Executive Summary: Key Legal and Evidentiary Issues

• Daniel Lalonde sued the Sûreté du Québec, Martin Parent, and the Attorney General of Quebec for damages arising from the alleged non-renewal of his roadside assistance service contract.
• At issue is whether the plaintiff's broad document disclosure request was proportionate given that the exploratory phase of the proceedings had already been completed.
• Several categories of documents sought had already been communicated or were covered by commitments made during the prior examination of Martin Parent on February 14, 2023.
• Courts do not permit "fishing expeditions" — requests resting on mere hypotheses, rather than precise factual allegations, to justify access to an opposing party's documents.
• Late amendments to the plaintiff's originating application, filed just days before the scheduled January 2026 hearing, significantly increased the total claim from $153,226 to $418,226.
• Proportionality under the Code of Civil Procedure requires that disclosure requests be assessed in light of the procedural stage reached and the steps already taken by the parties.

Facts of the case

Daniel Lalonde, operating under the name Lalonde's Towing & Storage, provided roadside assistance services to the Sûreté du Québec (SQ) under a roadside assistance protocol agreement (memorandum of understanding). Lalonde brought a claim against the SQ, officer Martin Parent, and the Attorney General of Quebec, alleging that the defendants wrongfully refused to renew his service contract and took steps to harm his commercial activities. He sought damages for both contractual breaches and extracontractual faults.

The claim was originally filed on December 10, 2021, before the Court of Quebec for an amount of $30,000 — below the Superior Court's jurisdictional threshold. In October 2023, the plaintiff amended his originating application, increasing his claim to $128,226 for lost profits plus $25,000 for trouble and inconvenience. The file was then transferred to the Superior Court. In August 2024, the parties signed a request for inscription for hearing and judgment, estimating the hearing at just over two days, scheduled for January 29 and 30, 2026.

A few days before the scheduled hearing, the plaintiff filed significant further amendments to his originating application, adding new factual allegations and additional claims totalling $265,000, bringing the total claim to $418,226. The defendants successfully sought an adjournment to analyze the new amendments, over the plaintiff's opposition. On January 29, 2026, the court authorized the amended application, and the parties agreed on a new procedural schedule — which expressly provided for the possibility of a document disclosure request and further examinations on the new allegations — with a joint declaration for the scheduling of hearing to be filed by October 1, 2026. It is in this context that the plaintiff brought the present motion for document disclosure.

Contractual and procedural framework

The central contract at issue is the roadside assistance protocol agreement between Lalonde's Towing & Storage and the SQ. The plaintiff alleged that the SQ's stated reason for non-renewal — missing administrative documents — was a pretext, and that the real motivation involved other factors, including alleged complaints from Shawville Mayor Sandra Murray and, in the amended application, references to the plaintiff's views on COVID-19 and a claimed "breach of trust." The motion for document disclosure was based on Articles 169 and 251 of the Code of Civil Procedure, which permit a party to request that the court order another party to produce documents. The court also applied Article 99 C.p.c., governing the content of procedural pleadings, and the overarching principle of proportionality under Articles 18 and 19 C.p.c.

Court's reasoning and analysis

Justice Coulombe assessed each of the eleven categories of documents requested by the plaintiff against the principles governing pre-trial disclosure, as summarized by Justice Martin F. Sheehan in Excavation de Chicoutimi inc. c. Hydro-Québec, 2021 QCCS 4966. Those principles confirm that while pre-trial disclosure should be interpreted broadly, it is not unlimited: fishing expeditions, repeated requests, and indiscriminate searches are prohibited, and requests must respect proportionality.

For the majority of the requested categories — including internal communications about Lalonde's contract (Category A), documents related to Bristol Auto Performance/Bristol Towing (Category B), internal directives to dispatchers and officers (Category D, paragraph 23), documents concerning the renewal of the protocol agreement from 2016 to 2021 (Category E), personal notes and agendas (Category G), criminal and police records (Category H), complaints referenced in the decision-making process (Category I), document preservation policies (Category J), and audio and radio recordings (Category K) — the court rejected the requests. The primary grounds were that these documents had already been communicated or were covered by prior commitments, that the plaintiff had declared himself ready to proceed without them, and that several requests rested on mere hypotheses rather than precise factual allegations, amounting to prohibited fishing expeditions. The court cited Ungava Mineral Exploration Inc. c. Procureur général du Québec, 2025 QCCA 170, and Procureur général du Québec c. Beaulieu, 2021 QCCA 1305, in support of these conclusions.

Two categories were granted. With respect to communications involving Sandra Murray and other elected officials (Category C), the court found that no prior document communication had specifically addressed this subject, and that the plaintiff's amended allegations were now sufficiently precise to establish the relevance of the documents sought. With respect to the RAO data and chronological reconstruction documents (Category D, paragraph 24), the court found that these documents did not appear to have been previously requested or communicated and bore a sufficient connection to the facts in dispute. Although the court acknowledged they could have been requested earlier, it noted that since the matter had not yet been rescheduled for hearing, their production would not prejudice the proceedings.

Ruling and overall outcome

The court partially granted the plaintiff's motion for document disclosure. The defendants — the SQ, Martin Parent, and the Attorney General of Quebec — were ordered to produce, within thirty days, documents falling under two categories: (1) all documents and communications between Martin Parent and/or the SQ and Sandra Murray, mayor of Shawville, or any elected or municipal representative, between January 1, 2018 and January 31, 2021, concerning Daniel Lalonde or Lalonde's Towing, alleged complaints, alleged preferential treatment, and the use or exclusion of Lalonde's services; and (2) RAO logs, towing call records, rotation parameters, audit logs, and complete extractions of towing events in the territory from January 1, 2019 to the date of production. All remaining document categories were denied. No monetary award was granted in this ruling, which was a procedural decision on disclosure only; costs were reserved to follow.