosanct confidentiality, but we will have to find mechanisms quickly to be able to talk to each other.”

Kamel said there were plenty of missed opportunities to help Isaac Brouillard Lessard, the 35-year-old man who stabbed Breau to death with a kitchen knife on March 27, 2023, before he was shot dead by police in his apartment building in Louisville, Que., about 100 kilometres northeast of Montreal.

Brouillard Lessard had been found not criminally responsible because of mental illness five times for offences in 2014 and 2018, and had been followed by the province’s mental health board.

Breau’s relatives watched Tuesday’s news conference remotely and a family spokesman said they’re ready to turn the page.

Dominic Roberge, a provincial police officer and longtime friend of Breau and her husband, said the family’s major concern is that Kamel’s 38 recommendations will be shelved rather than dutifully considered by authorities.

Many of her recommendations involve the need for better oversight of mental health patients. Kamel also says the province should reduce the number of hospitals that care for forensic psychiatric patients so that expertise isn’t spread too thin.

Psychiatrists should be briefed on legal options available to them for patients being followed by the mental health board, she recommended. As well, Kamel said police should be better trained to deal with patients who have severe mental illness. And she said there should be some type of mechanism that alerts police when a patient who is followed by the mental health board moves to the territory they cover.

Kamel, who released her report into the deaths on Monday, said they could have been avoided had health-care workers communicated more closely with police and other colleagues in the health network. Her recommendations, she said, will mean little if health-care workers and police don’t consult and collaborate and stop with a “it’s not my backyard” mentality.

The coroner said authorities had the necessary leverage to have Brouillard Lessard hospitalized, but didn’t know the full extent of his mental health deterioration because of a lack of communication.

“We had several missed opportunities to provide care to this young man,” Kamel said.

Roberge told reporters after Kamel’s news conference at provincial police headquarters in Montreal that the Breau family is pleased with the work of the coroner and felt she listened to their concerns throughout the inquest.

“For them, it’s the turning of the page,” Roberge said, adding the closing of this chapter comes with a range of emotions for the family.

Breau, 42, a mother of two and veteran police officer with 20 years of service was days away from beginning a new job as an investigator.

The deaths led to the provincial government tabling a law in May that includes a budget of $11.3 million over five years for a team of “liaison officers” mandated to monitor people who commit crimes but who are judged to be not criminally responsible because of mental health disorders, and to assess the risk they pose.

Kamel said the law, which came before she released her report, shows the government was listening to the testimony during the inquest, and called it a good first step. But she noted more needs to be done as one out of two calls to 911 are related social issues — including a growing number related to mental health.

Meanwhile, the Quebec provincial police said Tuesday they are working to ramp up training for officers responding to mental health calls and adjusting to a different reality for front-line officers. “For example, 25 years ago, when I was at the police academy, we were still talking about bank robberies,” said Chief Insp. Patrice Cardinal.

“It is essential that police officers participate in the solution … We can’t have all the responsibility, but we can’t be excluded from the responsibility either.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 10, 2024.

OTTAWA – Canadian-made weapons will be prohibited from reaching the Gaza Strip, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly said Tuesday.

Her comments come weeks after the U.S. announced plans to send Quebec-made ammunition to Israel. Shortly after that announcement, Global Affairs Canada told The Canadian Press that it would “not speculate on a possible foreign military sale.”

However Tuesday at the Liberal caucus retreat in Nanaimo, B.C., Joly told reporters Canadian-made weapons will not be sent to Gaza.

“We will not have any form of arms or parts of arms be sent to Gaza, period,” Joly said.

“How they’re being sent and where they’re being sent is irrelevant.”

As part of a recent proposed arms sale to Israel, the U.S. State Department has approved the purchase of 50,000 high-explosive mortar cartridges with fuses made in Quebec. It pegs the sale at a maximum cost of US$61.1 million, roughly C$83 million, with deliveries estimated to begin in 2026.

A notice posted by the U.S. on Aug. 13 lists the “principal contractor” as General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems Inc., based in the town of Repentigny, east of Montreal.

The company would not specify what role it has in the sale, nor respond to criticism that this goes against the government’s aim to restrict new arms sales to Israel. The firm has instead referred questions to the U.S. military, which acknowledged a request but did not respond by deadline.”

In March, the Liberals joined the NDP to pass a motion to stop authorizing arms exports to Israel, though permits approved in the prior months are still active.

But Joly said Tuesday that Ottawa’s policy is that Canadian-made arms and components cannot be used in the Gaza Strip, regardless of how they are sent to Israel.

Ottawa stopped approving new arms permits for Israel in January, while allowing approved permits to stay in place.

“Following that, I suspended this summer around 30 existing permits of Canadian companies, and we’re asking questions to these companies,” Joly said.

