{"id":22804,"date":"2026-09-06T13:26:35","date_gmt":"2026-09-06T17:26:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.virtulexavocats.com\/?p=22804"},"modified":"2026-09-06T13:26:35","modified_gmt":"2026-09-06T17:26:35","slug":"gatineau-judges-removal-jail-warrants-unpaid-fines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.virtulexavocats.com\/en\/gatineau-judges-removal-jail-warrants-unpaid-fines\/","title":{"rendered":"1,669 Jail Warrants Signed “In Bulk”: Why Two Gatineau Judges Now Face Removal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Unpaid fines, automatic jail time and judges who “signed without looking”: what the Conseil de la magistrature’s inquiry report on the Gatineau municipal court reveals, and why it matters to all of Quebec.<\/em><\/p>\n

On December 7, 2022, nearly 300 requests to jail people for unpaid fines were on the docket of the Gatineau municipal court. Twelve of them targeted the same man: a homeless citizen living on social assistance who, as he would later testify under oath, had never received any notice at all. He was absent, like hundreds of others. After dealing with the people who had shown up, the judge disposed of everyone else with a single sentence, issuing warrants “for all the files that have not been named”. Two days later, in his office, he signed pre-printed warrants: five days in jail per file, to be served one after the other. For this man, that added up to 60 days. He was in fact incarcerated, and spent three days behind bars before a lawyer secured his release from the Superior Court.<\/p>\n

His case was not an isolated one. Between June 10, 2020 and December 7, 2022, judges Martin Gosselin and Joanne Cousineau of the Gatineau municipal court issued 1,669 imprisonment warrants (1,113 by the former, 556 by the latter) against 1,126 people, always using the same method. On August 5, 2026, an inquiry committee of the Conseil de la magistrature du Qu\u00e9bec (the body that oversees the conduct of provincially appointed judges), chaired by Judge Henri Richard of the Court of Qu\u00e9bec, found the complaint against them well founded and recommended their removal from office. The decision is reported as Tremblay et Gosselin et Cousineau<\/em>, 2026 CanLII 85870 (QC CM).<\/p>\n

A removal recommendation is an exceedingly rare event in Quebec. The case also has a distinctly local flavour in the Outaouais: the complainant, Christian Tanguay, filed his complaint as assistant director general of administrative services for the City of Gatineau, the very employer of the municipal court, and he is now the b\u00e2tonnier<\/em> (president) of the Barreau de l’Outaouais. Let’s look at what actually happened, and what the law required.<\/p>\n

How you end up in jail over an unpaid fine<\/h2>\n

In Quebec, when a person is ordered to pay a fine for a penal offence (a Highway Safety Code ticket, a municipal by-law infraction, and so on) and does not pay, the file goes to the collector of fines<\/strong>, a public officer designated by the Minister of Justice. The Code of Penal Procedure requires the collector to go through a series of steps before jail is even considered: send a notice of judgment and a demand for payment, locate the person if necessary, grant extra time or a payment agreement, seize assets, and, if the person is unable to pay, offer compensatory work<\/strong> (community work hours that wipe out the debt).<\/p>\n

Only at the end of that road, when everything else has failed, may the collector ask a judge to impose a term of imprisonment. This is known as an application for imprisonment for non-payment (in French, a “DIPE”). Prior notice of the hearing must be served on the person. And the judge may only order imprisonment if satisfied<\/em> of two things: that the other collection measures are insufficient, and that the person has, without reasonable excuse<\/em>, refused or neglected to pay. The Code adds an unambiguous requirement: the imposition of the sentence must be justified in writing<\/em>.<\/p>\n

That last condition, the absence of a reasonable excuse, was added to the Code of Penal Procedure on June 5, 2020, five days before the first hearing covered by the complaint. It answered repeated criticism of the disproportionate jailing of homeless and vulnerable people; the Viens Commission had called on cities and the legislature in 2019 to end the practice. The underlying principle is much older: the Supreme Court of Canada has held that a real inability to pay is not a ground for imprisonment, but precisely a reasonable excuse.<\/p>\n

What was really going on in Gatineau<\/h2>\n

The uncontested evidence describes a well-oiled routine in place since the early 2000s. Twice a year, the court clerk’s office bundled hundreds of applications into a single two- to three-hour sitting. The people who showed up went first; their files were dealt with one by one, with sworn testimony and minutes. The City’s lawyer then had the paid and unserved files struck from the docket. For everything else, she asked orally for imprisonment warrants “in bulk”. The judge granted the whole lot in a single oral judgment, without reasons, without opening a single file, without any evidence being presented, and without even hearing the collector of fines who was sitting in the courtroom.<\/p>\n

