‘Follow the money’
MANY OF THE PRACTICES described at the Charbonneau hearings have long been known to political insiders, and even to the public
DON
MACPHERSON
Deep Throat: Follow the money. Always follow the money.
Bob Woodward: What do you mean? Where?
Deep Throat: Oh, I can’t tell
you that.
— 1976 film version of All the President’s Men, about the Watergate scandal
Long before this spring’s Charbonneau hearings mapping the money trail between contractors and political parties, parts of it were already known.
I’ve written several columns over the years about how the parties, especially the Liberals, were legally selling access to elected officials for the price of a ticket to a fundraising activity.
I wrote the first one in 1987. That was only 10 years after the late RenéLévesque passed the reform that supposedly eliminated the influence of money in Quebec provincial politics for good.
Later, other people exposed more of the money trail.
In coverage of the Charbonneau hearings, you may have read how “straw men” were used to disguise illegal corporate political contributions.
The straw men were individuals who made apparently legal donations in their own names with money that actually came from a company, often their employer, hoping to buy the goodwill of a party or a politician.
The practice came to light in 2005, in testimony by advertising man Jean Brault at the federal Gomery inquiry into the sponsorship scandal.
Brault testified that it was fundraising officials of the Parti Québécois who had suggested the scheme to him, which the PQ denied.
This roused the Quebec chief electoral officer to create the Moisan inquiry.
It reported the following year that the Liberals as well as the PQ had received “disguised contributions” from Brault’s company, and that in the case of the PQ, party officials had known they were illegal.
There’s another expres- sion you may have read: “sectoral financing.” It was popularized by the Québec solidaire party in a 2012 report describing how other parties targeted specific business sectors for contributions.
Often the sectors are ones such as civil engineering in which firms seek government contracts.
Again, the chief electoral officer was stirred to action. The following year, he pub- lished his own report, saying that between 2006 and 2011, employees of companies in targeted sectors donated about $10 million to provincial parties, and about $1.2 million to municipal ones.
The bulk of the money, $7.3 million, went to the governing Liberal party.
The report said sectoral financing began to decline “significantly” in 2009, after the Sûreté du Québec launched its Opération Marteau — Operation Hammer — criminal investigation into the construction sector.
Maybe the Liberals testifying before the Charbonneau commission this spring hadn’t wanted to know how the sausages were being made. That’s called “plausible deniability.”
The denials are less plausible, however, when they’re about activities that for years have been known to political insiders, and in some cases even the public.
The Charbonneau inquiry hasn’t taken us all the way to the end of the money trail, however.
There’s the question raised by the Charbonneau testimony of former Liberal organizer Marc-Yvan Côté.
He blamed the high cost of election campaigns for turning the parties into fundraising “monsters.”
In the last four-year electoral cycle before the decline of sectoral financing, from 2004 through 2007, the Liberals reported a total of $32.6 million in contributions.
Yet, in the 2007 general election, they were allowed to spend only $10 million, and reported campaign expenses of $9.5 million.
So why did they need the other $23.1 million?
The Charbonneau hearings are to resume in late summer. And this column will return Aug. 5. Have a good summer.