Who’s the bad guy here?
Ouellette’s arrest sparks confusion, conspiracy theories
It was Robert Lafrenière, the head of the anti-corruption unit (UPAC) who got the ball rolling when he vowed last May to track down the “bandit” leaking his unit’s information to the media.
What ensued is the stuff of a fine crime novel where, usually around page 200, you are still wondering: “Who’s the bad guy here?”
“This is a man who is as straight as an arrow, so it’s sort of a shock to see him be arrested like that,” La Prairie Liberal MNA Richard Merlini said in an interview Thursday.
“He made the right decision to withdraw from caucus, to not be a distraction, and that is a sign of his integrity.”
Merlini — a quiet behind-thescenes style politician not known for making waves — found himself thrust into the limelight Thursday when it emerged Ouellette, the MNA for Chomedey, had suddenly removed himself from his usual role of chairing the legislature’s powerful institutions committee.
As a senior member of the committee, Merlini had to step in. At the time, Merlini explained, he didn’t think too much of the lastminute switch. It happens.
What he didn’t know was that Ouellette, himself a former Sûreté du Québec crime investigator, had a date with destiny in suburban Quebec City. It was there that police arrested Ouellette, allegedly in connection with the very leaks Lafrenière had denounced before the committee May 4.
On Thursday, as the shock waves rolled through the legislature — and even former political foes paid tribute to Ouellette for his past whistle-blowing efforts at a time when government ethics are front and centre — many were left scratching their heads.
“I have no clue,” Merlini said when asked if anyone really knows what brought Ouellette down. “There will always be conspiracy theories. …
“I just say, let (the police) do their work.”
But people can hardly be blamed for speculating, given the cloakand-dagger nature of events whirling around Ouellette’s arrest. A police investigator who made his name in the 1990s in the war on biker gangs, he was just about the last person anyone expected to see brought down in a sting operation.
As the Journal de Montréal reported Thursday, UPAC investigators used a cellphone obtained in one of its own raids Wednesday, specifically the one at Richard Despatie’s home in Brossard, to entrap Ouellette.
A former UPAC investigator, Despatie was fired in October 2016 because he had encouraged someone to denounce UPAC irregularities in the media. His home was one of two raided Wednesday on the South Shore.
Using his phone, police texted Ouellette at the legislature. When he left parliament in the middle of his work day to meet a man he believed was Despatie, he ran smack into police, who arrested him. In fact, it was documents seized at Despatie’s home that lead UPAC to act.
That explains the wording of UPAC’s statement Thursday: it said the surprise arrest was carried out “to preserve evidence as well as to prevent the offences from continuing or being repeated.”
In the online statement, UPAC didn’t identify Ouellette “because it is important to stress no charges have been laid at this point of the investigation.”
There’s more intrigue. While reporters at the legislature were scrambling to get reaction to the Ouellette bombshell Wednesday, police quietly parked two unmarked cars at the door of Ouellette’s condo in old Quebec.
Despite UPAC initially saying there were no raids in Quebec City, television cameras showed police entering the condo under the cover of darkness around 9:35 p.m.
And in a further sign UPAC is hell bent on getting to the bottom of the leaks, the Journal de Montréal reported Thursday that police had been tailing Ouellette for several weeks.
A full day after the arrest, the commotion in the halls of power continued unabated Thursday.
Even though Liberal insiders have been saying for weeks they wanted to know who was leaking information damaging to the government to the Québecor chain, news that it might have been one of their own rocked Planet Couillard.
“I’m flabbergasted,” International Affairs Minister Christine St-Pierre, a close friend of Ouellette, told reporters arriving for an emergency meeting of the Liberal caucus.
“There’s a great fog around all this question,” added Democratic Institutions Minister Kathleen Weil.
Rushing back from a business trip to Chibougamau, a shaken Premier Philippe Couillard told reporters he was “shocked, saddened and surprised,” by the arrest, which he said he learned about when someone handed him a smartphone after La Presse broke the story.
As for Ouellette, he informed Liberal caucus chairman Filomena Rotiroti on Thursday he would withdraw from the Liberal caucus pending a decision from the Crown prosecutor on whether charges will be filed.
“He is a bit shaken, as we all are,” Rotiroti said.
Some MNAs questioned the way UPAC was proceeding. Both Health Minister Gaétan Barrette and Robert Poëti, the minister responsible for the integrity of public markets, himself a former police officer, told reporters they wished UPAC was clearer in its statements because its refusal to name people casts a shadow over everyone.
Ouellette’s arrest raised other questions — especially in the mind of the opposition parties who openly speculated it was Ouellette’s crusading whistleblowing that got him in trouble. In other words, someone was out to get him.
As chair of the legislature’s influential institutions committee, which oversees issues of justice and public security and UPAC, he was in regular contact with Lafrenière.
The two didn’t particularly like each other, tangling just a week earlier when Ouellette wanted to haul Lafrenière in to testify at hearings into Bill 107, which will make UPAC into a veritable police force.
Ouellette, known as a man who wears his heart on his sleeve, has complained about the plodding pace of UPAC’s investigations.
In one outburst in April, Ouellette said he was “disgusted by the situation, disgusted by all these leaks, disgusted by all these conflicts of interest.”
It’s pretty clear Lafrenière, who ferociously defends his turf and UPAC’s independence from all influence, is not a man who likes to be told what to do.
But as one former associate of Ouellette noted privately Thursday: “Guy has always been a loose cannon, so you play with fire.”
Another theory floating in the halls Thursday is that Ouellette was encountering resistance in his zeal to see the international ISOa-nticorruption norms — which eliminate political meddling in the issue of contracts — put to use in the Quebec government.
Both Couillard and Poëti stressed Thursday that the government fully backs the idea.
A sign Ouellette remains a respected figure, useful to government transparency and integrity, came when opposition politicians played him the ultimate compliment by heaping praise on him for being a man of principle acting for the greater good.
“I share the astonishment of all my colleagues, but Guy Ouellette, this morning, has my respect, he has my support,” Québec solidaire MNA Amir Khadir — a man not know for showering flowers on anyone — told reporters. “I have no reason to doubt his integrity.”
“Guy Ouellette has devoted his life to the search for the truth,” said Parti Québécois house leader Pascal Bérubé. “He took significant risks in his life as a police investigator and did exemplary work as the chairman of the (institutions) commission.”
I share the astonishment of all my colleagues, but Guy Ouellette, this morning, has my respect, he has my support. AMIR KHADIR, Québec solidaire MNA