The most troubling part may be what came next. The judges never set the length of the sentences. A computer system, configured years earlier by a former judge of the court, automatically calculated the number of days in jail based on the amount owed. The warrants were signed a few days later, in chambers, without the files being consulted. Before the committee, the judges admitted they did not know how the system determined the length of the sentences they were signing.<\/p>\n

A quip captured on the recording of the December 8, 2021 hearing sums up the mindset. After the warrants were issued, the City’s lawyer remarked that she was “like a plant” in that courtroom. Judge Cousineau replied that she herself was like the pot, or the saucer under the pot. The committee would come back to that exchange.<\/p>\n

How the courts and the City responded<\/h2>\n

On March 10, 2023, Justice Catherine Mandeville of the Superior Court heard the habeas corpus<\/em> application of the man who had by then been jailed for three days. Habeas corpus<\/em> is the remedy, guaranteed by both the Canadian and Quebec charters, that lets any detained person have a judge quickly review the legality of their detention. Ruling from the bench, she quashed all twelve warrants and ordered his release, in scathing terms: none of the safeguards required by law had been applied, and the judge had simply chosen not to act as a judge in any way.<\/p>\n

To its credit, the City of Gatineau did not bury its head in the sand. It had every file reviewed, obtained a stay of execution of all the warrants as early as April 2023, and then, on October 10, 2023, had the Superior Court quash them outright. Since then, a class action has been authorized against the City on behalf of people with no fixed address, or living in shelters, who were targeted by those warrants. The complaint to the Conseil de la magistrature was filed against that backdrop.<\/p>\n

The judges’ defence<\/h2>\n

Neither judge admitted any ethical breach. They relied on the “system” inherited from their predecessors and from the clerk: each, upon appointment, received “instructions” from a colleague on how to run these hearings. Judge Cousineau says she checked with 73 other municipal courts that operated the same way. They argued it was reasonable to assume the collector had done his job, that an automatic grid is not an unreasonable way to set sentence length, and that the warrant form, with its two pre-printed “whereas” clauses, amounted to sufficient written reasons. They added that the complaint was conveniently timed for the City, which would benefit from shifting responsibility for the class action onto them. Finally, they argued that an error of law is not an ethical fault.<\/p>\n

Why the committee rejected that defence<\/h2>\n

An essential distinction comes first. A judge who gets the law wrong is not, for that reason alone, guilty of an ethical breach: correcting errors is the job of appeals and judicial review. Judicial ethics looks at the judge’s conduct<\/em>, at how he or she approaches the job. Under the current state of the law, as the committee summarized it, a judge breaches the duty to “render justice within the framework of the law” in only three situations: a deliberate refusal to apply the law out of bad faith or caprice, a refusal to apply it in the name of a “noble cause”, or an error of law caused by ignorance, provided that ignorance is gross<\/em>.<\/p>\n

It is this third category the committee relied on, and it did not mince words. Sections 346 and 347 of the Code of Penal Procedure, it wrote, leave no room for ambiguity. The judges did not commit an error in interpreting the law; rather, they ignored it altogether through gross negligence, content to act servilely as rubber stamps, in disregard of every applicable rule of law. By their own admission, they did no research before sitting on these matters, not even in the annotated Code of Penal Procedure, the basic reference work in the field.<\/p>\n

The committee also did the homework that could have been done in 2020: a review of the case law. Since 1993, the Lachine municipal court, then the Court of Appeal in 2015, the Superior Court in 2016 and the Quebec City and Laval municipal courts have all said the same thing: imprisonment for a fine is a measure of last resort, the judge must carefully examine the collector’s evidence even when the defendant is absent, must personally set the length of the sentence and must give written reasons. The warrant signed afterwards is not the judgment. None of this was new. The committee also set aside the testimony about the 73 other municipal courts, for lack of any evidence of how they actually proceeded.<\/p>\n

Beyond ignorance of the law, the committee found an affront to the dignity and honour of the office. Justice dispensed in blocks of hundreds of files, on the sole basis of a faceless list of names on a docket, sends the message that the court attaches no importance to the human beings who will bear the consequences. A judge, it concluded with reference to the quip, must never behave or see himself or herself as a plant, a pot or a saucer. It also found a breach of impartiality and independence: a judge who gives effect, eyes closed, to the prosecution’s requests, and lets software set jail terms, is no longer deciding anything. In all, five provisions of the Code of Ethics for municipal judges were breached.<\/p>\n

