Dr. Claudiu Popa in an interview with the newspaper La Tribune : The full version
On August 28th, 2026, I was asked by journalist Tommy Brochu from the local Sherbrooke newspaper, La Tribune, to give an interview in response to the aftermath of the litigations between me and the managers of the Faculty of Law of the University of Sherbrooke, particularly to comment on the decision of the Quebec Bar against me, which, after my resignation from the Quebec Bar in October 2025, chose to spend its members' money to secretly decide in July 2026 to remove me from the Roll of the Order, where I no longer wanted to be and where I had not been for several months.
Brief reminder : While I was teaching at the Faculty of Law of the University of Sherbrooke, I discovered that the managers of this Faculty were committing fraud in the hiring of lecturers, primarily through three main schemes, which have been detailed here https://www.claudiu-popa.com/about-the-university-environment/fraudulent-schemes-teaching-contracts-faculty-of-law-university-of-sherbrooke-1-marie-pierre-robert-louis-marquis-sebastien-lebel-grenier and here https://www.claudiu-popa.com/about-the-university-environment/fraudulent-schemes-teaching-contracts-faculty-of-law-university-of-sherbrooke-2-marie-pierre-robert-louis-marquis-sebastien-lebel-grenier. The faculty managers refused to stop these fraudulent practices and correct them, choosing instead to retaliate against me, which forced me to file different recourses to enforce the law. Judges close to these managers, close to their networks of influence, and close to the institution itself intervened in these cases and blocked them by summarily dismissing them, distorting or hiding essential facts, without a thorough analysis of the evidence, and without allowing these managers to be questioned. Once the cases were buried, and after the installation of a Bar president from the law firm that represented these managers of the Faculty of Law, the Quebec Bar acted against the lawyer who had discovered the fraud of the clients of the Bar president's firm.
I received the questions from the newspaper La Tribune on August 31st, 2026.
I responded on September 1st, 2026.
On September 3rd, 2026, La Tribune published its article.
La Tribune published a highly censored version of the interview, omitting essential facts that would have allowed the public to understand the problematic context in which the Quebec Bar acted abusively, the way judges concealed hiring fraud to protect the managers of the Faculty of Law of the University of Sherbrooke who perpetrated this fraud (Marie-Pierre Robert, Louis Marquis, and Sébastien Lebel-Grenier), or the corruption entrenched within the Quebec and Canadian judicial system, and the academic community.
Here, below, is the full version of the interview, so you can judge for yourselves and see how information is manipulated or hidden from the public by the mainstream media :
Tommy Brochu : What is your reaction to this sanction?
Claudiu Popa : The decision of the Quebec Bar made me laugh : the Quebec Bar alleged that it disbarred me due to a "vexatious declaration" rendered by judge Martin F. Sheehan for having undertaken "baseless" recourses related to the "aknowledgment of my qualifications" which had been denied by deans Louis Marquis and Marie-Pierre Robert under the false pretext that I supposedly did not possess 5 years of professional experience, neither in 2022 nor in 2024, and yet, in the same decision, the same Quebec Bar recognised that I was "an experienced lawyer with 8 to 10 years" between 2022 and 2024, thus admitting the basis of my recourses, contradicting Robert and Marquis, and contradicting the basis of the "vexatious declaration" for which the Bar disbarred me.
I also found that the Quebec Bar concealed from the public the true purpose of the lawsuits concerning the managers of the Faculty of Law of the University of Sherbrooke. Contrary to the Bar's claims, the 4 recourses did not all concern the "aknowledgment of my qualifications to teach the criminal law course". Only 1 out of 4 recourses concerned this aspect, and it was not the case that Martin F. Sheehan judged. The Bar concealed the fact that these recourses revealed recurrent hiring fraud of lecturers perpetrated by deans Marie-Pierre Robert and Louis Marquis of the Faculty of Law of the University of Sherbrooke, discrimination, or reprisals against the lecturer who denounced these managers. None of these recourses were judged on their merits; all the trials were blocked and summarily dismissed for fabricated pretexts. Yet, there is plenty of documentary evidence from official UdeS documents, corroborated by several other pieces of evidence, which demonstrate beyond any reasonable doubt that dean Marie-Pierre Robert repeatedly committed dishonest acts in the exercise of her duties using public funds, made false representations regarding the hiring rules for lecturers, knowingly violated hiring rules she claimed to apply, and lied on more than one occasion. Similarly for Louis Marquis, and this, with the knowledge of the rector at the time, Pierre Cossette, who showed complicity. Judge Martin F. Sheehan, whose daughter was a student at UdeS while he was judging UdeS in favour of UdeS, had access to several pieces of evidence to this effect, but he deliberately chose not to mention them in his decision. The dishonest actions of these managers deprived many lecturers of their rights and financial interests. Lecturers were defrauded, and these revelations opened the door to class actions and criminal complaints. Deans Robert and Marquis were fully aware of what they were doing, that their actions were dishonest, and that they risked harming their employees or external candidates. The behaviours of these managers met the essential elements of the fraud offence provided for in Section 380 of the Canadian Criminal Code, and even more so the lesser burden of proof required in civil or labour law.
