On February 3, 2020, Yvon Mercier, a 69-year-old retired RCMP Sergent Major, was arrested charged with two counts of second-degree murder and one count of arson.
The double homicide and arson occurred the previous day at a home Mercier owned. He rented his basement suite to the victims, Pierre Dupuis and Celine Labelle.
According to a CBC report, Mercier was taking the married couple to court for unpaid rent. They were due in court at the end of February.
Sûreté du Québec investigators have not released the cause of death for the couple, but family members say Celine Labelle was shot and killed.
RCMP confirmed Yvon Mercier retired from the RCMP in 2007.
A trial date has not been set.
Champion Trap Shooter
The Ottawa Citizen reports Mercier was an accomplished trap shooter, winning championships at the both provincial and national levels, and served as a coach for the Canadian shooting team.
It was while Mercier was in Saskatchewan that he became a successful competitive trap shooter. He became the first person to record a perfect 200 score in winning the Saskatchewan provincial singles competition in 1986.
“I know I shoot well under pressure,” he told a newspaper interviewer two years later after winning a Saskatchewan Summer Games gold medal in trap shooting.
In 1990, he won the Canadian national singles championship in trap shooting. He later spent more than 10 years as a national team coach and travelled with the Canadian shooting team to Manchester, England for the 2002 Commonwealth Games.
Former Trainer at RCMP Depot in Regina
In 1991, RCMP Sgt. Major Yvon Mercier was a trainer at the famed RCMP recruit training facility in Regina, The Depot. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times published April 23, 1991, Mercier spoke about the experience of visiting police departments.
“We have many, many police departments, from all over the world, that come to visit the academy here. They are astonished at the way we have kept our traditions.”
Later that same year, he lost a grievance case against the Commissioner of the RCMP.
In accepting a transfer to Depot, a condition of the job was that he move into a residence at The Depot. He did not, and was sanctioned for it, resulting in his grievance. From the decision in Mercier v. RCMP (1991), 48 F.T.R. 171 (TD):
The Commissioner and his senior officers have concluded that the Division Sergeant Major at Training Depot should live at the Depot in a house provided for that purpose. They have concluded that such residence should be a real and full-time residence involving the occupation of the house by his family as well and not a residence of convenience where his family would remain off the base in circumstances where, it is assumed by the respondent, the applicant would regularly absent himself from the base when not on active duty there.
The applicant has also failed to satisfy me that what has been done here amounts to the applicant being “disciplined” or “penalized” because he has presented a grievance, something which is prohibited by s. 31(5) of the Act as quoted above. The transfer which was finally ordered on May 27, 1991, had its origins in decisions taken two years ago to the effect that the person appointed Division Sergeant Major was to live in housing provided on the base. This requirement had been regularly communicated to the applicant long before he filed a grievance.
A Chilliwack RCMP’s husband runs a Payday Loan Company. I wonder who does collections? He also has a home building company. One investor may have been murdered when he asked for his money back. Check the Chilliwack newspapers over the past few years for more details.
He was charged with an arson for torching his own house?! WHAT are exactly property rights if they cannot be exercised without permission of a regulator? This is really the definition of a police state at the very least or even modern slavery!
Well, he was torching his own house in an attempt to cover up the double-murder he allegedly committed in the basement of that house. I’m okay with the arson charge in this case. Had he not (allegedly) set his house on fire to cover up those crimes the yes, I would agree with your assessment, Andrey.
We are here not because we want to get a somewhat agreeable majority and come to a consensus. I thought we were discussing what’s right VS what’s wrong. In that case, it should not matter, property rights are unconditional. It’s either RCMP is able to bring random/unrelated/misnomered charges or we actually have no property rights. Suppose you run over somebody driving your own vehicle and kill them, not only it’d make you criminally responsible for their death(s) but you damaged your vehicle and get charges on that one too! This wouldn’t make any sense.
Whether they want to charge him on covering up murder scene and why they didn’t would be a good question. I also suspect that legal systems live in their own realms, that’s why they had to invent completely different language full of new definitions that loosely bound to reality. So that the decisions made are not that easily questionable after all.