On March 21, 1974, half a century ago, the destruction of part of the LG-2 power station camp, during a violent inter-union war, caused unprecedented damage to the Hydro site. -Quebec. The ransacking of the site forced the evacuation of the site by plane, in addition to hindering the continuation of the work for almost two months. The damage is estimated at more than 30 million, the equivalent of nearly 200 million in 2024 dollars.
Less than a week after the events, Robert Bourassa’s government launched the work of a commission of inquiry responsible for shedding light on what happened. It was during the work of this commission that Brian Mulroney and Lucien Bouchard, two future prime ministers, became known to a wide audience.
Attached to the prestigious Ogilvie-Renault law firm, Brian Mulroney represents, within the commission, the business world. Lucien Bouchard, for his part, serves as deputy prosecutor. As for him, Guy Chevrette, a future leading figure of the Parti Québécois, represents the working world.
The commission is headed by Robert Cliche. Former law professor turned judge, husband of the writer Madeleine Ferron, brother-in-law of Jacques, with whom he maintained a stormy correspondence, Robert Cliche was identified with the left current of Quebec politics. He had been leader of the NDP in Quebec. “The dream president,” wrote Lucien Bouchard.
The commission under his direction will hear nearly 300 testimonies during 68 days of public hearings. “It must be recognized that Mulroney and Cliche did a good job during this commission. There were some green and some unripe ones in there,” says Michel Rioux, long-time director of information at the CSN.
Terror
This commission reveals in broad daylight the desire of the Construction Trades Council to take all means, including that of terror, to impose its domination on large construction sites.
By turning over the stone of the union practices of the time, the commission quickly sees everything that is teeming underneath. Lucien Bouchard summarizes what is before their eyes: “wrestlers and boxers recycled into union functions; convicts and elements of the underworld going about their union activities with baseball bats and revolvers […], or even with machine guns.” Just like union representatives who reward illegal acts committed in their interests with large sums of money. In other words, a kind of mafia was corrupting the world of work.
It must be recognized that Mulroney and Cliche did a good job during this commission. There were some green ones and some unripe ones in there.
In the end, almost the entire Cliche commission report reads “like a catalog of horror”, comments Lucien Bouchard.
The Cliche commission will authorize a wiretapping program. This ultimately revealed that intimidation, including firearms, was used to force workers to join this or that union.
André “Dédé” Desjardins was then the head of local section 791 of the Quebec Provincial Council for Construction Trades, recalls Michel Rioux. His reign was one of terror. “He would fly in with guys to lay down the law. » This stalwart was considered the “king of construction”. Friend of mafiosi accustomed to black works, this son of a plumber that is Dédé drives in a white Cadillac. He will not wait for the conclusions of the Cliche commission’s work to resign, knowing from the outset how much responsibility falls on him in what happened at James Bay.
A springboard for Brian Mulroney
It is impossible to understand the political character that Brian Mulroney is building without focusing on the work of this commission which will serve his ambitions. Friend of Robert Bourassa, Mulroney does not hide his political intentions.
At an annual meeting of shareholders of Power Corporation, he had already stated that he wanted to one day become Prime Minister of Canada. John Sawatsky, his biographer, reports this declaration as a self-fulfilling prophecy declaimed in front of a choice witness: Paul Martin Jr., then a young executive of Power Corporation. Martin will also become Prime Minister of Canada.
The work of the commission is public. The media covers them widely. For the public, it takes on the appearance of a soap opera. At the Cliche commission, Mulroney favored the strong method. Above all, he makes a habit of communicating information clandestinely to the press by favoring one or the other journalist, or by trying to play them against each other. When the journalist from Duty Louis-Gilles Francoeur is on the eve of publishing an important story linked to the commission, Mulroney contacts him to negotiate.
In front of the cameras, Mulroney does not hesitate to put himself in the spotlight. When it comes to having Prime Minister Robert Bourassa testify, Mulroney will oppose it. He believed, his biographer said, in “the immunity of leaders”.
The control
At the beginning of the 1970s, the James Bay construction site constituted a jackpot for certain workers. Almost everyone knows someone who has gone to work “in the North”, as they say, that is to say in James Bay. Many workers are attracted by salaries higher than those usually granted to most trades. In this turmoil, unions compete for worker representation, often using means that have little to do with the simple defense of the rights and interests of workers.
The Quebec Federation of Workers (FTQ) intends to exercise control over the majority of union members on the site. The Confederation of National Unions (CSN), a union with Catholic origins, nevertheless tries to hold its place. The intimidation between the two is carried out bluntly. Violence is commonplace. The president of the CSN, Marcel Pépin, lifts the veil on what is happening when he affirms that the campaign of terror against workers is the work of the International Union of Heavy Machinery Operators (UIOML). “The search for a monopoly at all costs gave rise to extreme exaggerations on the part of these people,” remembers Michel Rioux, at the time attached to the CSN Information Service.
A UIOML agent, Yvon Duhamel, is leading the charge on the James Bay site. He readily believes himself to be invested with a sense of unionism which he redefines as he wishes. Square face, strong chin, long sideburns framing a face without fear and remorse, Duhamel faces anyone who tries to bring him back to more reasonable dispositions while tension rises on the construction site. When he was told that he must moderate his enthusiasm at the risk of being expelled from the site, just like other workers had been, Duhamel took the bit in his teeth. He launches an assault on the installations, at the same time as he promises to make it clear that it is his group that really controls what is happening in the North.
At the controls of a Caterpillar D9 bulldozer, Duhamel destroyed a trailer, then set fire, with accomplices, to the barracks where the construction workers slept. The water pipes in the workers’ village are torn out. The generators which ensure the premises’ energy production are destroyed. Some 135,000 liters of fuel were spilled from deliberately ripped open tanks. Fire leads to fire. In the aftermath of these actions, everything is nothing but ashes, ruins and desolation.
According to Duhamel, the James Bay Energy Company (SEBJ) had to understand who the real masters of the place were. Duhamel refused to testify in this affair, which initially earned him eight days in prison. In August 1974, The duty reports that the business agent of the Quebec Federation of Workers (FTQ), Yvon Duhamel, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for the misdeeds he committed and encouraged to commit on March 21, 1974. Following of the commission’s work, someone whose life is marred by a criminal record can no longer hold a management position in a union. The president of the FTQ, Louis Laberge, is for his part criticized for having looked the other way while reprehensible acts were committed almost under his nose.