I have been denouncing these offences for 4 years. Yet, to this day, from 2022 to 2026, no Quebec journalist has written any articles on this subject. No investigative work has been published on these matters of public interest. No Quebec journalist has requested an interview and has not even referred to the explanations publicly available on my professional platform claudiu-popa.com, which demonstrated the extent and severity of the fraud perpetrated by the managers of this law faculty. With all due respect, journalistic efforts should at least somewhat focus on the individuals denounced and their fraudulent schemes.
Tommy Brochu : Why didn't you attend the disciplinary process?
Claudiu Popa : I was not informed that a complaint had been filed against me. I was also not informed of the holding of a hearing or that the Discipline Council of the Quebec Bar had rendered a decision against me. This is not the first time the Bar of Quebec has acted in this manner when settling political scores against opponents of its associates. Robert was a client of the law firm Cain Lamarre of the president of the Quebec Bar, Marcel-Olivier Nadeau. For years, the Quebec Bar promoted Marie-Pierre Robert by granting her funds through its foundation and providing her with professional opportunities that filled her CV, on the basis of which she then obtained positions of power from which it was possible for her to resort to fraudulent schemes in the hiring of lecturers, while Robert in turn enriched, with hundreds of thousands of dollars paid with students' money and with the public's money, the law firm Cain Lamarre of the president of the Bar of Quebec. Several of Marcel-Olivier Nadeau's colleagues from Cain Lamarre benefited from Robert's hiring fraud. No wonder it was under Nadeau from Cain Lamarre, who became president of the Bar in June 2025, that the Bar acted secretly starting from September 2025 against the opponent of Nadeau's client's adversary. Moreover, the assistant syndic of the Bar, Sébastien Dyotte, a graduate of the Faculty of Law of the University of Sherbrooke under the direction of Louis Marquis and having connections with Marie-Pierre Robert through ADDUS and with her right-hand Josée Chartier, with whom Dyotte studied at the same faculty, allegedly filed a complaint at the end of September 2025 citing a judgement rendered in July 2024, only after I began publishing details from the judicial cases concerning dean Marie-Pierre Robert in August 2025. The smell of conflicts of interests and revenge is particularly notable in this case.
Tommy Brochu : How did you react when you were declared a vexatious litigant?
Claudiu Popa : I reacted calmly and serenely since it was a manifestly lying decision by Martin F. Sheehan, who essentially falsified or concealed crucial facts, which helped the managers of the Faculty of Law to hide the recurring fraud at UdeS from the public. I did not meet any of the "indicators" cited by Martin F. Sheehan in his decision. My conduct has been dignified, exemplary, and the opposite of vexatious : my actions have been proportionate and well-founded, written in a polite manner compared to what the managers of the Faculty of Law of the University of Sherbrooke have done, supported by facts and law, solely in response to the abuses of these managers. I have always prioritised the path of amicable settlement, reasoned and conciliatory discussion, but these managers refused to discuss or negotiate to resolve the problem out of court - they even intensified their abuses afterwards. UdeS made three times more requests and/or challenges than I did in my own recourses against its managers. They are the real querulents, and the demonstration is easy to make. I will deconstruct the judgement of Martin F. Sheehan as well as the decision of the Quebec Bar that refers to it, paragraph by paragraph if necessary, in a forthcoming legal analysis that will be available on my professional platform www.claudiu-popa.com/on-the-university-environment.
Tommy Brochu : Why did you resign from the Bar before receiving this sanction?
Claudiu Popa : On October 5, 2025, I resigned from the Quebec Bar to no longer associate myself in any way with this organization which is increasingly perceived as corrupt and is becoming a source of ridicule under the current leadership of Catherine Ouimet and Marcel-Olivier Nadeau. My resignation is not related to the vengeful actions of the Bar against the lawyer who revealed corruption within the academic and judicial fields. Would the public be surprised to learn that these two fields are infested with nepotism, favouritism, and abuse of power? I don't think so.
Moreover, this vengeful behaviour of the Quebec Bar is just a manifestation of what generally happens when corruption within the justice system is revealed : the actors of the system concerned by these revelations activate their networks of influence and attempt to resort to various propaganda techniques to distract attention from their own corruption. They think that the solution to hide their illegalities is to attack the person who reveals them. However, their rudimentary attempts to resort to insults, lies, and rude behaviour towards me, coming from a clique that currently controls the Faculty of Law of the UdeS and the Quebec Bar that promoted the managers of this faculty, are not very effective at concealing their fraud – the public is perfectly capable of seeing through these techniques when the facts and evidence are presented to them objectively. These fabricated insults against me do not make Marie-Pierre Robert or Louis Marquis honest people. They remain the same dishonest, malicious, and dangerous people for the public.
Tommy Brochu : Are you considering appealing the decision?
Claudiu Popa : I did not resign from the Bar to ask to return. I will contest this false and unfounded decision, but not before the Quebec courts – many of the biased judges with conflicts of interests who intervened in these cases have already proven to me that they are more concerned with helping friends escape any form of responsibility, at the cost of discrediting themselves, harming the justice system, and proving untrustworthy, instead of doing what they swore to do in their oath of office but did not do in my cases against the managers of the Faculty of Law of the University of Sherbrooke : delivering justice. I will do it publicly, the only remedy left when judges abdicate de facto their functions.
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My comments regarding the content of the article published by the newspaper La Tribune will be published soon.