Party lawyer grills ex-official
Martin Dumont faces accusations of his own
A former staffer within mayor Gérald Tremblay’s Union Montreal party faced a gruelling round of cross-examination at the Charbonneau Commission on Wednesday morning, with the lawyer for the municipal party questioning the witness’s memory and even accusing him of stealing food for a political campaign.
Michel Dorval, the lawyer representing Union Montreal at the ongoing public inquiry, had plenty of tough questions for Martin Dumont, and after several hours of questioning, he succeeded in poking some holes in Dumont’s testimony. This week, Dumont — who worked for Union Montreal in various capacities between 2001 and 2007 — alleged that he witnessed large amounts of cash floating around the party’s offices and being handed to highranking party officials by construction bosses.
One of the anecdotes he recounted involved a breakfast fundraiser in May 2004, held in support of Tremblay’s “No” campaign during Montreal’s 2004 demerger referendum. Dumont had testified on Monday that the entry fee for the event was $10,000, and that 14 construction bosses attended, along with the mayor.
On Wednesday, lawyer Dorval produced a series of cheques made out to the “No” committee, dated around the time of that breakfast. Most were for amounts far less than $10,000, (typically about $5,000) and several came from construction companies that Dumont had never mentioned.
There is no proof that the cheques were connected to the breakfast fundraiser; only that the donations were headquarters of Jacques Duchesneau, who ran to become mayor of Montreal in 1998. Dumont replied that he was pardoned unconditionally by a judge after pleading guilty, and that his arrest occurred more than a year after the municipal election.
The commission’s legal team eventually intervened when Dorval pushed even further, bringing up an alleged reprimand Dumont received while working in the mayor’s office. Dumont, he claimed, had been caught looking at pornographic images on his work computer.
Commission lawyer Denis Gallant argued that the questions were not helping the commission to get to “the truth” about corruption at city hall, and Dorval backed off. received around the same date.
There was palpable tension in the hearing room as the questions became increasingly pointed. At times, Dorval seemed at risk of losing his patience with the witness, while Dumont offered curt, one-word answers and avoided Dorval’s gaze entirely.
That tension only escalated when Dorval brought up a shoplifting charged laid against Dumont in the late 1990s, even suggesting that the witness had stolen food to be brought to the campaign
There was palpable tension in the hearing room as the questions became increasingly pointed.