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The perpetrator, Alexandre Bissonnette, was charged with six counts of first-degree murder. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Premier Philippe Couillard believed the shooting to be a terrorist attack, but Bissonnette was not charged under the terrorism provision of the Criminal Code or described as such by terrorism experts. On February 8, 2019, Bissonnette was sentenced to life in prison, with no possibility of parole for 40 years. On March 8, 2019, it was reported that Bissonnette was appealing this sentence.

After initially pleading not guilty to all charges on March 24, 2018, Bissonnette pleaded guilty to all charges on March 28, 2018. On February 8, 2019 the court sentenced him to life imprisonment with no parole for at least 40 years. On March 8, 2019 it was reported Bissonnette would appeal the sentence.

The shooting had secondary casualties that only manifested after the event. Andréanne Leblanc, 31, was found dead in March 2018, dressed in her paramedic’s uniform. She was on duty that frigid January night when she received the urgent call to head to the mosque in the city’s Sainte-Foy district. She is regarded by the citizens of Québec City and her peers as the seventh victim of the shooting. Her suicide has highlighted the lack of mental health resources for first responders. They are often mentally injured with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or the same symptoms, sometimes years after similar or repeated traumatic interventions. Leblanc’s case is regarded as a catalyst that brought Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale and Minister of Health Ginette Petitpas Taylor to release in April 2019 Supporting Canada’s Public Safety Personnel: An Action Plan on Post Traumatic Stress Injuries. The announcement brought with it $29 million in new funding.

On the anniversary of the attack, January 29, 2018, Prime Minister Trudeau spoke before the House and said that the victims were “gunned down by ignorance and hatred, fuelled by Islamophobia and racism”, and further stated: “These attacks sought to divide this country and its citizens, drive wedges between neighbours, and make enemies of strangers”. Andrew Scheer also stated the “shooting was an act of terror”, and that: “Last year’s attack was a hate crime that took six innocent lives.”

The Quebec City mosque shooting (French: Attentat de la grande mosquée de Québec) was a mass shooting on the evening of January 29, 2017, at the Islamic Cultural Centre of Quebec City, a mosque in the Sainte-Foy neighbourhood of Quebec City, Canada. Six worshippers were killed and nineteen others injured when a man opened fire just before 8:00 pm, shortly after the end of evening prayers. Fifty-three people were reported present at the time of the shooting.

The Islamic Cultural Centre of Quebec City’s Grande Mosquée de Québec in the city’s west-end Sainte-Foy neighbourhood is one of several mosques in Quebec City. The mosque is close to the Université Laval, which has many international students from French-speaking, Muslim-majority African countries. In June 2016, during Ramadan, it was the target of an incident in which a pig’s severed head was left outside the mosque. The incident has been described as a hate crime and an Islamophobic attack. After the incident, the mosque installed CCTV security cameras.

Quebec City has a low crime rate; in 2015, there were only two homicides in the city. It also has an active far-right community, compared to other Canadian cities. A local chapter of Soldiers of Odin said it wanted to conduct safety patrols of neighbourhoods where Muslims live.

He later confessed to police that he was motivated by the 2014 shootings at Parliament Hill, Ottawa, where a Canadian soldier guarding the National War Memorial was killed. Mr. Bissonnette was taking Paxil at the time of the attack.

Police began treating the attack as a terrorist incident at 10:00 pm, and activated the Structure de gestion policière contre le terrorisme (SGPCT) (Structure of police management against terrorism) protocol, a protocol for acts of terrorism in the region. It gave control of the investigation to the provincial Integrated National Security Enforcement Team—a joint anti-terrorism task force comprising the Montreal police, the Sûreté du Québec, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. At 10:40 pm, police declared the situation under control, with the building secured and the occupants evacuated.

Bissonnette was charged with six counts of first-degree murder and six counts of attempted murder on January 30. Although the Canadian prime minister and Quebec premier both condemned Bissonnette’s actions as a terrorist attack, charges of terrorism were not brought; according to Canadian legal experts, in the Canadian Criminal Code, the offence of terrorism requires not only acts of violence, but usually also collaboration with a terrorist group, which would be difficult to prove for a single gunman. The six counts of murder would amount to a maximum possible sentence of 150 years without parole under the 2011 Ending Sentence Discounts for Multiple Murders Act. Evidence against the suspect was provided to the defence team on February 21. The defence team’s request for a publication ban on future proceedings was also granted.

Alexandre Bissonnette (born December 1, 1989), a student at Université Laval and former Royal Canadian Army Cadet, was identified as the suspect. He called police from the area near the Île d’Orléans Bridge, and told them he was involved and wanted to surrender. Université Laval announced that Bissonnette would not be allowed on campus while judicial proceedings were underway.