Professional Ethics: Psychiatrist Louis Morissette Should Be Barred From Practice

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.¹,²,³

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.⁴

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 2017.⁵

1. “Academic Freedom? How Nasty Can a University Be?” by Denis Rancourt, Dissident Voice, February 17, 2018.
2. “Denis Rancourt’s letter to president Jacques Frémont, University of Ottawa”, with three attached supporting letters from Hazel Gashoka, Jean-Marie Vianney, and Cynthia McKinney, January 8, 2018.
3. “Did University of Ottawa Persecute a Professor on Its Faculty? A Petition in Support of Denis Rancourt”, March 2018.
4. “Book Of Complaint Against Psychiatrist Louis Morissette With Appeal To CdR CMQ”, by Denis Rancourt, April 2, 2018.
5. “Book: All arguments of parties and intervener in Dr. Denis Rancourt’s constitutional challenge of Section 65(6)3 of the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, at judicial review, in the Divisional Court for Ontario, Court File No.: 17-DC-2279”, Ontario Civil Liberties Association, March 2018.