Say you were a CEO and allegations kept piling up about possible corruption and collusion with organized crime within your corporation. You'd want find out if it was true. And if it were, you'd want to stop it, right?
Not so, it seems, in the case of the Charest government. So far, it has refused to hold a public inquiry into mounting allegations of corruption, collusion, money-laundering and influence-peddling by organized crime in the construction industry around the Montreal area.
The latest salvo came from Radio-Canada's public affairs program Enquête. It alleges the Montreal Mafia controls a system in which the contract- tendering process for major infrastructure projects is rigged so that a limited number of firms get most of the lucrative contracts - the so-called Fabulous 14.
Enquête contends that with this system, projects end up costing tax payers from 20 to 35 per cent more than if the process were not rigged
Yesterday, Action démocratique's interim leader, Sylvie Roy, brandished a 2008 Transport Canada study that looked at 60 years of capital and maintenance costs of roads in Canada. The study contends that last year those costs were 37 per cent higher in Quebec than the Canadian average.
Enquête relied in part on information from François Beaudry, a retired engineer who worked 33 years at the Ministry of Transport. He says he's convinced that this Mafia-run system is widespread in the greater Montreal area.
He says that in 2003, he even received a phone call at the ministry from a contractor who "predicted" the results of a major tendering process for Laval. And the contractor got it right. According to Enquête, this information was handed to the Sûreté du Québec. But did the government know about this?
This story is one more added to the pile of scandal allegations in the greater Montreal area. That's why the ADQ has been demanding a public inquiry into the construction industry since April. So has the Parti Québécois.
Given that the Liberal government plans to spend more than $42 billion of taxpayers' money on infrastructure projects over the next few years, you'd think the premier would call this inquiry to make sure that nothing from the public purse ends up in the pockets of organized crime and that we get the most for our money.
Think again. So far, Public Security Minister Jacques Dupuis has rejected a public inquiry because there are pending police investigations, saying an inquiry would interfere with the police work. But as Sylvie Roy points out, the Gomery Commission sat while the RCMP was looking into the sponsorship scandal.
The simple fact is this: Police can investigate people for years, sometimes without results, but only a public inquiry is capable of hearing witnesses, determining whether a system of corruption exists, how it works and who are the players, including, perhaps, people in the public administration. It's also important to find out if this alleged rigged system has extended to other regions of Quebec.
Paul Martin exposed the sponsorship scandal, but his party ended up paying a hefty price for it. For Quebec taxpayers, this raises a $42-billion question: What is the Charest government afraid of finding out?
Is it afraid to look into what's going on at the Ministry of Transport and in the Tremblay administration, led by a former Liberal minister, in awarding major infrastructure contracts?
Is the government afraid of potential political damage? Or, as one reporter asked Roy yesterday, could there be links of some kind between the Liberal Party and some of the firms that get picked for a lot of contracts?
If the Charest government keeps saying no to an inquiry, expect innuendo-laden questions like these to be asked more and more often.
As a reminder: Unlike Charest, Liberal premier Robert Bourassa set up an inquiry - the Cliche commission - to look into corruption in the same industry. It handed in its report in 1975.
By some strange coincidence, that was only two years after Denys Arcand released Réjeanne Padovani - a brilliant film about over-pricing, corruption and collusion between fictional Montreal and provincial politicians and organized crime in major roads construction projects.