Honorary Colonels

Honorary Lieutenant-Colonel Michel Carpentier

52 (Sherbrooke) Field Ambulance

Michel Carpentier was born in Shawinigan on 21 August 1952. He is the eldest of seven children. He attended Collège St Georges elementary school and Val-Mauricie high school in Shawinigan-Sud. He holds an undergraduate certificate in police management from the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières and a diploma in senior police administration from the Canadian Police College in Ottawa. He has worked in the field of public safety for over 34 years. He has held positions in various parts of Quebec and at every level of the police hierarchy, from patrol officer right up to Commander of the Eastern Townships district of the Sûreté du Québec and Chief of the Sherbrooke police department from 1995 to 2005.

Michel Carpentier has taken specialized training in emergency measures and crisis management. Because of this training, he had heavy responsibilities during the tire fire in Saint-Amable, the post-crisis management in Kahnawake and the ice storm in 1998.

Thanks to his extensive police experience, he was able to chair a labour-management expert panel tasked with re-engineering policing throughout the Sûreté du Québec's territory. This work was presented in the Carpentier report, which was submitted in 1996. In addition, he conducted strategic planning and presented a position paper on the police organization in Quebec at a parliamentary committee in Quebec City in 2000.

He designed, developed, planned and managed the creation of the Sherbrooke police department, consolidating the police departments of Ascot-Lennox, Rock Forest and Sherbrooke, and part of the Sûreté du Québec's territory.

He has been a conference speaker and panellist on numerous occasions for the Association des directeurs de police du Québec, regional elected officials and other associations on the issues, benefits and challenges of consolidation in the field of safety and prevention.

He was awarded the Governor General of Canada's Police Exemplary Service Medal in 1997 and an additional bar in 2001. He was also awarded the St. John Ambulance Serving Brother Medal in 2000.

He currently has a public safety and administration consulting business, Services Conseils Michel Carpentier Inc.

In addition to his professional life, he has always been very involved in the community. He has worked in various capacities for the Canadian Red Cross, St. John Ambulance, the Canadian Organ Donors Association, the Canadian Cancer Society, the Maison de la famille Memphrémagog, the Scout and Guide Movement of Canada, the Canadian Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, the Cerebral Palsy Association, the Jean Lapointe Foundation, the Centre hospitalier universitaire de Sherbrooke (CHUS) Foundation and the Rock Guertin Foundation. His efforts earned him the Governor General's Caring Canadian Award in 2004.

Since 1990, he has been directly involved with the Canadian Forces. During the Oka Crisis, he acted as a liaison officer between the Army and the Sûreté du Québec.

As he himself was an army cadet in 1969 in Cadet Corps 694 in Shawinigan and his duties enabled him to get involved at this level, he acted as the sponsoring committee chair of Squadron 67 of Sherbrooke, provincial Vice-President and Secretary-Treasurer of the provincial Air Cadet League and National Director of the Air Cadet League.

Since his appointment in 1995 as Commander of the Eastern Townships district of the Sûreté du Québec and Chief of the Sherbrooke police department, he has been actively involved in a partnership with the Reserve Force in the Eastern Townships. He has also worked with the Canadian Forces Liaison Council. He participated in a number of exercises in Bagotville; Fort Drum, USA; and Valcartier, as well as crisis management training at the Royal Military College in Kingston. He is Commander of the Order of the Cross of the Fusiliers de Sherbrooke.

Michel Carpentier has lived in Sherbrooke since 1988. He is married to Louise Bolduc and is the proud father of Patrick, Julie and Luc.