Quebec Human/Youth Rights Commission to investigate dead Chomedey girl’s fate

The Quebec Human and Youth Rights Commission has opened an investigation into whether the rights of a seven-year-old girl who died on Sunday at a Chomedey home were being respected before the police intervened.

According to news accounts this week, the girl’s situation had been the subject of a report to youth protection authorities in Laval.

The commission, which operates independently from the provincial government, said in a news release on Tuesday that it was “shocked to learn of the death of another child in Quebec.”

The commission had previously held an inquiry into the death of a nine-year-old girl in Granby, who died in 2019, after she also was the subject of a youth protection report – although the commission did not directly refer to that earlier case.

On Tuesday afternoon, investigators prepare to enter a home on Le Boutillier St. in Chomedey while pursuing an inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the death of a girl last Sunday. (Photo: Martin C. Barry, Newsfirst Multimedia)

All the same, the commission concluded in that case that there were numerous unresolved issues, and that the girl slipped through the cracks in a dysfunctional child protection system in Quebec.