Henry Aubin: Anti-corruption team under the gun
beset by interference, many of the tough cops who produced the damning construction-industry report are thinking of leaving
By Henry Aubin
September 16, 2011 4:03 PM
Source
Is there any good news at all in that terribly discouraging report on how political parties and Quebec’s Ministry of Transport systemically enable organized crime and construction companies to drive up the cost of public-works projects?
Yes. There’s at least one unit within the provincial government that is manifestly earnest (as distinct from rhetorically earnest) about uprooting corruption. This is the squad that produced this week’s devastating report. The squad, headed by Jacques Duchesneau, was created by the Ministry of Transport to cast light on shady practices in road construction. The report names no names, but in detailing ways in which political financing, ministerial failings and corporate colluding combine to create an orgy of waste, the team has proved itself to be a beacon of hard work and integrity.
That’s the encouraging news. The bad news is that more powerful players in the Charest government’s ostensible war on corruption are undercutting the squad. The vast majority of team members are considering leaving. Reached Friday, one authoritative source on the team told me that Duchesneau himself is so upset that he has told colleagues he could leave.
Here’s the problem.
Until last week, Duchesneau’s 19-member team, created in February 2010, operated independently of a larger entity, the Unité permanent anticorruption (UPAC), the investigative agency that the Charest government created last March as an alternative to acceding to widespread calls to appoint a public inquiry on corruption. It was during this 18-month period of autonomy that the team produced the report.
UPAC, which has an authorized workforce of 189 people, is essentially an expansion of the Sûreté du Québec’s earlier Opération Marteau (Hammer) anti-corruption squad. It absorbed the Duchesneau team on Sept. 6. It also includes certain officials from Revenue Quebec and other agencies.
I’ve been critical of UPAC since its inception for two reasons.
It lacks healthy independence from the government that it is supposed to be looking at critically.
Other watchdog agencies – such as the auditor-general’s office and the bodies overseeing elections and lobbying – report to the National Assembly, where they must answer to all parties. UPAC enjoys no such insulation from partisanship. It reports to the public-security minister – in other words, to a single politician. It’s worth noting that the current minister, Robert Dutil, is no stranger to the world of construction and public-works contracts: He’s the former boss of the bridge-building unit of Canam, the engineering company.
The Charest cabinet (not the National Assembly) picked a former chief inspector in the SQ, Robert Lafrenière, to head UPAC. The SQ has seldom been tough on provincial politicians’ corruption, and Lafrenière is hardly a hard-nosed outsider à la Eliot Ness. His earlier job was as Dutil’s deputy minister. In other words, he has a CV the government can “trust.”
Now, back to Duchesneau’s team.
My source says that only three of the 19 members have decided to stay within the new UPAC fold. The other 16 are on the fence. “I don’t think they (the UPAC hierarchy) want us,” he says. “We’re rocking the boat too much.”
This week’s leak of the team’s explosive report, which had been submitted to Lafrenière, is a symptom of this frustration.
The immediate cause of the crisis has been Lafrenière’s insistence that the members of Duchesneau’s team, all of them ex-cops who’ve been hired on contract, become civil servants and thus take compulsory entrance exams. The members – old pros – reject jumping through such a hoop. The government has since said they could remain on contract, but the members, the source told me, are still concerned that Lafrenière has “an axe to grind against some of us” – Duchesneau, the former Montreal police chief, included.
The 16 members are originally from the RCMP, the Montreal police and the SQ. With this report, they’ve demonstrated their expertise and their independence from politicians.
If Duchesneau and his people leave, it would strip the Charest government of its last tissue of credibility in its so-called anti-corruption offensive.
haubin@montrealgazette.com
beset by interference, many of the tough cops who produced the damning construction-industry report are thinking of leaving
By Henry Aubin
September 16, 2011 4:03 PM
Source
Is there any good news at all in that terribly discouraging report on how political parties and Quebec’s Ministry of Transport systemically enable organized crime and construction companies to drive up the cost of public-works projects?
Yes. There’s at least one unit within the provincial government that is manifestly earnest (as distinct from rhetorically earnest) about uprooting corruption. This is the squad that produced this week’s devastating report. The squad, headed by Jacques Duchesneau, was created by the Ministry of Transport to cast light on shady practices in road construction. The report names no names, but in detailing ways in which political financing, ministerial failings and corporate colluding combine to create an orgy of waste, the team has proved itself to be a beacon of hard work and integrity.
That’s the encouraging news. The bad news is that more powerful players in the Charest government’s ostensible war on corruption are undercutting the squad. The vast majority of team members are considering leaving. Reached Friday, one authoritative source on the team told me that Duchesneau himself is so upset that he has told colleagues he could leave.
Here’s the problem.
Until last week, Duchesneau’s 19-member team, created in February 2010, operated independently of a larger entity, the Unité permanent anticorruption (UPAC), the investigative agency that the Charest government created last March as an alternative to acceding to widespread calls to appoint a public inquiry on corruption. It was during this 18-month period of autonomy that the team produced the report.
UPAC, which has an authorized workforce of 189 people, is essentially an expansion of the Sûreté du Québec’s earlier Opération Marteau (Hammer) anti-corruption squad. It absorbed the Duchesneau team on Sept. 6. It also includes certain officials from Revenue Quebec and other agencies.
I’ve been critical of UPAC since its inception for two reasons.
It lacks healthy independence from the government that it is supposed to be looking at critically.
Other watchdog agencies – such as the auditor-general’s office and the bodies overseeing elections and lobbying – report to the National Assembly, where they must answer to all parties. UPAC enjoys no such insulation from partisanship. It reports to the public-security minister – in other words, to a single politician. It’s worth noting that the current minister, Robert Dutil, is no stranger to the world of construction and public-works contracts: He’s the former boss of the bridge-building unit of Canam, the engineering company.
The Charest cabinet (not the National Assembly) picked a former chief inspector in the SQ, Robert Lafrenière, to head UPAC. The SQ has seldom been tough on provincial politicians’ corruption, and Lafrenière is hardly a hard-nosed outsider à la Eliot Ness. His earlier job was as Dutil’s deputy minister. In other words, he has a CV the government can “trust.”
Now, back to Duchesneau’s team.
My source says that only three of the 19 members have decided to stay within the new UPAC fold. The other 16 are on the fence. “I don’t think they (the UPAC hierarchy) want us,” he says. “We’re rocking the boat too much.”
This week’s leak of the team’s explosive report, which had been submitted to Lafrenière, is a symptom of this frustration.
The immediate cause of the crisis has been Lafrenière’s insistence that the members of Duchesneau’s team, all of them ex-cops who’ve been hired on contract, become civil servants and thus take compulsory entrance exams. The members – old pros – reject jumping through such a hoop. The government has since said they could remain on contract, but the members, the source told me, are still concerned that Lafrenière has “an axe to grind against some of us” – Duchesneau, the former Montreal police chief, included.
The 16 members are originally from the RCMP, the Montreal police and the SQ. With this report, they’ve demonstrated their expertise and their independence from politicians.
If Duchesneau and his people leave, it would strip the Charest government of its last tissue of credibility in its so-called anti-corruption offensive.
haubin@montrealgazette.com