Final arguments are set to begin today in a hearing involving a Quebec man who killed two children and injured six others when he drove a city bus into a Montreal-area daycare in 2023.
Lawyers for Pierre Ny St-Amand say it would be unconstitutional for a Quebec Superior Court judge to declare him a high-risk offender, a designation that would impose stricter rules on him while he is detained at a psychiatric hospital.
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They want the judge to strike down the section of the Criminal Code that allows courts to label certain people deemed not criminally responsible as high-risk.
The judge ruled in April that Ny St-Amand was likely in psychosis when he crashed a bus into a daycare in Laval, Que., killing a four-year-old boy and a five-year-old girl.
The Crown says Ny St-Amand’s actions were so brutal that he must be considered a high-risk offender, but his lawyers say the status reinforces the stereotype of the “criminal lunatic” who can never be rehabilitated.
The president of the province’s mental health review board testified on Wednesday that 17 people have been designated high-risk offenders in Quebec since 2014, and 12 still have that status.
© 2025 The Canadian Press
