 "As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. It is in such twilight that we all must be aware of change in the air - however slight - lest we become victims of the darkness.
Montreal, 10 September 2007 CANADA: THE RISING POLICE STATE 1. "SOVIET" methods coming to Quebec Courts One of the most heinous practises of the former Soviet Union was declaring people crazy behind their backs to deny them a hearing. The request was usually made by Police to the Justice Minister, urged on by informants who found the alleged "views" or "opinions" of their target victim inconsistent with official prevailing views endorsed by the State. Those declared crazy were then warehoused in the Soviet Union's extensive network of "psychiatric" hospitals (prisons) and given a chemical lobotomy. The drug of choice for the purpose was Haloperidol, sometimes called Haldol. As the article below -- Shrinking the Freedom of Thought -- recalls, eventually, they just "medically" killed off all the "mental patients". The practise of judicially LISTING people and declaring them incompetent to strip them of their inherent right to conduct their own legal business, is already here. But, little do Canadians know that the Soviet practise of judicially ordering psychiatric evaluations against the will of the individual is also well on its way to Canada. The articles in law journals which are evidence of its arrival at our threshhold are written in French, and published in various Bar Reviews. Seminars given on the subject by the author of the articles and those who support his views, are open only to lawyers and judges. As a consequence, the ordinary citizen has likely never heard about this anomalous development in Quebec law being led by former McGill University Dean of Law, Yves-Marie Morissette, who is now a Quebec Court of Appeal Judge. Professor/Judge Morissette believes that ordinary people who represent themselves at Court without a lawyer are likely to be mental cases. He wants the Legislature to pass a law enabling Judges to declare such people crazy from the Bench, and to subject them to psychiatric examination under Court Order to confirm the "pathology". Morissette then recommends two things: (i) further Court Orders compelling the person into curatorship, meaning imposing a "guardian" upon him for his legal business; and (ii) "treating" the poor lunatic with HALOPERIDOL for having tried to defend himself without a lawyer. What is worse, Judges in cases of "abuse of right," are already embellishing their rulings by judicially declaring people crazy, while citing Morissette. - BIOGRAPHIES of Yves-Marie Morisette:
- ARTICLES of Yves-Marie Morissette:
At p. 569 of "Quelques réflexions", linked above, Morissette (now, a Québec Court of Appeal Judge) says: [TRANSLATION] ... the pure and simple deprivation of the party's capacity to exercise legal proceedings is essential. A curator would have to have, in that case, the sole power to exercise the rights of the interested party, and, as the latter will be tempted to relentlessly dispute at court the decisions of his or her curator, the law (obviously, it must be the law) must envisage a mode of exception which, once confirmed via rigorous diagnostic, carried out in good and due form, deprives the «quérulent» [complainer] of his or her faculty to address the courts. The solution is radical, certainly, but is adapted to the problem. In this time of proliferation of individual rights, the idea may be unpopular with the legislator or with the public, but that is because they are not well informed on the crux of the problem. As to a remedy for other forms of abuse of process, it seems to me that the law as it currently stands is sufficient to the task." [ORIGINAL, by Yves-Marie Morissette, in FRENCH] «... la privation pure et simple de la capacité d'ester en justice s'impose. Un curateur devrait dans ce cas être seul à pouvoir exercer les droits de l'intéressé, et comme ce dernier sera tenté de contester sans relâche devant les tribunaux les décisions de son curateur, la loi (il faut évidemment que ce soit elle) devrait prévoir un régime d'exception qui, une fois confirmé en diagnostique rigoureux, porté en bonne et due forme, prive le querulent de sa faculté de s'adresser aux tribunaux. La solution est radicale, certes, mais adaptée au problème. En cette époque de prolifération des droits individuels, l'idée peut être impopulaire auprès du législateur ou du public, mais cela tient au fait qu'ils sont mal renseignés sur le noeud du problème. Quand au redressement des autres formes d'abus de procédure, il me semble que le droit tel qu'il existe actuellement suffit à la tâche.» - SEMINARS AND WORKSHOPS of Yves-Marie Morissette:
