Inquiry opens a barrel of snakes
The steady stream of revelations before the Charbonneau inquiry makes it easy to become bleary or blasé. But this week’s testimony deserves extra attention. It contains the most disturbing disclosures yet. Here’s why.
Until now, we’ve learned that systemic collusion and corruption in public works contracts have existed mostly at the level of the Mafia and those construction companies whose business is generally confined to Quebec. These companies’ bosses, while wealthy, are not generally part of the business elite. You wouldn’t expect to see a Tony Accurso or Lino Zambito swanning around fundraising soirées for the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal.
What Michel Lalonde told the Charbonneau Commission on Thursday broadens our understanding of systemic crime among contractors, and alarmingly so. He opened what is not so much a can of worms as a barrel of snakes.
Lalonde, president of Génius Conseil (better known under its former name, Groupe Séguin), served in effect as the co-ordinator of collusion among all — repeat, all — of Quebec’s largest engineeringconsulting firms. They include not just SNC-Lavalin, often called the flagship of Québec Inc., but also CIMA+, Dessau, Génivar, Roche, Tecsult and several others. They often subcontract work to the previously implicated construction companies. Their leaders regularly make the society pages.
Lalonde himself was not one of the big boys. That his company was smallish made him, he explained, the cartel’s ideal emissary in dealing with Montreal city hall — he could be relatively impartial. From 2004 to 2009, he said, he worked with the city’s then public works director (Robert Marcil), the then treasurer of the ruling party, Union Montreal (Bernard Trépanier), and the then executive-committee chair (Frank Zampino) to steer contracts to the appropriate member of the cartel. Bribes would then go the supposedly neutral contract-selection committee, composed of civil servants, so that it would ratify the choice. Depending on its size, each cartel member allegedly contributed either $100,000 or $200,000 in cash to Union Montreal in the 2005 election year, for a total of $1.3 million in illegal donations. The firms would also kick back three per cent of their contracts to the party, Lalonde said (as previous witnesses have said the construction companies also did).
To be sure, this isn’t the first time executives of these high-class companies have been incriminated for local bid-rigging. Last fall, for example, the past president and a past vice-president of SNC-Lavalin were charged with fraud in connection with their company’s supervision of the McGill University Health Centre’s superhospital. In 2011, police also charged two Roche executives for fraud in suburban Boisbriand.
But, on the basis of what little information the police have given so far, these are isolated, stand-alone cases involving individuals (as distinct from their employers), Even a conspiracy theorist would be hard put to say the allegations are evidence of industry-wide corruption. As well, these allegations are not about collusion among engineering-consulting firms.
Lalonde’s testimony is of another order entirely. It suggests corruption and collusion that are systemic and sustained. Each company, he said, delegated a senior executive (he named each) to deal with the system. (Is Lalonde a more credible witness than Martin Dumont? Yes, unlike that prevaricator, he says he played an active role in illegalities.)
Think a minute. Here, according to Lalonde, we have companies representing the upper crust of Quebec’s corporate world that:
Subvert local democracy by illegally swamping a political party’s electoral war chest, with the result that when that party gains power it is beholden to these corporations.
Hoist the cost of public works by up to 30 per cent, meaning that we dull-normal taxpayers have paid hundreds of millions of dollars for inflated contracts every year.
Corrupt not only Montreal’s political structure but also the senior ranks of Montreal’s supposedly neutral civil service. (True, earlier testimony has shown that the Mafia and construction companies had corrupted several civil servants, including Gilles Surprenant and Luc Leclerc, but the elite cartel allegedly bribed their boss, Marcil.)
It’s too early to draw firm conclusions about the unlawfulness of the corporate influence Lalonde describes: All parties must be presumed innocent unless proven guilty. But if the Charbonneau inquiry’s final report finds his account credible, Quebec’s justice system will face a huge test of public confidence. Will it pursue the big shots?
It’s one thing to prosecute Mafiosi and rough-edged construction bosses. It’s quite another — as the timorous White House has shown in regard to certain Wall Street banks — to go after a society’s paragons of corporate respectability.