On the “instructions” received from colleagues, the committee was categorical: no one, inside or outside the court, has the authority to instruct a judge on how to judge. Every judge is independent, including from his or her colleagues, and the corollary of that independence is that a judge cannot be excused by saying everyone else does the same. The existence of a “system” explains the conduct but does not excuse it. Ignorance of the law is no excuse, the committee reminded, all the more so for the judges charged with applying it.<\/p>\n

Why removal, and what happens next<\/h2>\n

Two outcomes are possible after a Conseil de la magistrature inquiry: a reprimand, already considered a severe sanction for a judge, or a recommendation of removal. The test, set by the Supreme Court in the Therrien case, is whether the conduct so manifestly and totally undermines the impartiality, integrity and independence of the judiciary that it shakes public confidence and renders the judge incapable of performing the duties of the office. The committee answered yes: “serious and irremediable” breaches, repeated at every sitting for two and a half years, affecting more than a thousand people, with ultimate responsibility resting exclusively on the two judges, despite their clean disciplinary record. It described the affair as a judicial fiasco.<\/p>\n

Precision matters here: no one has been removed yet. In Quebec, a judge can only be removed by the government, on a report of the Court of Appeal made after an inquiry, at the request of the Minister of Justice. The committee recommends to the Conseil, which recommends to the Minister, who applies to the Court of Appeal. That step has now been taken: applications signed on August 19 and filed on August 21, 2026 ask the Court of Appeal to inquire into and report on the conduct of the two judges, who will have a further opportunity to be heard. The known precedents for this process, the Therrien and Ruffo cases, can be counted on one hand.<\/p>\n

Why this case stands out<\/h2>\n

First, because it affects people who have no voice. Those targeted by these warrants were often homeless, without an address, without a lawyer, and absent from the hearing precisely because they had received nothing. The system worked all the more smoothly because no one complained. It took one man finding a lawyer for the whole thing to collapse.<\/p>\n

Second, because it raises an uncomfortable question for all of Quebec. The judges claim that dozens of municipal courts did the same thing, and that the practice went back more than fifteen years in Gatineau. The committee did not accept that claim, for lack of evidence, but it did not contradict it on the merits either. If it is true, even in part, how many people were jailed elsewhere under the same conditions? One may also ask, without excusing the judges, whether the City, the clerk’s office and the collector, who built and fed this machinery for two decades, come out of it unscathed; the pending class action may supply part of the answer.<\/p>\n

Third, because the report restates, with rare force, what a judge is. Not a rubber stamp, not a flower pot: the guardian of the rights and freedoms of the person standing before the court, including, and above all, when that person is absent and no one speaks for them. The committee notes that the requirement of impartiality is more<\/em> important, not less, when only one side is in the room. That lesson reaches far beyond municipal fines.<\/p>\n

Key takeaways<\/h2>\n

If you owe fines you cannot afford to pay, do not let the file sit. Contact the collector of fines: payment agreements and compensatory work exist, and a real inability to pay is a reasonable excuse recognized by law. If you receive notice of a hearing on an application to jail you, show up or be represented: the law requires the judge to hear you and to be satisfied, on evidence, that you are refusing to pay without a valid reason.<\/p>\n

If you or someone close to you is being held under an imprisonment warrant for fines and you believe the rules were not followed (no notice received, no offer of compensatory work, no reasoned judgment), an habeas corpus<\/em> application to the Superior Court allows the legality of the detention to be reviewed urgently. A lawyer can bring it quickly. And if you were targeted by one of the warrants quashed in Gatineau, find out about the pending class action.<\/p>\n

\n

This column is published for general information purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Because every situation is unique, you should consult a lawyer for advice tailored to your own case. Feel free to contact Virtulex avocats to discuss your situation.<\/em><\/p>\n

William Desrochers, Attorney, Virtulex avocats \u2014 www.virtulexavocats.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Reference: Tremblay et Gosselin et Cousineau<\/em>, 2026 CanLII 85870 (QC CM), Inquiry Committee of the Conseil de la magistrature du Qu\u00e9bec, files 2024-CMQC-066 and 2024-CMQC-067, inquiry report of August 5, 2026 (Judges Henri Richard, chair, Marco LaBrie and Hermina Popescu, Marie-Claude Laquerre, notary, and Robert Dutrisac) \u2014 full text on CanLII (French)<\/a>; official version on the Conseil de la magistrature website<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Conseil de la magistrature inquiry committee recommends removing two Gatineau municipal judges who signed 1,669 jail warrants for unpaid fines without evidence or reasons. 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