To be appointed a judge, a candidate for the judiciary is not only required to be completely honest and transparent in the application questionnaire, but must also meet a series of criteria analysed by the members of the Federal Judicial Advisory Committee, which recommends a candidate to the Minister of Justice of Canada. These requirements include namely the following : "capacity to exercise sound judgement", "consideration for others", "empathy", "common sense", "sense of ethics", "impartiality".

This assessment must also be carried out by the Minister of Justice of Canada, and the Minister must determine whether the recommended candidate is indeed a suitable role model for serving as a judge.

Furthermore, a candidate appointed as a judge must continue to meet these same requirements after their appointment, throughout the exercise of their function.

Did Louis Marquis meet these requirements at the time of his appointment?

Did Louis Marquis continue to fulfill these requirements after his appointment?

In this second article, we will see that the answer to these questions is "no".

In total contrast to these requirements and beyond the undeclared litigations, Louis Marquis had, before being appointed judge, a “closet” full of other “skeletons” : (1) he had already been reprimanded by a court for lack of common sense and judgment, and (2) contrary to a sound sense of ethics and impartiality required to be appointed as a judge, he has placed himself, on more than one occasion, in situations that generate conflicts of interest.

Once appointed judge, Louis Marquis continued these practices, hearing the case of a lawyer who was his friend and rendering a decision that was favorable to him.

After being involved in litigations in 2022 and 2023, which he generated and refused to settle, and after the discovery of fraudulent schemes in the hiring process of lecturers at the Faculty of Law of the University of Sherbrooke (exposed in Part 1 and Part 2 of this series), Dean Louis Marquis "chose" in 2023 not to renew his term as dean, even though he was entitled to another 4-year term, from 2024 to 2028.

He publicly announced that he was going on sabbatical, “study leave”, outside of Canada.

Behind the scenes, however, Louis Marquis was secretly submitting his application to be appointed as a judge to the Superior Court of Quebec, where some of the cases he was involved in personally were being heard.

He aimed to obtain a position that would protect him, that would ensure his financial security through a salary of nearly $400,000 per year, a guaranteed job security until 75 through judicial irremovability, and a social and reputational status that would be difficult to question.

However, according to current rules, this position cannot be held by someone with a past that could affect their image, the image of the Canadian judiciary, or that of the Government of Canada that appoints them as a judge. Nor can this position be held by someone who is not completely honest and transparent in the judicial appointment process.

Curiously and to the surprise of several jurists, in June 2024, Louis Marquis was appointed as a judge to the Superior Court of Quebec by the Minister of Justice of Canada, the lawyer Arif Virani, of Justin Trudeau’s government (Liberal Party of Canada).

Coming soon.

Articles 3 and 4 of the "Series on the granting of teaching contracts at the Faculty of Law of the University of Sherbrooke" revealed how certain lawyers from the law firm Cain Lamarre were personally involved or implicated in the cases involving their client, the University of Sherbrooke et al. (2022-2025).

These articles also exposed ethical breaches by certain Cain Lamarre lawyers, which would normally pose problems for them with the Quebec Bar.

At the first opportunity in 2025, several partners at Cain Lamarre supported "one of their own" to become the president of the Quebec Bar : the lawyer Marcel-Olivier Nadeau.

Next, once he got his hands on the Quebec Bar, the new "Cain Lamarre" president got to work, and publicly came to the aid of his firm's lucrative client, UdeS, in what appeared to be a reputational whitewashing attempt.

Let's talk a little about the president of the Quebec Bar, in a "bonus" article of this series.

The last part of this text addresses several systemic issues within the judicial system in Quebec, which the president remains silent about, and sets the stage for the judicial abuses encountered in the UdeS cases.

The series of articles on the granting of teaching contracts at the Faculty of Law of the University of Sherbrooke has reached the point of addressing how the judges who intervened in the cases involving the University of Sherbrooke handled these cases.

Therefore, the focus is shifting from the academic world to the judicial world.

As we all know, judges are required to be neutral and objective arbiters, without interests or ties to the parties in dispute, without bias, without prejudice, without conflicts of interest.

When judges fail to perform their role in strict compliance with these obligations, they become agents of injustice and a public danger.

This is what will be addressed in the next three articles, starting with this one.

Article 4 reveals how Canadian courts have handled the application for a declaration of disqualification against the law firm Cain Lamarre.

Among the beneficiaries of the fraudulent hiring schemes, used namely to promote the careers of certain lawyers through favouritism at the expense of others, are lawyers and notaries from the Cain Lamarre law firm.

What is the situation and why is it problematic, particularly (but not exclusively) from an ethical standpoint?

How do people in positions of authority proceed when they don't want their reprehensible actions to be publicly discussed? They create a diversion. They employ a ruse. They divert the attention from the sensitive issue by generating another topic of discussion, while hoping that the public forgets their reprehensible actions. They divert the narrative from the real problem to talk about something less damaging for them.

This is what the two managers of the Faculty of Law at the Université de Sherbrooke, Dean Louis Marquis and Dean Marie-Pierre Robert, did once they were caught resorting to fraudulent schemes in the course of their duties in the process of granting teaching contracts while using public funds.

Between 2022 and 2023, it had been discovered that three managers of the Faculty of Law at the University of Sherbrooke (UdeS), Louis Marquis (Dean from January 2020 to December 2023), Marie-Pierre Robert (Associate-Dean from 2015 to 2019) and Sébastien Lebel-Grenier (Dean from 2011 to 2019), had resorted to fraudulent schemes in the granting of teaching contracts to lecturers.

After these reprehensible acts were reported, instead of being penalized, these three individuals were promoted by the University and by the Government of Canada : Sébastien Lebel-Grenier was appointed Principal and Vice-Chancellor of Bishop's University in 2023, Marie-Pierre Robert became the new Dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Sherbrooke in 2023 (Ms. Robert's husband, Sébastien Pierre-Roy, was appointed judge at the Superior Court of Quebec in Sherbrooke in 2023 by the Government of Canada), and Louis Marquis was appointed judge at the Superior Court of Quebec in Sherbrooke in 2024 by the same Government of Canada. What's the story behind this?