Our courts would be swamped if we had to condemn the media every time a political career is derailed by reactions to information.
Without doubt, Dominique Ollivier did not deserve the outpouring of hatred that fell on her.
Losing the position of number two in the City of Montreal for perfectly legal and approved expense reports is a sanction that can be considered exaggerated, certainly unfair from his point of view.
Others have done much worse and survived politically, sometimes even triumphed. After all, she committed no crimes in her previous role and was not even once blamed by the Auditor General.
But the “others have done worse” defense does not work in municipal court to challenge a speeding ticket. Even more so in politics, where we rarely have the right to the presumption of administrative innocence. Nor to a full and complete defense of his reputation before the opposition.
Because it was politics that dismissed Mme Oliver. She had become a nuisance a few weeks before the presentation (by her) of a budget advocating rigor in spending and inflation in taxation.
Bad timing…
Seeing the municipal councilor claim 1.6 million from the Quebecor media and the journalists who revealed to the public her expenses at the Office de consultation publique de Montréal (OCPM) is therefore a bit strong.
The Montreal Journal and TVA exposed a series of lucrative expenses of the organization and its leaders. Including Mme Ollivier, who chaired the OCPM from 2014 to 2021, when she was elected to Montreal city hall, where she was immediately named president of the executive committee.
We can quibble with the figures, complain about the treatment, the scale given to the “scandal”, but the facts presented are essentially true.
No one said she committed fraud. But what emerged from the various reports was an impression – a conviction, in fact – of great carelessness in the management of public funds at the OCPM: numerous meals in restaurants, frequent trips abroad, etc.
“I did not steal, I did not defraud,” said Mme Ollivier to defend himself last fall. It’s true.
Also true, it was under his successor Isabelle Beaulieu that there were 77 outings at Chez Alexandre and the purchase of $900 headphones and hockey tickets. People who think and spend “outside the box”.
For a few days, we also witnessed a transfer of responsibilities between the two former bosses of the OCPM. Mme Ollivier blaming the laxity of his successor and Mme Beaulieu saying it was a mess when she arrived on duty. However, both agreed on one thing: there was a lack of budgetary rigor in this hazy organization which costs 3 million per year. Too bad they didn’t show up sooner…
It’s so true that Mme Beaulieu was dismissed for “serious misconduct” by the municipal council. The organization was at the same time placed under supervision. Given what we do with the results of these consultations, we could just as easily abolish it, but we would perhaps have to consult on this subject, and since they are the experts in consultation, they will know how it would end.
One thing is however official: we did not pay too much attention to expense or relevance.
It’s hard to argue that these reports weren’t in the public interest. It is also difficult to see what would be downright “false information”, as the lawsuit asserts, without too many details.
In his pursuit, Mme Ollivier defends not only the legality, but also the legitimacy of all this spending. It was accepted, for example, to reward an employee for his exceptional work: hence the oyster meal.
Out of the City’s $7 billion budget, an oyster dinner at $347 is a not-so-salty drop in an ocean where an animal shelter is being built. If we searched all the expense reports of all the executives, it would be a carnival.
Mayor Valérie Plante defended M for a timeme Ollivier: everything was legal, approved, verified. There is therefore a sort of hypocrisy in dismissing her, and firing her successor, in an administration where we allow ourselves to do so. A technique like any other to purge one’s guilty administrative conscience.
In a sense, Dominique Ollivier has therefore paid for plenty of unrepentant and unpunished spending administrators who will never be worried.
But it’s not the journalists she should blame; they disinfected a small part of this not very well managed City.
It was the mayor’s office that threw her overboard, for fear of going down with her. The same people who chose her to manage the City, and who defended her for two, three days, until it became too costly.
As they say in court: the court will decide.