Session followed the money
AMID A FRENZIED PACE, penultimate Charbonneau Commission session saw a parade of political heavyweights
From examining the “largest fraud in Canadian history” to detailing complex — and illegal — political financing schemes, Monique Muise looks at the series of revelations made at the Charbonneau Commission during spring hearings and looks at what can be expected when the commission reconvenes, even just briefly, in the fall.
May 22 was an important day at the Charbonneau Commission.
While it bore a striking resemblance to most other days at the anti-corruption inquiry, it was notable for two reasons. First, May 22 marked exactly two years since Justice France Charbonneau delivered her opening address to the masses and kicked off a seemingly endless stream of testimony about seemingly limitless greed. And second, the anniversary was nearly forgotten.
The fact that no one (with the exception of one reporter) bothered to signal the two-year mark says less about the forgetfulness of the inquiry’s staff and more about the frenzied pace set during the Charbonneau Commission’s penultimate session.
In short, everyone forgot because everyone was too busy to remember.
This spring was, in many ways, a dash to the (quasi) finish line. Gone were the days of languid 50-minute recesses and weeklong grillings. The proceedings lasted later into the evenings, the breaks got shorter and the witnesses were cycled in and out so quickly that, by early June, the whole thing began to feel less like a $40-million public inquiry and more like a Tim Hortons drive-thru.
At the same time, the commission became increasingly secretive. The names of the witnesses were not divulged until an hour before they took the stand (the original window was 24 hours) and most questions put to official spokesperson Richard Bourdon were answered with a polite but firm: “No comment.”
When the commissioners decided to halt the hearings during the Quebec election campaign, they said little about how they’d be spending their time while they waited for the race to end. As it turns out, they were interviewing witnesses behind closed doors, although the names of the witnesses were never revealed. They also privately interviewed every provincial party leader and premier to hold office since 1997, but the public only found out about those meetings because the leaders themselves spilled the beans.
Even with the delays and obfuscation, however, the inquiry managed to tease plenty of interesting information out of the more than 70 witnesses heard during this penultimate session — mostly by following the money.
PASSING THE HAT
For many members of the public — as well as Quebec’s political pundits and the politicians themselves — the last four months at the Charbonneau Commission were all about one thing: finding out who gave money to the Quebec Liberal Party and the Parti Québécois, and if they did it legally. The answer to the first question was: “a lot people linked to the construction industry,” and the answer to the second turned out to be a resounding “no.”
Based on the evidence, however, the methods used to funnel illicit donations into provincial party coffers differed vastly from those used at the municipal level. There were no briefcases handed over in parking lots, no envelopes tucked inconspicuously into jacket pockets, no cash stockpiles, and not a single safe bursting with $100 bills.
No, at the provincial level, the straw man was king.
Here’s how it works: First you get someone to write a personal cheque to your preferred party (being careful to respect the legal donation limit) and then you reimburse them in cash. Voila! You’ve just circumvented electoral law.
But while the scheme itself is simple, assigning culpability becomes maddeningly complex when it comes to straw-men donors. Did the party ask the engineering firm for the donation, or did it ask the firm’s employees? When a party representative is standing in the firm’s office with a hand outstretched, is there really a difference? Did the firm take it upon itself to reimburse its employees without the party’s knowledge, or did the political actors encourage them to do it? Did the employees realize they were breaking the law?
These were just some of the questions Justice Charbonneau and her team attacked as they went further and further down the rabbit hole of provincial political fundraising.
“The political parties know that it isn’t the employees that are pulling money out of their pockets,” summarized André Côté, a former vicepresident at engineering firm Roche. “It’s the firm they’re soliciting. Every time.”
Marc-Yvan Côté, a longtime MNA who left politics for the private sector in the mid-1990s, agreed, describing the parties as insatiable fundraising “monsters.”
“The costs of election campaigns won’t diminish,” he warned. “The pressure (to raise money) will always be there.”
But when their turn came, the people in charge of fundraising for the PQ and the Liberals, somewhat predictably, said they had no idea the money they were receiving was coming from straw men. The Liberal organizer, Violette Trépanier, went so far as to note that she was shocked and “very disappointed” to learn that companies were illegally bankrolling her party. YOU SCRATCH MY BACK ...
All of this brought the inquiry to the next big question. What, if anything, were the firms getting in return for their generosity?
Asked why they spent so much time attending fundraisers and recruiting employees to help fund election campaigns, the owners of construction and engineering companies would only say this: they feared what would happen if they didn’t. (One construction boss did dare to go a step further, claiming he lost business and was buried under a mountain of bureaucratic red-tape when his employees stopped handing over cheques.)
When the same question was asked of party organizers and political attachés, the witnesses were adamant that business owners solicited and schmoozed for the sake of “developing business relationships,” but certainly not because they were promised something in return. While nobody would say it outright, witnesses hinted that the parties were well aware that access to people in power is a commodity — one that can be readily bought and sold.
