MORE VILLAINS THAN HEROES
Charbonneau report reveals corrupt industry
THE PROBLEM IN QUEBEC WAS MUCH MORE EXTENSIVE AND INGRAINED THAN HAD BEEN THOUGHT.
• Its 1,741 pages peppered with examples of greed, deceit and violence, the Charbonneau commission report into corruption in Quebec’s construction industry is a cautionary tale of biblical proportions.
For years, construction and engineering firms conspired to cheat municipal and provincial governments. Civil servants were bought off with cash, golf trips, hockey tickets, bottles of wine or a Christmas ham. Honest contractors who dared bid on jobs that their competitors had fixed would see their equipment mysteriously vandalized. Circling around it all were gangsters with the Mafia and Hells Angels, for whom the construction industry was an attractive way to diversify their business and launder illegal gains.
The result, the inquiry found, was a system that undercut productivity, discouraged innovation, produced substandard, even dangerous, infrastructure and cost taxpayers untold millions.
“This inquiry confirmed that there was a real problem in Quebec, and that it was much more extensive and ingrained than had been thought,” France Charbonneau, the Quebec Superior Court judge who headed the inquiry, said as she made public the report Tuesday alongside fellow commissioner Renaud Lachance.
But if there’s any silver lining to the infuriating mess, it’s that the extent of the problem may have remained hidden today if not for a handful of whistleblowers who risked their jobs and possibly their physical safety to bring it to light.
In her remarks, Charbonneau singled out “the courage shown by certain people who were outraged and tried to prevent collusion and corruption.” She named Joseph Farinacci, Ken Pereira, Jean-Paul Beaulieu, François Beaudry, Karen Duhamel and Karine Bouchard, “as well as all the bureaucrats who were able to resist certain undue political pressures.”
Farinacci quit a senior job in the Montreal municipal government rather than follow orders from the mayor’s right-hand-man, Frank Zampino, to favour a buyer of city land.
Pereira went public even before the inquiry was called in 2011 with stories of corruption and organized crime infiltration of his union, the construction wing of the Fédération des Travailleurs du Québec.
Beaulieu was a deputy minister in the Transport Department who in 2003 was shuffled aside after refusing to approve extra charges on a highway project because of suspected collusion. Beaudry was an aide to Beaulieu who tipped him off about the collusion.
Duhamel was a young engineer with the firm Genivar who discovered that her firm was overcharging the government for materials, and when she reported it to her boss she was re-assigned. (Bouchard’s contribution is not specified in the report, parts of which are redacted because of ongoing court cases.)
Charbonneau also singled out businessman Lino Zambito and engineer Michel Lalonde for their “exceptional” contributions to the commission. The two men admitted on the stand to their roles in Montreal’s collusion racket.
The commissioners drafted 60 recommendations for the provincial government, but Charbonneau acknowledged that no law or regulation could completely stop corruption and collusion.
“It is only collectively that we will succeed in making Quebec a better society where ethics, integrity, honesty and rigour come first,” she said. “All of society must take charge of its destiny to eradicate these reprehensible practices, which, what is more, cost all citizens dearly.”
It was not part of Charbonneau’s mandate to assign blame or allege criminal responsibility, but the scoundrels far outnumber the heroes in the report.
Zampino, chairman of Montreal’s executive committee when Gérald Tremblay was mayor, thought nothing of vacationing on the yacht of construction magnate Antonio Accurso. Accurso testified that it was just “Italian tradition” that led him to embrace Mafia boss Vito Rizzuto at a meeting filmed by the RCMP. When he wasn’t threatening competitors to leave Montreal sidewalk jobs to his company, Nicolo Milioto, known as “Mr. Sidewalk,” collected money from construction firms to be paid to the Rizzuto clan.
Tremblay, who resigned in 2012, is depicted as being oblivious to the malfeasance going on around him. He “did not adequately exercise his role of control and observation, preferring to leave it up to the chairman of the executive committee,” the report says.
To the north in the suburb of Laval, the party of thenmayor Gilles Vaillancourt, now facing charges of fraud and gangsterism, received a two per cent kickback from companies that won contracts through collusion.
On the provincial level, the commission found engineering companies were flouting provincial election law in the mid-2000s, giving $100,000 a year to the party in power.
At some points the report reads as if everybody was getting involved.
“The commission observed cases of collusion among construction companies, among engineering firms, among suppliers and between construction firms and suppliers,” it says. Asphalt, civil engineering, street lights, you name it.
The report recommends a number of measures to tighten supervision of the awarding of public contracts, including a new public authority to root out embezzlement.
It also says whistleblowers should be offered greater protection against reprisals, in addition to financial support if required.
Premier Philippe Couillard committed Tuesday to acting on the recommendations, expressing the hope that the dark period chronicled by Charbonneau is over.
“Somewhere, our society fell asleep a bit,” he said.
“Its level of vigilance dropped.”