Did Coderre go too far in hunt for leaks?
Mayor at centre of growing police-surveillance scandal
Up for re-election in a year, Denis Coderre expected to be talking about his accomplishments right about now.
Instead, Montreal’s mayor finds himself at the centre of a growing police-surveillance scandal that raises questions about his judgment, his relationship with police, and his and the police force’s apparent obsession with plugging leaks to the media.
The latest revelation came Monday: in 2014, Coderre asked police brass to look into how La Presse journalist Patrick Lagacé learned Coderre had, two years earlier, been given a $444 ticket for not having renewed his vehicle registration.
Coderre’s call to then-police chief Marc Parent resulted in police detectives searching Lagacé’s cellphone records.
On Monday, Coderre said he had paid the ticket and that he did not know police had gone so far as to target a reporter’s communications. He described himself as “the victim” in the case, saying he was acting as a frustrated “citizen” when he complained to Parent about a police vendetta against him.
Noting Coderre is not just any citizen, city hall opposition leader Luc Ferrandez called on the mayor to apologize, describing his actions as “an abuse of power.”
It’s inevitable, even desirable, for a mayor to have a working relationship with his city’s police chief, former judge John Gomery, a former president of the Quebec Press Council, said in an interview on Monday.
“It’s quite appropriate that if there’s a suspicion that something has gone amiss, that the mayor should be in a position to call up the police chief and say, ‘You should be looking into this,’” Gomery said. “But if the point of the contact is for the mayor to ask the police to do something that the police shouldn’t be doing, then obviously that’s not good. And an inquiry will find out if there has been an improper use of this contact between an elected official and police forces.”
Gomery was referring to a provincial inquiry that Premier Philippe Couillard called last week into Montreal police surveillance of La Presse reporters, and Sûreté du Québec surveillance of six other reporters in a separate case.
The SQ spying was also sparked by an elected official’s call to a police boss.
In that instance, then-Parti Québécois public security minister Stéphane Bergeron asked then-SQ director-general Mario Laprise to look into leaks to the media about an investigation into Michel Arsenault. The powerful union leader, once recorded on wiretaps boasting about PQ connections, had personally complained to Bergeron.
After Bergeron’s call, the SQ obtained warrants that gave them access to up to five years’ worth of reporters’ cellphone logs. Last week, Bergeron said he had no idea what action the SQ would undertake as a result of his call.
The SQ case has revived questions about the politicization of the force, an issue sure to be highlighted in the public inquiry.
When she took power in 2012, PQ premier Pauline Marois dumped Liberal-appointee Richard Deschesnes, replacing him in the SQ’s top job with Laprise. (Deschesnes was later one of four former high-ranking SQ officers charged with fraud, theft and breach of trust for allegedly misusing money from a secret police fund. The case is still before the courts). When Couillard became premier in 2014, he immediately replaced Laprise with a new director general.
In Montreal, there were two distinct hunts for leaks:
In 2014, Coderre asked Parent, police chief at the time, whether he was being targeted by rank-and-file officers. One leak focused on a police escort that accompanied Coderre to a Corey Hart concert. In another, TVA obtained a copy of a speeding ticket Coderre had received. Later, La Presse got the police report about an incident in which the mayor allegedly snapped, “You, you work for me!” at police officers at a St-Jean-Baptiste event. Officers are bitter over a 2014 provincial law that forces municipal employees to pay higher pension premiums. That law is the reason officers have refused to wear regulation uniform pants since July 2014. In August 2014, police stood by as city hall was ransacked by protesting firefighters and blue-collar workers.
The second case occurred this year under current police chief Philippe Pichet, who has given conflicting accounts about what happened. Internal-affairs detectives investigating an officer’s alleged criminal behaviour discovered he had been in contact with Lagacé and they suspected the officer was leaking information to the news media. That led detectives to track Lagacé’s incoming and outgoing phone numbers for several months. In addition, another warrant specified police might listen to Lagacé’s calls and those of colleague Vincent Larouche if they were talking to the officer under investigation. Lagacé had previously been pressured by detectives to reveal his sources for a story about the Montreal police force’s search for a mole who tried to sell the names of police informants to the Mafia. The provincial public inquiry — led by a judge, a police official and a member of the media — is to publish a report next year.
It is expected to dredge up more details about the very stories that police and politicians did not want leaked in the first place. And, if light is shed on backroom manoeuvres by cops and elected officials, skeletons could be exposed.