Rohinie Bisesar Is Free. Should Canada’s Interest End There?

The news that Rohinie Bisesar has received an absolute discharge from the Ontario Review Board has reopened a difficult conversation about justice, mental illness, public safety, and what Canadians expect from their institutions.

I remember this case vividly.

Not because it was one of the biggest stories of the year, but because of where it happened.

At the time, I lived downtown and regularly passed through that area. The Shoppers Drug Mart where Rosemarie Junor was killed sits just inside the Eaton Centre near the Queen Station entrance. Thousands of people pass through there every day. Office workers stop in on the way home. Commuters grab a few items before catching the subway. Students pass through between classes. It is one of the most ordinary places imaginable.

When the story broke, I knew exactly where it happened because I used that store myself.

I didn’t picture a stranger.

I pictured myself standing in that line.

I pictured the thousands of people who pass through that entrance every week on their way home from work.

That’s what made the case different.

An innocent woman wasn’t killed while engaging in dangerous behaviour. She wasn’t in the wrong place at the wrong time. She was in one of the most ordinary places imaginable, doing one of the most ordinary things imaginable.

She was shopping.

And if it could happen to her there, it could have happened to any of us.

Rohinie Bisesar was later found not criminally responsible due to severe mental illness. Under Canadian law, that meant the focus shifted from punishment to treatment and public safety. Over the following decade, she remained under forensic psychiatric supervision while doctors and review boards assessed her condition and risk.

Today, that supervision has ended.

Legally, the decision follows the framework Parliament created. The Review Board’s role is not to determine whether a crime was horrific. It is not to determine whether the public remains angry. Its role is to determine whether the individual continues to pose a significant threat to public safety.

Once the answer becomes no, the law points toward discharge.

The question Canadians should be asking is whether that framework still reflects the balance we want.

This is not an argument against mental illness or treatment. It is not even an argument that Rohinie Bisesar should have remained locked up forever.

The question is much simpler.

Should society’s interest in a homicide ever drop to zero?

If Rohinie Bisesar had been convicted of murder, she would still be serving a life sentence today. Even if released on parole, she would remain under conditions and supervision for the rest of her life.

Instead, after roughly ten years, the state’s involvement ends entirely.

Many Canadians will struggle with that outcome.

Not because they reject the NCR finding or because they lack compassion.

Because they recognize that an innocent woman is still dead, a family still has an empty seat at the table, and the circumstances that produced that tragedy can never be recreated with certainty.

The Review Board report notes that Ms. Bisesar continues to take two antipsychotic medications, including a monthly injectable treatment, and understands that she has a major mental illness requiring treatment in perpetuity.

Some people will read that and feel reassured.

I am not one of them.

After all, the reassurance being offered is not that the illness is gone. The reassurance is that the illness is being successfully managed.

There is a difference.

An innocent woman was stabbed to death in a random attack by someone suffering from a severe psychiatric episode. More than a decade later, the public is being told that the individual remains stable because treatment is working and must continue indefinitely.

For many Canadians, that raises an uncomfortable question.

If lifelong treatment remains necessary, why does lifelong oversight become unnecessary?

The current NCR framework asks one primary question:

Is this person a significant threat to public safety today?

Perhaps there is another question we should be asking.

Has this person demonstrated a capacity for catastrophic violence that society has a continuing interest in monitoring?

That does not require detention. It does not require punishment. It does not require treating every NCR patient the same.

But it may justify a conversation about whether the most serious NCR cases should have a middle ground between active supervision and complete discharge.

Canada already accepts ongoing oversight in many areas of public life. Parolees report to authorities. Certain offenders remain subject to registries. Professional regulators monitor license holders for decades. We routinely acknowledge that some actions carry long-term public interest even after formal penalties end.

Why should homicide be different?

This is not a question of revenge.

It is a question of balance.

The NCR system was designed to protect the rights of people suffering from severe mental illness. That principle is important and worth preserving.

But public safety matters.

Victims matter.

Public confidence matters.

And when Canadians read a headline that tells them a woman who killed a stranger in one of the busiest public places in the country is now free of all supervision, many are left asking a question the system doesn’t seem interested in answering:

When does society’s interest end?

For the family of Rosemarie Junor, it never did.

— Christopher M. Michaud
The Canadianist