During a lengthy interview conducted in the fall of 2021, Quebec Deputy Chief Coroner Me Luc Malouin told me that finding the family of a deceased person in a context like Michael’s is a matter for the police first.
If no relatives are found, the missing person’s name will be posted on the Coroner’s Office website for a period of time. If no one comes forward, the name will be added to the list of unclaimed bodies, which can also be found on the Bureau du Coroner’s website.
Photographs are sometimes circulated when the legal authorities do not know the identity of the deceased.
When the police give us their report, they have to give us an affidavit that all of their research has come up negative to determine that the police did their job. The coroner’s office doesn’t have an investigator. He will cooperate with the police and contact the registry office for information. Forensic pathologists have access to the RAMQ registry. If they are lucky they find a family, but sometimes they find nothing. We will do everything we can to find the family, but when someone is no longer related to them, we are very limited, he summarized.
Saying we can’t find family and that we will proceed with the funeral is still a momentous decision. Usually many weeks pass. We’re giving the police time to investigate. It’s not a quick method, emphasizes Luc Malouin.
But it was impossible to raise my uncle’s particular case with the deputy chief coroner.
Everything the coroner used in his investigation was not public and one had to have a formal reason to gain access to those documents, he argued.
These documents relate to a person’s private life in the same way as medical records. Neither Michel’s family doctor nor the archivist of the Center for Integrated Health and Social Services of the University (CIUSSS) of Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean could give me any information about my uncle’s state of health, since he received no follow-up of any kind by a CLSC employee or the circumstances of his death.
The Deputy Chief Coroner reports that 75% of deaths requiring coroner involvement are remotely observed deaths. About 65,000 deaths occur annually in Quebec. Coroners are asked to intervene in about 6,000 cases.
We have dramatic cases. I think it’s appalling that in our society, with all the means of communication, we find out that someone died from the smells in the corridors, laments Luc Malouin.
“There’s a lot of loneliness, lonely people that you find months later. We live in a communication society, unfortunately human communication is lacking. »
– A quote from Luc Malouin, Deputy Chief Coroner of Quebec