In 1999, Lauzon and Martin Poirier issued a report arguing that the Quebec government and the Roman Catholic Church made substantial profits by falsely certifying thousands of Quebec orphans as mentally ill during the 1940s and 1950s. The authors made a conservative estimate that religious groups received $70 million in subsidies (measured in 1999 dollars) by claiming the children as "mentally deficient", while the government saved $37 million simply by having one of its orphanages redesignated from an educational institution to a psychiatric hospital.Lynn Moore, "Duplessis Orphans: Church, government cashed in, report says," Montreal Gazette, 27 April 1999, A5; "They deserve better" [editorial], Montreal Gazette, 28 April 1999, B2. Lauzon and Poirier found that religious order received a per diem of seventy cents for every child at an orphanage, but that this figure rose to $2.25 for children housed in psychiatric hospitals. A representative of a religious order involved with the orphanages accused the authors of making "false assertions".Lynn Moore, "Nun attacks report on orphans," Montreal Gazette, 29 April 1999, A6.