The people in power, mean- while, claimed i mmunity from any influence.
“I always built a wall between my role as a Liberal party member (trying to raise money) and my duties as a minister,” explained former deputy premier Nathalie Normandeau, who was on the stand for only one day.
In short, if the commissioners had been hoping to uncover a simple equation wherein support for a party equalled provincial contracts, it seemed they would come out of the spring session sorely disappointed.
Fortunately, if there’s one thing the Charbonneau Commission and its staff of 90 people does well, it’s dig.
There was, of course, more to the story than “developing business relationships.” As it turned out, the engineering firms whose employees donated the most — Roche, SNC-Lavalin, CIMA+ and Dessau, to name a few — were also the most successful when doing business with the province. Between 1997 and 2012, 87 per cent of all Transport Quebec professional services contracts were awarded to only 12 firms, and more than half of the construction contracts were divvied up between just 15 companies.
The commissioners also heard evidence that suggested Transport Quebec repeatedly ignored the rumoured existence of construction cartels, and approved unnecessary projects that benefited engineering firms, but not necessarily taxpayers. Former PQ transport minister Guy Chevrette, when questioned about a barely-used stretch of highway near St-Don at built in the mid-2000s, said: “It’s true that I got involved (in the project) ... but it’s up to politicians to direct development.”
Normandeau, once minister of municipal affairs, would echo his words a few weeks later when she explained that asking her staff to move certain subsidy approvals ahead more quickly was “my job.”
Neither appeared the least bit apologetic.
And then there were the inappropriate relationships. A former Liberal minister who became a consultant for an engineering firm, for example, but stayed in close contact with Normandeau’s chief of staff. And who could forget the Transport Quebec employee who accepted golf trips, Caribbean cruises and even cash from private firms in exchange for access to privileged information and approval of false “extras” on work sites?
While extreme, those last two cases seemed isolated, suggesting that the vast majority of provincial public servants and MNAs followed the rules — even if they turned a blind eye to those who didn’t.
HOSPITAL DETOUR
At a certain point, the Charbonneau Commission had to tackle what has been described as “the largest fraud in Canadian history.” To ignore the McGill University Health Centre superhospital contract was not an option, but it was unclear when the commission would get around to it.
Somewhat oddly, the inquiry’s legal team chose to shoehorn testimony about the $1.3-billion project between two blocks of testimony about political financing. Over the course of about a week in May, Justice Charbonneau heard from various people attached to the awarding of the contract, and they confirmed what the police had long alleged in sworn affidavits: the deal was dirty.
While the broad strokes — involving an alleged $30-million bribe in exchange for the awarding of the contract to SNC-Lavalin — were already known, the inquiry brought new details to light. The public learned, for example, exactly how the money got from SNC’s bank accounts to accounts linked to former MUHC executives Arthur Porter and Yanai Elbaz. We also learned how former MUHC staff allegedly helped SNC-Lavalin win the contract, even handing the engineering giant copies of its competitor’s early mock-ups, allowing it to improve its own hospital design.
NOW WHAT?
For the third year in a row, Quebec’s favourite reality TV show is off the air for the summer. But the break will be shorter than ever before — possibly fewer than eight weeks — and when the inquiry comes back in late August or early September, it will have plenty of loose ends to tie up. One of the first orders of business will probably involve dealing with a perennial thorn in Justice Charbonneau’s side: construction magnate Tony Accurso. The inquiry has been trying to lasso the embattled entrepreneur for nearly a year, and he still hasn’t exhausted every legal recourse to avoid appearing. If Accurso runs out of legal rope, his testimony could technically be scheduled as early as September.
Other witnesses (former Liberal minister David Whissell, for example, who has been mentioned repeatedly but has yet to appear) will also be brought in to close the final chapter on provincial contracts, or perhaps to give more evidence on past themes.
Only once this is all complete will the commissioners move into the final stage of their public hearings. For several weeks in the fall, they are expected to hear from experts and regular folks who have suggestions for how to fix the corruption problem. Many loopholes have been closed and tighter legislation has been enacted since the rampant graft of the 1990s and 2000s, so the challenge will be to come up with new, and perhaps more effective, ways to prevent future theft.
And then it will be over. No more live broadcasts, no more daily headlines. For a few months in early 2015, Quebecers will probably forget the inquiry exists. The Charbonneau Commission’s final act — the culmination of nearly four years of work in front of television cameras and behind the scenes — is not scheduled to occur until mid-April, when the co-commissioners issue their final report.
It could be hundreds of pages long.
Justice Charbonneau had the look of a woman who knows there is still a long road ahead on Wednesday as she officially closed the spring session and wished everyone “a pleasant summer, far from preoccupations linked to this commission.”