Go through your contractor with a fine-tooth comb

It’s not easy lately to find a contractor available to carry out construction or renovation work. But before jumping on the first comer, perhaps it would be wiser to carry out a few checks, just to minimize the risk of a glitch or to avoid doing business with unsavory professionals.

Sylvain Sarrazin
The Press

Several resources intended for the general public are available for carrying out basic research. They are certainly not infallible and cannot guarantee that everything will happen for the best in the best of all possible worlds, but at least allow to detect any anomaly or pot in the buttocks of a company.

Among the questions we are entitled to ask ourselves: is the contractor with whom we are about to sign a contract white as snow? Could he have ties to some shady organizations? We asked the investigation office of The Press to find out if there are any means of verifying possible links with organized crime. Our investigative journalist Hugo Joncas, who has already led informal workshops on the subject, provides some recommendations for basic checks.

Information to use

Above all, he recommends consulting the Registraire des entreprises du Québec, which allows the public to easily find out about the owners, shareholders and directors of a company. “With these results, we can do a quick Google search to see if we find anything, such as a mention related to the Charbonneau commission, a police investigation reported by the media, etc. “, says the investigative journalist.

He recommends, in the process, to keep this information in hand and take advantage of it to survey the Canadian Institute of Legal Information (CanLII), whose site provides access to the judgments and decisions of the courts of the country, in order to check whether the company or its representatives have ever had a run-in with the law.

You can also consult the database of the Société québécoise d’information juridique (SOQUIJ), which will probably give similar results; however, after sifting through certain construction companies, we found judgments that were not recorded by CanLII.

Basic reflexes

Even if they will not reveal possible links with organized crime, other small searches constitute good reflexes of verification. For example, consultations with the Régie du bâtiment du Québec website will make it possible to ensure that a company’s license is valid, advises Hugo Joncas.

Marc-André Harnois, general manager of the Association of Consumers for Quality in Construction (ACQC), even encourages us to go further.

For its part, the Consumer Protection Office (OPC) also provides a tool to check whether the company has been the subject of an infringement notice from this organization, has been targeted by a formal notice and whether it holds a permit.

Finally, the director of the ACQC points to a resource that we do not necessarily think of immediately: the directory of the Garantie Construction Résidentielle (GCR). “Normally, it’s for new buildings, but some contractors do both new construction and renovation. Taking a look at the quality of a company’s work in new construction by consulting its file with GCR can give an indication of its way of working in renovations,” underlines Mr. Harnois.

Valuable recommendations

That said, the absence of judicial traces is not automatically synonymous with absolute reliability. For example, previous problems may have arisen, but the aggrieved customers were unable or unwilling to turn to the courts. Also, amicable agreements, which leave no traces, may have been concluded.

Mr. Harnois insists on the recommendations that can be obtained through his network to ensure that everything went according to plan during the work.

Be careful also with opinions and comments left on the web or social network pages: their manipulation by the company itself as well as the undermining of reputation by a competitor cannot be excluded.

Insurance resources

Does your insurance offer support mechanisms for finding reliable contractors? It is worth checking it out. For example, for renovation work, Desjardins suggests using Réno-Assistance (in which it is the majority shareholder), “a platform to connect owners who have renovation projects with trusted professionals and contractors to carry them out. Oh good. Réno-Assistance has a pool of more than 1,000 certified professionals and contractors in the fields of residential and commercial renovation. An experienced renovation advisor accompanies each client throughout their project,” explains Valérie Lamarre, Desjardins Group public relations officer.

In a disaster claim context, the institution offers screened companies, for which the licenses, criminal and financial records, and the conformity of the equipment have been verified. “We also do interviews to validate the partner’s expertise, skills and abilities so that they can meet our requirements. The client who agrees to work with one of the partners that we offer him does not need to worry about doing research, “says Mr.^me Lamarre. If one of the proposed companies is chosen, a performance guarantee is provided.