The document at the foregoing link is a PDF of a web page mounted by the Quebec Bar Association in 2002 to announce their annual lawyers' training conference. Here is how they describe the purpose of the workshop led by Professor Yves-Marie Morissette and former Chief Justice Lyse Lemieux on the subject "Le justiciable qui se représente seul" ["The party who represents himself alone"]: [TRANSLATION] ... This workshop will take the form of a panel discussion addressing the growing phenomenon of parties representing themselves alone before the Courts. Also up for discussion will be the issue of the imbalance of "querulence" [querulousness * see my note] exhibited by certain pleaders, defined as a morbid tendency to seek conflicts, to claim imaginary rights, and to complain of injustices of which they feel they are victims. Abuse of process is almost always symptomatic of this phenomenon. The discussion will turn to the means and principal remedies available to the Courts to redress such abuse. [* The definition has been invented at the instigation of Professor Morissette. It is not a "known" psychiatric illness. In fact, if it were such an illness, the first person you would expect to be a victim of it would be the lawyer. After all, who else would sign up for law school but the inveterate complainer looking for a fight to pick. If there were such a kind of mental incompetent, the field of law would give him the widest opportunity to exercise his "imbalance" while billing a nice fee for it.] It should be noted that in other jurisdictions, when the "growing phenomenon of parties representing themselves alone" is addressed, it is not placed under the catch-all heading of a new kind of "psychiatric" illness said to be prominent only among non-lawyers. Rather, the first assumption made is that the ordinary person is increasingly unable to afford lawyers' fees, which can range up to three and five-hundred dollars an hour. Also, the field of law and of procedure has become so complex that the average person cannot gain a grasp of it quickly enough to appear at Court without some frustration both to himself, the other party, and the judge. The point to be made is that in jurisdictions where the pro se pleader is correctly viewed as a rightful beneficiary of an effective legal system, the questions posed are "How can we simplify the system so he can use it?" and "What support mechanisms can we provide for him to use it effectively?" In jurisdictions where the law and the courts are viewed as the private property of big corporations, big law firms, and wealthy litigants, the facile response which declares the ordinary person of modest or reduced means "likely" to be crazy should be viewed with a great deal of circumspection. In Quebec, major amendments to the Code of Civil Procedure have disfavoured the ordinary person by shifting away from written procedures into oral pleading. Lawyers are trained for oral pleading. They have the law at their fingertips. The ordinary person is now required by the legal system to master both law, procedure and public speaking, as well as his own case and evidence, and stand up against law firms that can turn on a dime. Add to this the language barrier for people whose mother tongue is not French, and you have a recipe for frustration which the Quebec system is clearly not ready to address, except with Haloperidol for the poor fellow who no longer has anywhere accessible to bring his grievances. - QUEBEC BAR REVIEW - various mentions of the Morissette "theory" that people who represent themselves without a lawyer tend to be crazy:
[* "Warlike" is the translation given by Encarta.] [EXTRACT OF ORIGINAL by Louise Vadnais, avocate, in FRENCH:] On examinera aussi une nouvelle tendance au sein de la pratique professionnelle: Le justiciable qui se représente seul: le plaideur trop belliqueux et le phénomène de la quérulence. La juge en chef de la Cour supérieure, Lyse Lemieux, sera entouré d'un panel composé de professeurs, praticiens et d'un psychiâtre, pour aborder les conséquences de ces nouveaux phénomènes. - INVOLUNTARY PSYCHIATRIC "Treatment" as Human Rights Abuse:
http://www.canlii.org/fr/qc/qccq/doc/2002/2002canlii37307/2002canlii37307.html Gravel c. Fournier, 2002 CanLII 37307 (QC C.Q.) Gravel c. Fournier is a judgment found in the www.canlii.org online database of selected Canadian precedents and law, where the Court has been asked to declare a certain person an "abusive pleader" (plaideur vexatoire). When judgment is handed down in accordance, the person's name is then placed on a LIST which can be consulted by Courthouse and judicial personnel in order to DENY them the right to file proceedings. At his paragraph 9, Judge Filion cites "La pathologie et thérapeutique du plaideur trop belliqueux", a "study" by "l'honorable juge de la Cour d'appel, Yves-Marie Morrissette, alors professeur titulaire à la Faculté de droit de l'Université McGill". In the Filion case, judgment was not granted; although it had been granted against the same