By Denis Rancourt, PhD
This article was first published on Dissident Voice (LINK).
The Quebec medical tribunal will decide if psychiatrist-for-hire Louis
Morissette was allowed to provide a hatchet job based on hearsay.
The review committee of the medical tribunal of Quebec will decide
within 90 days whether or not anyone anywhere, such as a political party
or institution or individual in any province or state, can hire a
Quebec expert psychiatrist to render a medical opinion about an opponent
without interviewing or even informing the individual.
The said medical opinion could be made without any medical record or
clinical evaluation or verification of information, and then used
publicly or otherwise for political or institutional purposes.
This happened to me, with devastating consequences.
I only found out by chance, years later, thanks to an investigation
into my 2008 dismissal from the University of Ottawa, which is still in
litigation.
,
,
I filed a complaint to the medical tribunal as soon as I could. I
have publicly posted the entire complaint, the intake investigator’s
conclusions, and my appeal of the said conclusions.
This is what occurred, in the most neutral terms I can muster.
Dr. Louis Morissette, a psychiatrist licenced by the province of
Quebec, agreed to conduct a secret medical evaluation of an individual
who was critical of his employer. The psychiatrist evidently agreed to
the employer’s request that he work without informing the individual.
The psychiatrist never contacted the individual, never tried to contact
him, and never even claimed that he tried to contact him.
The psychiatrist did not use any medical records whatsoever. Instead,
he relied entirely on false intimate personal information provided by
the employer, which he never attempted to verify, and on media reports
selected by the employer.
On this basis alone, the psychiatrist wrongly labelled me a dangerous
person, causing me to be exiled from my community, following his
definitive recommendations to that effect. Years later, when I found
out that the psychiatrist had medically evaluated me, he refused to give
me a copy of his report.
Morissette has a long documented record of evidence-based alleged and
proven violations that the Collège des médecins du Québec has ignored.
These include the following that I added to my complaint, with the evidence:
- judicially proven lying while giving expert testimony in court;
- giving expert opinion in a criminal proceeding without consulting the relevant scientific research literature;
- an appellate court finding of his reprehensible behaviour;
- giving an in-court expert opinion of the harmlessness of mass-murderer Karla Homolka based on 3½ hours of interview;
- being in conflict of interest while recommending release of double-child-murderer Guy Turcotte;
- destroying his appraisal-session interview notes immediately and
prior to termination of criminal legal proceedings and engaging in such
disallowed practice since 1983;
- requesting double payment for the same service by claiming the same accused person both as patient and legal client;
- performing such a large amount of opinion-for-hire contracting for
clients as to affect his professional independence, put him in conflict
of interest, and influence the quality of his practice; and,
- exercising his profession in a jurisdiction in which he is not a certified practitioner.
After eight months, the medical tribunal’s intake analyst, Dr. Michel
Jarry, summarily dismissed my entire complaint, writing that there is
no cause to bother the disciplinary committee since I am not a “patient”
of Morissette. This remarkable result was handed down despite the many
and repeated unambiguous violations by Morissette of the statutory rules
of professional ethics.
I filed an appeal on April 2, 2018, and the review committee has 90
days to make its decision about whether this sort of thing is allowed.
It must not be allowed. Otherwise, we are no better than any
totalitarian regime that mines rumours and false accusations to
legitimize state actions, and psychiatrists are no better than
opportunists-for-hire in such a system.
It is also of note that the vice-president-governance of the
University of Ottawa who coordinated the collection of hearsay about my
intimate personal information, for use by the hired psychiatrist to
render his secret “psychiatric opinion”, was Nathalie Des Rosiers.
Des Rosiers subsequently became Director of the Canadian Civil
Liberties Association (CCLA) for a time and is now an elected member
(MPP) of the Ontario parliament and a minister in the government.
The university did not inform me of its actions, and vigorously
opposed my access to the psychiatric report until the final hour of an
appeal in litigation for access in 2017.
