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Quebec’s chief coroner has ordered a public inquiry into the deaths of several people who were experiencing homelessness in Montreal, the coroner’s office announced on Wednesday.
The aim is to issue recommendations to better protect people who are unhoused and prevent future deaths, it said in a news release.
Coroner Stéphanie Gamache will lead the inquiry, which will focus on the deaths of five people over the last seven months — 30-year-old Jennifer De Nobile, 46-year-old Marie Soleil Nantais, 71-year-old Valmont Brousseau, 55-year-old Alain Paris and 57-year-old Serge Martin.
Their deaths took place between September 2025 and March of this year. The coroner’s office says other deaths in similar circumstances could also be taken into account to inform the final report.
“The investigation will allow for an in-depth analysis of the causes and circumstances surrounding these deaths, highlight contributing factors, and foster broader reflection on the specific issues related to this phenomenon,” the coroner’s office said in the news release.
The announcement comes almost a week after Montreal’s mayor deplored the deaths of two people in the city in the span of 24 hours, between March 24 and 25. The mayor’s office has since confirmed to CBC News that she was speaking about Brousseau and Martin.
Wednesday’s news release from the coroner’s office shows that a third person, Paris, also died during that period.
During a news conference Wednesday, Mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada said she will be waiting for the results of the inquiry, not to just better understand what caused the recent deaths, but to better understand what can be done to improve support.
She said there is a lot of mental illness and addiction among those experiencing homelessness, meaning the cause of death can vary. But one thing is certain, she said: “Life on the street is really hard on people.”
Martinez Ferrada said the first solution is housing, which includes housing that provides support to residents.
Gamache was previously responsible for looking into the 2021 death of Raphaël “Napa” André, an Innu man who died while homeless in Montreal during the COVID-19 pandemic when a curfew was in place.
In her final report, she concluded that his death was preventable and issued 23 recommendations to strengthen the safety net.
A spokesperson for the coroner’s office says whereas that inquiry focused on the specific circumstances around André’s death, this new inquiry will allow Gamache to look at the homelessness situation in Montreal more comprehensively.
‘People age faster on the street’
According to data from the coroner’s office, 123 people who were experiencing homelessness died in Quebec in 2024 compared to 38 in 2022 — but that might not capture the full picture.
The executive director of the Fondation de la Maison du Père, Lizette Flores, says there is no unified system to count the number of deaths at the moment. The inquiry could potentially lead to such a tool.
“But prevention, minimal health care and minimal care and co-ordination is what’s more important,” said Flores.
Since the pandemic, the quality of street drugs has significantly deteriorated and Montreal’s homeless population has gotten older, making health an especially key issue among those taking care of the community and those who are part of it, said Duane Mansveld, the deputy director of clinical services at Maison du Père, a men’s shelter.
“Often people in homelessness are so focused on survival that they’re not focused on their physical health or get their health checked,” he said.
Through her research at Université de Sherbrooke’s institute on dependencies, Léonie Archambault has found that living on the street makes people more at risk of living with two or more chronic illnesses and premature mortality.
“People age faster on the street,” she said.
“They’re exposed to a lot of violence, they’re exposed to a lot of diseases. They are exposed to very harsh living conditions and it’s not surprising to see that these people have higher needs in terms of health care at a younger age.”
She calls the coroner’s inquiry essential to deepening our collective understanding of the situation and preventing avoidable deaths.
Mansveld, for his part, said he hopes the inquiry will lead to setting a minimum standard of care for the homeless population.
He points to the standards laid out for refugee camps as established by the UN Refugee Agency, which guide what services a person should have access to, among other things.
“We need the same thing here with our homeless community in Montreal, a minimal standard of care, just to ensure that people are treated with dignity and receive the care they need,” he said.
