Far-right leader who barged into Quebec VICE office for stunt convicted on appeal

Raphael Levesque, the leader of a far-right nationalist group who snuck into the VICE Media office in Old Montreal in 2018 to confront a writer, has had his acquittal overturned on appeal.

The Quebec Court of Appeal released its decision on Tuesday, convicting Levesque of breaking and entering and of mischief.

Levesque, the leader of the group Atalante, was arrested in May 2018 after he posed as a flower delivery man to gain entry, along with six others, to the offices of VICE in Old Montreal.

Once inside, the group pulled some theatrical stunts, such as presenting a fake trophy for "garbage" reporting, playing the theme song to "The Price is Right" and throwing leaflets around.

Wearing masks, they also confronted journalist Simon Coutu, who had reported several times on white supremacist and extremist groups, including Atalante.

Vice employees testified they felt threatened by Levesque and his group. One said he later suffered a panic attack.

The trial judge wrongly ruled in 2020 that Levesque's entrance to the building wasn't a case of breaking and entering, the appeal judges wrote. She also found that his actions were fundamentally peaceful, which helped her to conclude that the entry to the building wasn't a transgression, either.

The appeal court disagreed with both those judgments, saying the two charges -- breaking-and-entering and mischief -- were intertwined and "particularly complex," needing to be analyzed together.

Levesque did carefully plan to gain entry to the building by fraudulent means, the ruling said, and in order to do mischief.

Trial judge Joelle Roy accepted Levesque's argument that he didn't enter without justification, but that he chose to carry flowers as his way of gaining entrance in order to convey his intentions to peacefully "deliver a message."

She ruled that while Levesque was skating very close to the line in exercising his freedom of expression, she believed his account that he was not aggressive or vulgar and didn’t yell at anyone.

But the appeal judges concluded his actions weren't peaceful and that he didn't have a legitimate excuse for entering the building. Exercising freedom of speech is not an excuse for breaking and entering, they wrote.

Levesque was originally charged with break and entering, mischief, criminal harassment and intimidation.