respondent in a previous case. However, in the next case of Carrier c. Morency, it was granted, and no fewer than two judges presumed to declare the defendant "crazy" while citing Morissette. http://www.canlii.org/fr/qc/qccq/doc/2005/2005canlii11268/2005canlii11268.html Carrier c. Morency, 2005 CanLII 11268 (QC C.Q.) In Carrier c. Morency in 2005, Judge Raoul P. Barbe condemned Roy Morency to pay $7,000.00 in damages to lawyer Me Jérôme Carrier for "abuse of right". However, the Court went further, and not for the first time in that file. Judge Barbe, in giving reasons for judgment, cites "Y. M. Morrissette, « Pathologie et thérapeutique du plaideur trop belliqueux » dans Développements récents en déontologie, Éd. Blais, 2001 p.167". Judge Barbe also refers to proceedings against Morency before another Judge, Louise Moreau, who, herself, cites Yves-Marie Morissette. Using the language invented by Morissette to denote the "mental illness" invented by Morissette, Judge Moreau judicially "diagnoses" Morency with the mental illness of "querulence". At paragraph 59 of her ruling, Judge Moreau said: "59. La quérulence du demandeur exige que j'accorde la demande de déclarer cette poursuite abusive et que je réserve les recours [de Carrier]." [TRANSLATION: The "querulence" of the plaintiff requires that I grant the application to declare this suit an abuse of process and I reserve his recourses [to Maître Carrier]. In effect, Judge Moreau has said that on account of his "mental illness," the plaintiff was to be non-suited. Judges have no authority to declare people crazy from the Bench. These rulings in Carrier c. Morency amount to "judicial declarations of madness". They are undoubtedly ultra vires. What is worse, it is the Quebec Bar Association, whose job is to protect the public, which has been conducting these training sessions for lawyers and judges, hosted by Morissette. As a consequence, Judges are jumping on the Soviet bandwagon. They have usurped the function of the legislator by in practise judicially amending the Quebec Code of Civil Procedure to give themselves the non-existent power to declare people crazy from the Bench. This is not only ultra vires and a human rights abuse, it is a profound abuse of power, and on no authority of law. If there were such a law, it would be circumscribed, if not declared void in virtue the section 1 guarantee and limitation clause in the Canadian Charter of Rights: Guarantee of Rights and Freedoms Rights and freedoms in Canada 1. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.http://www.canlii.org/fr/qc/qccq/doc/2005/2005canlii17036/2005canlii17036.html Arya c. Lowe, 2005 CanLII 17036 (QC C.Q.) Without going into the to-and-fro of this case, what is perhaps most noteworthy is that Judge Raoul P. Barbe (again), while citing Morissette's "Pathologie" in his final paragraph, scheduled a hearing before him with an English-French language interpreter for the respondents, but while denying the same respondents access to a lawyer, stating that the case before him was not sufficently complex to warrant it. On the contrary, it would appear that once the Judge had cited Yves-Marie Morissette, respondents stood at risk of being declared crazy from the Bench, making this case of far more than ordinary complexity. Without a lawyer, they might have no way of knowing that Judges have no power to declare people crazy. They might not even know that they were being declared crazy. And, as the training seminars hosted by the Quebec Bar are given to both judges and lawyers, these unfortunate litigants might have difficulty finding anyone cognizant of the problem. In the present state of the law in Quebec, with Yves-Marie Morissette's articles on "pro se pleaders" (that's the American term) being consulted by Judges, the very FACT of having one's name on the LIST is tantamount to an "incompetency" ruling ex parte by a Court, substituting itself for a psychiatrist. As John Locke, famous English philosopher, once said, "Wherever law ends, tyranny begins." [John Locke, 1632-1704] What is further troubling is that the LEADING CASE cited by Judges to deprive ordinary people of their day in Court and label them "abusive pleaders" is that of a MASS MURDERER: Valery I. Fabrikant c. Dr Serge Corbin et mis en cause, REJB 2000-19412 (C.S.), 455-05-000418-009. The fact that Judges would use such a case to place an innocent Canadian on a LIST of "mental incompetents" stripped of their legal rights is, in itself, character assassination by association. It is inflammatory; an outright abuse of dignity, reputation, and other fundamental human freedoms.  Web-site background: a faded canvas of Dulle Griet (Mad Meg) c. 1562 by Pieter Bruegel the Elder; (200 Kb), Oil on panel, 117.4 x 162 cm; Museum Mayer van den Bergh, Antwerp. Click to see larger. | ||||
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