A success story overshadowed by scandals

Hamad suffered serious blows to his credibility amid accumulation of gaffes

Just days before the first wave of Syrian refugees set foot in Quebec two years ago, Sam Hamad stood alongside the province’s business leaders and made an impassioned plea on behalf of the migrants.

“They’ve obtained their visa to liberty, their visa for dreams and ambitions,” said Hamad, Quebec’s labour minister at the time. “Now it’s up to us to work with them.”

The minister was on hand to announce a government subsidy that would help those who fled the Syrian war find jobs in Quebec. For Hamad, himself a Syrian immigrant, this was undoubtably one of the highlights of his 14-year career in provincial politics.

Unfortunately for him, it was likely also one of his last good days in government. Just months later — amid questions about Hamad’s relationship with a Liberal fundraiser facing criminal charges — the minister was ousted from cabinet.

It would appear that Hamad never truly recovered from that blow to his credibility. The Liberal MNA announced his retirement from politics Thursday after being passed over in January for his former cabinet post as president of the province’s treasury board.

Hamad’s foray into public life began in 2003, when he was elected in the Quebec City-area Louis-Hébert riding. The Liberal MNA held the bitterly contested riding through four consecutive campaigns — a period that saw him hold seven cabinet posts and sponsor about 30 pieces of legislation.

Prior to running for office, Hamad was an engineering lecturer at Université Laval and Université du Québec à Montréal, and held administration positions with the province’s order of engineers for eight years. He also served as an executive at the Groupe Roche engineering firm and was vice-president of Centraide Québec for a brief period in the 1990s.

But there were times when the success story of an immigrant turned businessman turned minister was overshadowed by political scandals. The latest came last year after a Radio-Canada report alleged that Hamad leaked strategic government information that helped the business dealings of Marc-Yvan Côté, whose family donated more than $16,000 to the Liberal party between 2008 and 2012.

Côté was a board member at Premier Tech, a company that received an $8-million grant from the department of economic development in 2012, when Hamad was the minister in charge of that file. The two were in frequent communication at the time, according to Radio-Canada.

Quebec’s anti-corruption task force arrested Côté last year on fraud charges, and the National Assembly’s ethics commission opened an investigation into Hamad’s relationship with the fundraiser. The ethics probe did not find enough evidence to sanction the minister, but claimed his dealings with Côté raised “serious questions” about whether he placed himself in a conflict of interest.

The appearance of wrongdoing was enough for Hamad to be lumped in with other Liberal castaways from the scandal-plagued Jean Charest government.

Hamad’s tenure as transport minister also hurt his prospects within the party. He was minister in the summer of 2011, when a collapse in the Ville-Marie tunnel shone a light on Montreal’s crumbling infrastructure.

On the day of the collapse, Hamad said there was nothing to indicate the tunnel wasn’t safe, adding that “there are no compromises with safety in Quebec.” Inspection reports released later that week indicated that the government had been aware for years of a “critical” problem with the beams that came down in 2011.

After the Ville-Marie fiasco blew over, Hamad was quietly replaced as transport minister and given the economic development file.

The accumulation of gaffes eroded Hamad’s standing with the Liberals, who commissioned an internal poll in January asking members if the MNA was a “very ethical politician, somewhat ethical, not very ethical or not at all ethical?” Though the poll asked the same question about former premiers Charest and Pauline Marois, Hamad was the only MNA singled out.

Hamad bid farewell to politics in a tearful news conference Thursday, presenting himself as someone who fought for his constituents in the Louis-Hébert riding.

He may have had his constituents’ trust but, in the end, it was clear he didn’t have his party’s.