Firefighters search for victims at the scene of a fire on March 20 in Montreal. The fire killed seven people.Ryan Remiorz/The Canadian Press
A decade before a fire killed seven people in an Old Montreal building this March, the city asked a judge to withdraw charges related to non-compliant evacuation routes and alarm systems against the building’s owner.
There is no record of some of the issues ever being resolved.
The city’s decision in 2013 to drop the case is significant because, in subsequent years, it stopped investigating infractions involving evacuation routes and alarm systems on the grounds that bylaw officers could not provide sufficient evidence to enforce safety rules, according to the fire chief.
But audio recordings of the March 26, 2013, court proceedings obtained by The Globe and Mail reveal the city did not even try to test its evidence against Emile Benamor, the building’s owner.
“Given the pleas in the other files, the prosecution will ask to withdraw the charges,” said Christine Plourde, a lawyer for the city, in the recording.
“Very well, withdrawal granted in all other files,” Judge Martine Leclerc replied.
Mr. Benamor’s run-ins with city inspectors began soon after he bought the building in 2009, and municipal court records show he was charged with several fire safety infractions in 2010. The Globe reported in May that he was fined $714 for issues related to firewall protections and evacuation plans, but he pleaded not guilty to the charges related to non-compliant evacuation routes and alarm systems.
After those charges were withdrawn, no further charges were filed regarding those matters in municipal court.
In an August, 2012, hearing, City of Montreal lawyer Jason Johnson asked for a delay in the proceedings, saying there would be “talks between the defence and the prosecution in this case.”
Neither Mr. Johnson nor Ms. Plourde replied to requests for comment. The City of Montreal declined to answer questions about why it asked to withdraw the charges, citing the continuing investigations and legal processes of the March 16 fire.
When contacted by phone, Mr. Benamor hung up without answering The Globe’s questions. His lawyer, Alexandre Bergevin, did not respond to written questions.
In May, The Globe revealed that the Montreal fire department had instituted a moratorium on investigations of building evacuation routes in 2018 and that the moratorium had prevented a review of the Old Montreal building’s safety in 2021.
The Globe also reported that the department had instituted a separate moratorium on investigations related to fire alarm system upgrades in June, 2021.
Both moratoriums were quietly lifted in the days after the fatal fire in March.
In response to The Globe’s reporting, Montreal fire chief Richard Liebmann confirmed that the moratoriums were put in place because the department had hit pause on requests for its officials’ expertise on these matters. Such requests, he said, were “for very complex files that were not necessarily sent to court, because we did not have all the necessary elements to win our case and force a return to compliance.”
He said the process of lifting the moratoriums started in 2022 and was expedited after the March catastrophe, as the fire department reviewed its methods for ensuring compliance.
Documents from the Régie du bâtiment du Québec (RBQ), which regulates and enforces building construction and safety in the province, show that the evacuation routes in the building were still non-compliant as of 2018. Unresolved issues included no second exit on the third floor and a dead-end hallway on the second floor, first identified in 2009 by a fire department inspector. Nothing indicates these had been addressed before the deadly blaze on March 16.
In response to The Globe’s reporting, Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante has asked the city’s comptroller-general to probe the fire department’s enforcement of safety regulations in the years leading up to the fire. City of Montreal spokesperson Gonzalo Nuñez said the comptroller-general will examine the department’s actions “in order to clarify the question of moratoriums and to support the [department] in the actions to be put in place.”
Annette Lefebvre, a lawyer for Randy Sears, who lost his son, Nathan, in the fire, filed an application in March to launch a class-action lawsuit against Mr. Benamor, along with Airbnb and Tariq Hasan, an alleged operator of illegal Airbnbs in the building. Ms. Lefebvre is seeking $22-million in punitive damages for Mr. Sears and other victims, along with an undetermined amount in compensatory damages.
She said she is “very much” contemplating a lawsuit against the City of Montreal as well.
“The city definitely turned a blind eye to all of this,” she said, referring to both the illegal Airbnbs and the lack of enforcement of fire safety rules. “It’s a shocking, shocking story.”
Charles Daviault, a lawyer for the family of Charlie Lacroix, who also died in the fire, said he would file a separate lawsuit against the City of Montreal and Mr. Benamor, among others, in the coming weeks.
Quebec’s chief coroner ordered a public inquiry into the deaths in April. Spokesperson Catherine Mathis said the hearing dates and location would be announced later.
The cause of the fire remains under investigation, Montreal police spokesperson Mélanie Bergeron said.
The fire department conducted many inspections of the Old Montreal building throughout the years, often finding several issues at a time. During an inspection in May, 2018, an official found 10 distinct non-compliances related to the fire alarm system, fire extinguishers and doors, among other issues. In an inspection two weeks later, another inspector found four additional non-compliances related to firewalls, extinguishers and a missing door handle.
Those were eventually corrected, according to later inspection reports.
But another inspection report states that, as late as Nov. 20, 2020, the alarm system in the building was still non-compliant. There is no record of this issue being corrected in the documents shared with The Globe.