The military says it is happy with the review and is doing its own investigation
The Ontario coroner’s office said it will hold an inquest into the death of an officer cadet at the Royal Military College (RMC) in Kingston, Ont., last year.
A lawyer for Absar Chaudhry’s family says that this is an unusual step that they hope will give them answers and keep another family from going through the same pain.
“They want to ask questions, they want clarity, and they want to understand…”I don’t know what the weather, culture, rules, or supervision were where he was living in the days or weeks before he died,” Michel Drapeau said.
“Doing justice to him is almost a duty to them.”
On Nov. 30, Chaudhry’s body was found in his dorm room. He had turned 21.
The coroner had told the family that he had killed himself, but Drapeau said that one of the goals of an inquest is to find out why someone died, so he will wait for the jury to decide what happened.
An investigation gives the family a “seat at the table.
The lawyer said that the Chaudhrys were upset with the board of inquiry, which was an internal, military-led process to look into Absar’s death. They wanted an independent look into what happened, so they asked the coroner to help.
As first reported by the, the Office of the Chief Coroner has confirmed that an inquest will be held.Globe and Mail,But said that a date hasn’t been decided yet.
Drapeau said that this is an unusual case because the military is usually the only group that looks into the deaths of its members. He also said that he knows of only one other time in Ontario when the coroner looked into a military death.
Since the death doesn’t meet the requirements for a mandatory coroner’s inquest, which include deaths at work, in custody, or while being held in hospitals or psychiatric facilities, it’s up to the coroner whether or not to hold an inquest.
On the website for the province, it says that the coroner may decide to hold a discretionary inquest to give the public a “open and full hearing of the circumstances of a death” and to see if a jury could make suggestions to stop more deaths.
The office of the coroner says that, on average, about three discretionary inquests are held each year.
Drapeau said that a board of inquiry and a coroner’s inquest are two very different things.
A lawyer said that the military system can take years, doesn’t let loved ones gather evidence, and requires families to file an access-to-information request to get a copy of the final report.
On the other hand, he said that the inquest will be run by an outside group and will give the family a “seat at the table” where they can give their own testimony and have a representative question witnesses on their behalf.
The military says it will follow the inquest’s rules
In an email sent on behalf of both the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces, spokesperson Andrew McKelvey said they will work with the coroner’s inquest and “welcome any additional review that would help find the causes” of Chaudhry’s death.
McKelvey said that the military’s own board of inquiry is making a list of witnesses and plans to start interviewing them in the next few weeks, but it’s too early to say when it will be done.
In a separate statement, a spokesperson for National Defence Minister Bill Blair said that he “shares the family’s goal of finding out what happened and how tragedies like this can be prevented in the future.”
The email also says that the government is committed to “significantly changing the culture” at Canada’s military colleges.
Several reviews have been done on RMC, including one by former Supreme Court justice Louise Arbour in 2022. In that report, she questioned the “wisdom” of keeping Canada’s military academies as they are now.
In part of her report, it says, “The military colleges look like institutions from a different time, with an old and flawed model of leadership.”
Drapeau said that he thinks the culture of RMC should be looked at as part of the coroner’s investigation so that any problems or weaknesses can be fixed, “if for no other reason than to prevent another cadet’s death.”