Ottawa had an estimated maximum of $136 million in approved military exports to Israel, according to a document Global Affairs Canada submitted to the foreign affairs committee, current as of July 3.

The document lists all 210 permits that were valid at that point, amounting a maximum of $154.8 million, of which $18 million worth had already been sent to various public and private clients in Israel.

The permits date back to December 2020 and $24 million of the total authorized value stems from permits approved after the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas, which led to Israel’s bombardment of Gaza.

The National Council of Canadian Muslims has urged Ottawa to block the proposed U.S. sale. Major civil-society groups have called on Ottawa to expand restrictions on military exports to Israel to a total ban.

The request cited possible violations of international humanitarian law in the Gaza Strip.

“Over the last few weeks only, Israel attacked at least seven schools. They add to the long list of schools, hospitals, refugee camps and places of worship hit since October — many of these crowded with displaced civilians sheltering from the violence,” reads the Sept. 3 joint letter, signed by 20 organizations, including Save the Children and the Mennonite Central Committee.

“Canada is prohibited from exporting arms if those transfers would be used to commit serious crimes under international law, including disproportionate and indiscriminate attacks.”

Israel insists it is trying to rout Hamas and only targets civilian infrastructure that harbours members of the group, though the letter argues the United Nations has found a “well-documented pattern of (international humanitarian law) and human-rights violations by Israel in Gaza and the West Bank.”

The Palestinian ambassador to Canada, Mona Abuamara, said she’s asked Global Affairs Canada how many military exports are reaching Israel, but hasn’t received clear answers on what is being exported under months-old permits or through other countries.

“These things are not as clear as they should be, because they happen secretively,” she said in a recent interview.

“I take what the Canadian government tells me; I wait for these reports to be confirmed — and I hope they are not confirmed,” she said of the proposed U.S. sale of Quebec ammunition.

Global Affairs Canada did not answer when asked whether Abuamara has accurately conveyed her discussions with the department.

Liberal MP Salma Zahid wrote on social media that her own party “must block this transparent attempt to circumvent the arms embargo our government committed to” and have “a real arms embargo” against Israel.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 10, 2024.

MONTREAL – The lawyer representing pro-Palestinian activists who are accused of criminally harassing federal Immigration Minister Marc Miller says the charges are an attempt to “criminalize free speech.”

Barbara Bedont says her three clients were protesting outside a Liberal byelection campaign office in Montreal’s Verdun borough last week when they saw Miller and two of his employees in a car and confronted them, yelling messages such as “shame on you!”

Mohanned Mansour, Samar Elkahlout and Wendy Ing were charged with criminal harassment and mischief for allegedly damaging the car Miller was in, and were given conditions Tuesday that include a requirement to stay at least 50 metres away from the minister and the two employees.

Bedont denies that her clients damaged the car or posed any threat to Miller or the others. She said the case, instead, is part of a growing trend by politicians and police of trying to suppress free speech.

“There have been cases in the past in which the judges have clearly said that freedom of speech, it’s not just for popular, happy, speech. It’s for speech that could be offensive, that could be insulting, and politicians in particular have to tolerate that,” she said.

“And instead, what’s happening is that politicians and police officers, they’re ignoring this and they’re bringing more and more cases against protesters, particularly pro-Palestinian protesters.”

Miller’s office declined to comment because the matter is before the courts.

Elkahlout — who is also known as Samar Alkhdour — had been trying to bring her daughter to Canada earlier this year, but the 13-year-old died in the Gaza Strip before permission was granted. She has previously told reporters that her daughter suffered from serious medical conditions and died of malnutrition.

Since then she has held regular sit-ins outside Miller’s Montreal riding office in protest of the Canadian government’s policies on Palestinian refugees.

Bedont said the conditions imposed Tuesday are a “compromise” that put limits on the accused while still allowing them to continue their protests, including outside the door of Miller’s office when he and the two employees aren’t there.

She said the conditions initially proposed by the Crown included staying away from Miller’s office and not denouncing him on social media, but that she challenged those on the grounds that they violate her clients’ rights protected under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

“They have the right to freedom of expression, freedom of assembly,” she said. “And so that’s why we challenge these conditions because the conditions basically would have infringed those rights.”

The case comes as some politicians have called for harsher penalties for those who harass MPs. In July, former public safety minister Marco Mendicino called for the creation of “protective zones” around political constituency offices to shield members of Parliament and their staff from a rising tide of threatening behaviour.

Bedont said she supports the objective of protecting politicians and civil servants from violence. “But if the objective is to just shut down criticism and free speech, then I doubt that any law would withstand a Charter challenge,” she said.

She said the case against her clients is scheduled to return to court in November, but she hopes prosecutors will decide to drop the charges before then.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 10, 2024.

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