“A chum, c’un chum. Beyond this cult formula, what remains of the Charbonneau commission, its star witnesses, its shocking revelations? Ten years after the start of construction, the Crave platform presents a brand new documentary series that revisits the key moments of what will have been one of the best afternoon soaps in town.
Those who were stuck in front of the news channels between May 2012 and November 2014 should not expect to hear any shocking new information in Corruption. The shocking revelations of the Charbonneau commissionwhich will be available from February 18.
Mr. 3% and Mr. GST
Not as sensational, at least, as the testimonies at the time of the now famous “Mr. 3%” and “Mr. TPS”. Certainly, but the five episodes of the series still allow you to immerse yourself in all these thick stories of collusion and illegal political financing. The opportunity to look at things from another perspective, even if it means better understanding certain details that had probably escaped us.
“No one remembers everything unless you read the report, and very few people read it. Everyone thinks they know everything about the Charbonneau commission, but that’s not true. It’s so complex. Even if there are no big revelations strictly speaking, people still have the impression of learning during the five episodes, ”explains director Sébastien Trahan, supported in this project by journalists André Noël. and Alain Roy, who also wrote part of the Charbonneau commission’s final report.
A record to defend
After much discussion, they managed to convince Judge France Charbonneau to share her memories of the commission. We can also hear in the series several key witnesses, including the entrepreneur Lino Zambito or the former trade unionists Jocelyn Dupuis and Ken Pereira.
Others are conspicuous by their absence, starting with former Deputy Prime Minister Nathalie Normandeau. Commissioner Renaud Lachance also declined any request for an interview, he who made headlines in 2015 by dissenting with Judge Charbonneau on political financing in the final report.
The disagreement between the former auditor general and France Charbonneau left a bitter taste in many Quebecers, who had the impression that the commission had given birth to a mouse.
“The day after the report was tabled, several media headlined that no one had been blamed. We who wrote 1000 pages of the report, we couldn’t believe our eyes. Read it, the report. There are a number of people who are seriously getting hurt in this. The media reception was really strange”, laments Alain Roy, recalling that the purpose of a commission of inquiry is not to put people in prison.
For this experienced journalist, the Charbonneau commission was essential, if only to take note of the extent of the collusion and corruption surrounding the construction industry. Concretely, it will have contributed to lowering the price of work in Montreal and to cleaning up the financing of political parties, it is pointed out.
“It was a very large commission of inquiry. To my knowledge, no commission has cast such a wide net. The political parties were on the defense, the unions too. Engineers were struck off. It was a gigantic task to make links between all these people. It could only have been done with police investigations,” adds André Noël, a former investigative journalist at The Press.
It’s best just to laugh
In short, this new series will undoubtedly make it possible to rehabilitate the Charbonneau commission in public opinion, even if this was not the stated objective when Bell mandated Sébastien Trahan a year and a half ago to carry out this project successfully. . He and his two accomplices were able to flush out the forgotten pearls of the commission, among others the testimony of the former number two of the City of Montreal Frank Zampino, to whom we owe the illustrious sentence: “I would not confirm either more than I could rule out. »
Difficult also not to sketch a smirk by reviewing the passage in front of the commission of the entrepreneur Nicolo Milioto, alias “Mr. Sidewalk”, who said he did not know what the mafia was. The first two episodes, which deal with the influence of organized crime and corruption in Montreal, are punctuated with this kind of tasty extracts that make you laugh — yellow — but laugh nonetheless.
The following three episodes, which were not presented exclusively to the media, will deal in turn with the Fonds de solidarité FTQ, Ville de Laval, turnkey elections and the financing of provincial political parties.
In the last episode, there will be, among other things, questions about why former Prime Minister Jean Charest and Marc Bibeau, the former fundraiser of the Liberal Party of Quebec, were not called to testify. However, we should not expect a more elaborate response from Justice Charbonneau, other than what has already been said.
Ten years after one of the most significant commissions of inquiry in history began, some gray areas persist. What’s more, “wherever there is man, there is manhood”, and the work of the Charbonneau commission will undoubtedly have to be redone in a few years, predicts Sébastien Trahan, cynical, but proud that Quebecers had the courage to tackle corruption.