Quebec plans to enhance security and equipment at several of the province’s courthouses – investing $31 million to do so.
That will include $23.4 million to train and hire more special constables and $7.6 million to add and modernize security equipment.
This comes after a knife attack on Jan. 9 that seriously injured an interpreter at the courthouse in Longueuil, south of Montreal.
Alexandre Garces, 44, was charged with attempted murder, assault with a weapon, aggravated assault and possession of a weapon in connection with the attack on Hai Thach, 68.
The deployment of new equipment is schedule from June 2024 to September 2025.
Eventually, the Longueuil, Laval, Saint-Jérôme, Quebec City, Joliette, Salaberry-de-Valleyfield, Chicoutimi, Sherbrooke and Gatineau courthouses will be equipped with security arches.
Quebec’s Justice Minister Simon Jolin-Barrette and Public Security Minister François Bonnardel made the announcement on Monday morning at the Longueuil courthouse.
“Although isolated, the recent events that occurred at the Longueuil and Sherbrooke courthouses have shaken us all,” said Jolin-Barrette. “It is important to quickly restore a feeling of security to the population. This is a priority for the Public Safety Minister and myself.”
The courthouses in Laval, Longueuil, and Joliette will start receiving the new equipment this summer. Whereas Quebec City will see it in the fall. Saint-Jérôme, Salaberry-de-Valleyfield, Chicoutimi, and Gatineau will be equipped as of Spring 2025 and Sherbrooke in fall 2025.
In order to make up for the shortage of special constables and operate new checkpoints in certain courthouses, Bonnardel and the École nationale de police du Québec (ENPQ) agreed to modify the training strategy in January 2024 by adding more special constables to operate the new courthouse checkpoints.
“The addition of security arches in several courthouses in Quebec is an important step towards making them even safer places,” said Bonnardel. “This is also in addition to the substantial increase in the 144 additional special constables we have been training since last March.”
Although training doubled in 2023, the pace has accelerated and will allow four groups of special constables to be fully trained by the end of 2026.
“Both the citizens who come there and the people who work there must be able to feel safe in the courthouses. The plan presented today meets this imperative,” said Jolin-Barrette.