Emergency personnel search the scene of a fire in a heritage building in Old Montreal on March 27.Ryan Remiorz/The Canadian Press
Montreal’s ombudsman is investigating what prevention and enforcement measures the fire department took in the years preceding the city’s deadliest blaze in decades, last March, when seven people died in a historic district building.
Ombudsman spokesperson Pierre Tessier confirmed Thursday that an investigation was opened May 17, two days after The Globe and Mail reported that the city’s fire department had instituted years-long moratoriums on the enforcement of safety standards.
In an e-mail, Mr. Tessier wrote that Nadine Mailloux decided to open an investigation on her own, which may happen “when she witnesses a worrying situation, whether through information brought to its attention or through reports in the media.”
He said that in this case, Ms. Mailloux “wanted to see if and how administrative processes and collaboration between entities can be improved.” The investigation was continuing, he said, declining to provide further details.
The Globe’s reporting revealed that the fire department’s moratoriums prevented legal proceedings against the owner of an Old Montreal building where several safety issues were noted in multiple reports between 2009 and 2020, years before the fatal incident. There is no record of some of those issues ever being resolved.
The ombudsman’s website says she investigates “when she has reasonable grounds to believe that the municipal rights of a person or a group of people have been adversely affected, or are likely to be, due to an act, a decision, a recommendation or an omission” on the part of the city or its departments. After investigations, she “may recommend any measure she deems appropriate” and, if recommendations are not accepted, she can report the situation to the city’s executive committee or city council.
City of Montreal spokesperson Gonzalo Nunez said the fire department would not comment on the ombudsman’s investigation.
The Globe learned of her investigation, which had not been publicly reported until now, in a trove of fire department documents obtained through an access-to-information request filed in May.
The City of Montreal initially declined the request, saying it would produce too many records. The Globe filed a complaint with Quebec’s Access to Information Commission and modified the request to narrow the search. Thousands of pages of e-mails and other notes were released months later.
Among the documents is a letter e-mailed to the ombudsman’s office by the fire department’s deputy chief for prevention and risk management, Chantal Bibeau, on June 1.
In the letter, Ms. Bibeau answered questions from the May 17 “initial notice of opening of investigation” concerning the Old Montreal building. She included a table listing fire department inspections of the property since 2009 and attached related reports. She also provided an overview of relevant policies.
The fire department “has implemented moratoriums for certain types of inspections,” she wrote, including some related to evacuation routes between 2018 and 2023 and others related to alarm systems between 2021 and 2023.
Ms. Bibeau wrote that after the adoption of a new building code in 2017, “we found that our staff had neither the expertise nor the reference regulations to identify the conformity or non-compliance of the means of evacuation,” which was “all the more true for heritage buildings hundreds of years old.”
Regarding alarm systems, Ms. Bibeau told the ombudsman that in 2021 the municipal court “ruled that the elements we used as evidence in our criminal proceedings’ files were deemed inadmissible in court.”
As The Globe has reported, both moratoriums were quietly lifted in April in response to the Old Montreal fire. After years of not applying safety standards, the fire department implemented an intensive enforcement campaign called Operation Vulcain.
The Globe’s reporting prompted Mayor Valérie Plante to ask the city’s comptroller-general to review the department’s policies. E-mails show this report was completed and sent to fire department officials on July 14, 2023.
The City of Montreal has declined to share the report despite multiple requests from The Globe. An access-to-information request was denied because “its disclosure might well affect the outcome of judicial proceedings.”
A criminal investigation into the Old Montreal fire, which the police said was arson, is continuing, and a public coroner’s inquest will resume once the police probe is completed. Victims’ families and others have also filed lawsuits against the city, citing poor enforcement.