Sticker shock shakes up trial
Architect shares surprise at quadrupling of estimate for Contrecoeur land cleanup
An architect who worked for the municipal real estate agency that put the Faubourg Contrecoeur land out for bids testified on Thursday at the fraud trial connected to that project about being surprised when the estimated cost to decontaminate the land, which was to get municipal financing, suddenly quadrupled to $12.5 million from $3 million.
Mario Roy was responsible for development for the Société d’habitation et de développement de Montréal (SHDM) at the time that an initial soil contamination study followed by a second study were carried out for the agency as it prepared to sell the four million square feet of vacant city-owned land to private hands to build an 1,800-unit housing development.
From his experience in working on development projects, he said, such a sudden increase “is not very likely.”
It appeared to be the most contentious testimony the court has heard to date in the case.
Construction Frank Catania et Associés Inc. won the call for proposals over the one other firm that qualified to bid in 2006. The Catania firm wound up paying $4.4 million for the land in 2007 to construct the development project valued at $300 million. The municipal assessment of the land before the sale was $31 million.
The firm, along with its former president, Paolo Catania, four other former executives and Frank Zampino, the former No. 2 politician at Montreal city hall, are on trial on fraud and conspiracy charges connected to the project. Bernard Trépanier, the former director of financing for Union Montreal, the party of Zampino and then-mayor Gérald Tremblay, is being tried separately in the case.
“I didn’t say it wasn’t possible,” Roy said, when the defence crossexamined him about his remark that he was surprised. “I said I was surprised that it increased to $12.5 million.”
Defence lawyers for Catania and André Fortin, one of the former company executives accused, called into question Roy’s qualifications to speak on the contamination costs, his experience working on large housing projects and even his memory, challenging him to recall whether an urban-planning firm whose former president has pleaded guilty to fraud in the Contrecoeur case was hired by SHDM before or after Roy re-joined the agency following a stint at another municipal agency.
Roy’s testimony was frequently interrupted by objections from Catania’s lawyer, Pierre L’Écuyer, to the Crown’s questions, and by objections from Crown lawyer Pascal Lescarbeau during L’Écuyer’s cross-examination. The objections prompted Judge Yvan Poulin, who is presiding over the trial, to order Roy to leave the room several times while the judge resolved the dispute between lawyers.
At one point, the lawyers drew an admonition from Poulin, who warned them not to make statements during their questioning.
L’Écuyer asked Roy whether he remembered that the second contamination study showed an old pipeline ran under the Contrecoeur site. However, the pipeline had been noted in the first study as well, and listed as a minor factor — it didn’t leak and wasn’t contaminating the site.
Roy said in response to the grilling from the defence that he doesn’t understand why Contrecoeur is being made out to be a complex project.
“There isn’t more complexity to this project than any other,” he said. “It’s not such a big project, other than (the size of ) the land.”
It would be “much more complicated” to build 10 smaller projects on 10 different sites than to build on one large site, he said.
Having one site to build on “facilitates the project.”
Roy also testified that Martial Fillion, who became executive director of SHDM during the period and a former chief of staff to Tremblay, was very involved in the Contrecoeur project while he was not very involved in other SHDM projects.
Fillion was also arrested in connection with the Contrecoeur project, and died in 2013.
Roy said he accepted a retirement package from the SHDM at the end of 2006 when it was suggested he would not retain his position in charge of development.
The Crown also brought in a witness who worked for the urbanplanning firm, Groupe Gauthier Biancamano Bolduc, later called Plania. She handled a petty cash box from which she was instructed to reimburse employees for their political contributions, including to Union Montreal.
The employees would get partial reimbursement from the petty cash, which photos presented in court show was filled with wads of cash when the police executed a search warrant at the firm in 2010. The rest of the reimbursement, the witness said, would come from filling in mileage that was to be paid on the employee’s time sheet.
The court also began hearing testimony from Marc Deschamps, who was treasurer of Union Montreal while it was in power at city hall and who had a seat on the selection committee that chose Construction Frank Catania et Associés as the winning bidder for the Contrecoeur land. His testimony is to continue on Friday.