“The thing I am most proud of in my life is my time at the OCPM. » At the center of a controversy surrounding her expenses at the time when she directed the Office de consultation publique de Montréal (OCPM), Dominique Ollivier maintains that she has always acted in the “best interest of Montreal” and is sorry that his version of events was ignored.
“Someone would have told me that one day we would put back [mon passage à l’OCPM] in question, I would have said no, it’s not possible,” declared Dominique Ollivier from the outset, in an interview on Sunday with The Press.
She persists and signs: “I did not steal, I did not defraud, I did not embezzle money. I worked within the framework and respected the standards. »
Dominique Ollivier has been strongly criticized in recent weeks for her financial management when she was president of the OCPM. His travel and restaurant expenses, including a $347 oyster dinner for two people in a Parisian restaurant, were revealed by Quebecor media.
PHOTO MARTIN TREMBLAY, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
The former president of the executive committee before the Committee on Finance and Administration on November 17, 2023.
She laments that “no one has ever asked” her version of the facts. “I was judged. Fairly or unfairly, it’s not for me to say. But I find that I was judged without giving me the chance to present my defense,” she says. She specifies that she did a 45-minute interview with Quebecor journalists, but that only “three clips of a few seconds” were kept in the report. “I found it piecemeal,” she said.
In an open letter published Sunday in The Press, she denounces that the “court of public opinion” got carried away without having verified the information and sources. “I just hope people are open to hearing my point of view,” she said.
The context has changed
Looking back, she does not regret the various trips made as part of her mandate. “I think every trip was necessary,” she says. She admits, however, that she would have avoided certain restaurants, including the oyster dinner, which she claims to have refunded last Wednesday. “I definitely wouldn’t have done it again. I deeply regret that it shocked people, even though I did it in good faith,” she said.
At the end of her mandate, the frequency of dining out had decreased with the arrival of the pandemic, she maintains. “We started working more and more remotely. We didn’t need to see each other in person as much anymore. But we forget that from 2014 to 2019, these things did not exist,” she says.
However, she admits that for the future, the rules and guidelines surrounding OCPM expenditure “must be modernized”.
“Excessively racist and nasty”
Dominique Ollivier also denounces the comments made about him by the former mayor of Montreal Denis Coderre. “He said: we are going to Mozambique to go on safaris and not to get information on the public consultation. That, for me, is unacceptable.” She considers the comment “excessively racist and nasty”.
“First of all, he knows nothing about what is happening in Mozambique. That means, in my opinion, he cannot decree things like that. Then secondly, we went to Mozambique to receive the presidency of an association that he himself had requested,” she says. Denis Coderre wanted Montreal to chair the 17th Conference of the International Observatory of Participatory Democracy in 2017. The trip to Mozambique allowed the OCPM to receive, in the name of Denis Coderre, the presidency of this international association that he coveted, explains Mme Oliver.
The ex-mayor, for his part, filed a complaint with the Quebec Municipal Commission to investigate the management of Dominique Ollivier’s expenses during his mandate at the OCPM, TVA Nouvelles reported last week.
“I was speechless”
Dominique Ollivier also deplores having been judged by the current president of the OCPM, Isabelle Beaulieu, without supporting evidence.
I was speechless. During the seven years I was there, I managed an extremely dedicated team that worked days, evenings, and weekends. They were always ready to come and help and help each other. We had put in place an excessively close-knit structure.
Dominique Ollivier
In a municipal appearance on Friday, Isabelle Beaulieu instead said that she had inherited a poorly managed organization, without a clear framework, without a code of ethics, where employees engaged in “time theft”.
Mayor Valérie Plante will ask the municipal council on Monday to put the OCPM under supervision and dismiss Isabelle Beaulieu. The organization’s funding will also be frozen until further notice, due to the current crisis of confidence in its leaders.
With Isabelle Ducas and Philippe Teisceira-Lessard, The Press