Montreal Mayor Gerald Tremblay
Photograph by: Marcos Townsend, The Gazette
By LINDA GYULAI MONTREAL - Maybe it was one scandal too many in a city - and a province - where allegations of corruption and collusion have prompted several police investigations in the last two years.
Or maybe what provoked the Quebec government to sic its new anti-corruption squad on the Montreal administration yesterday is that amid the latest scandal to hit this week it was revealed that city hall has sanctioned espionage on not only the city's auditor general, but on an elected official and possibly the former Montreal police chief as well.
Either way, Quebec's order to investigate the city administration exposed Montreal, and Mayor Gérald Tremblay, as weak and isolated. And yet, at the same time, Quebec's action will only further weaken and isolate the city and its first magistrate.
News broke Monday that city comptroller general Pierre Reid had been intercepting Lachine borough mayor Claude Dauphin's emails since 2009 as part of an internal probe of a city subsidy program for industrial and commercial building owners that benefited just one firm, one in Dauphin's borough.
Tremblay said Reid's findings on the subsidy program have been transferred to the Sûreté du Québec. He also revealed he knew about Reid's probe for "some time" at a special council meeting that was called Tuesday to temporarily remove Dauphin as council speaker.
Yet this was the second time Reid's investigation methods have been called into question. The public learned in February Reid had intercepted the emails of city auditor general Jacques Bergeron during a 10-month probe into allegations of improper contract awarding. Bergeron contends Reid was out to discredit him.
The mayor announced Monday he would remove Reid as comptroller general, though he would remain a city employee. But that hasn't quelled the debate over what some at city hall are calling "spygate."
As opposition Projet Montréal councillor Alexander Norris summed up in council Tuesday, with Reid's internal probes of high-ranking officials, Tremblay has created a "parallel political police force" that answers to his own administration.
A news report this week quoted anonymous sources saying Reid even investigated Yvan Delorme while he was Montreal police chief.
Tremblay denied the report by La Presse, calling it "totally false." He also accused Quebec on Wednesday of using Montreal as a scapegoat for allegations of irregularities in several municipalities, including Terrebonne, Macouche and Laval.
Nevertheless, it's Reid's investigative methods that are the focal point of the mandate given to the anti-corruption unit that Public Security Minister Robert Dutil signed Wednesday, giving the unit's commissioner, Robert Lafrenière, the order to launch an inquiry into allegations of corruption at the city.
The mandate refers in particular to Reid's granting of contracts to private security firms without bids, as well as his methods, notably the interception of the emails of those he's investigated.
Dutil told reporters the government "cannot tolerate" the weakening of the city of Montreal.
So Quebec appears to be reining in a city that by its reckoning is out of control.
However, from Tremblay's perspective, Premier Jean Charest's government is putting the full force of the Sûreté du Québec's several ongoing investigations into corruption in the construction industry as a whole on his city hall to deflect attention from the police force's few tangible results so far.
The first hint that Montreal city hall has been weakened came last week. Tremblay shuffled his executive committee, a major move though it drew scant notice from pundits.
The most significant change was Tremblay's decision to elevate executive committee vice-chairman Michael Applebaum to chairman, and strip fellow vicechairman Alan DeSousa of responsibility for finance.
The move baffled municipal observers, who point out that as a real estate agent with no background in finance or business, Applebaum is an unlikely choice to put in charge of a $4.5-billion municipal budget and run the executive committee that's in charge a city of 23,000 employees.
"At least DeSousa is a chartered accountant," one source inside city hall, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said. "It looks like a desperate move by Tremblay. He's circling the wagons and wants to coast out the next two years (until the end of the mandate)."
The anti-corruption investigation into the Montreal administration isn't trusteeship. City council and the city executive committee will continue to run the administrative affairs of the city. But investigation is a form of custody. And it may well lead up to trusteeship, observers such as Westmount Mayor Peter Trent reckon.
"What really worries me about the Vaudeville that's going on downtown is that the eye is off the ball of doing some important things that need to be done," Trent said. Westmount is one of 15 demerged suburbs that share responsibility with Montreal for island-wide services, such as the police and fire departments and public transit.
One example of important work that's at risk is what to do about Montreal's mounting municipal pension fund costs, Trent said.
"Mr. Tremblay promised me months ago that we would make a pilgrimage to Quebec City to handle this whole pension fund problem because pension fund costs have just skyrocketed" he said. "If we don't contain those (costs), there's no point even working on the budget."
Tremblay agrees the pension fund question is important and even hired an actuary a few months ago to work on the file to help them make their case to the Quebec government, Trent said.
"But now he's tied up completely in all these shenanigans," he said.
It signals the end, one way or the other.
lgyulai@montrealgazette.com