The candidate for mayor of Montreal Denis Coderre still refuses to reveal his income for the four years since his defeat in 2017. This is causing real discomfort for voters who will vote in a few days.
We know that Mr. Coderre had a contract as a special advisor for Stingray, a music and video services company. The company refuses to say what the exact functions of Mr. Coderre were. But we know that one of the main leaders of Stingray, Eric Boyko, is part of the group of business people who want to bring Major League Baseball back to Montreal and that he is campaigning for the construction of a new stadium. A file which, of course, will seek the attention of the next mayor of Montreal.
We also know that Mr. Coderre was appointed a member of the board of directors of Eurostar, the company that operates the trains that use the Channel Tunnel, by the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, which is one of its members. main shareholders.
It is not known how much Mr. Coderre was paid for his services – in fact, the Caisse said the thing and its opposite, arguing at first that it was paying the former mayor and, upon his resignation, that he had been paid by Eurostar. In fact, legal fiction does not matter, Mr. Coderre occupied one of the seats allotted to the CPDQ on the board of directors of Eurostar.
You can’t stop someone from earning a living and there is nothing illegal and no formal conflict of interest here. But there is what in France is called “revolving door”.
A senior civil servant or a politician who leaves his post is offered a soft landing, a “slipper”, a post which is often better paid than the public service. It allows to have access to the contacts of the person in the administration and to benefit from his experience.
For former politicians, the revolving door is also accompanied – not formally, obviously – by “future considerations”, as they say in the world of sport.
Mr. Coderre takes refuge behind the code of ethics of elected officials of Montreal which provides that “the members of the council must, within 60 days of the proclamation of their election, and annually thereafter, file a written declaration before the council. mentioning the existence of pecuniary interests held in buildings, legal entities, companies and businesses likely to have contracts with the City ”.
On that account, Mr. Coderre will have nothing to reveal at all. The Stingray and Eurostar companies are not very likely to have contracts with the City of Montreal and Mr. Coderre does not, strictly speaking, have “interests” in them.
But Mr. Coderre’s response remains very troubling. He says if he does, he will simply walk away from the discussions, as he did for a friend of the car dealership during his tenure.
Except that it is very difficult to think that the mayor of Montreal would simply withdraw from the discussions on the return of the Expos and in particular on the Peel Basin site, which is the object of the greed of many other interested parties.
Even more seriously, how can we think that the mayor of Montreal would withdraw from any discussion involving the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec? Especially since we know that she owns several of the largest buildings in the city center and other properties throughout the city.
And there is the REM file. We know that, as mayor, Denis Coderre had taken up the cause of the first REM project in the West. It was even he who had very publicly ignored the objections of the Office of Public Hearings on the Environment (BAPE) by saying even before having read it: “the BAPE is not the Pope”.
There is now another project, much more controversial this one, of REM in the East – essentially on the territory of the City of Montreal. Is it possible to think that the mayor would withdraw from all the discussions and decisions in this matter? Of course not.
Especially since, of reservations, Mr. Coderre – unlike the citizens of the districts concerned – does not seem to have many. He wrote in his book Find Montreal that it was necessary to stop considering the future of underground and pneumatic public transport. In short, he immediately approves the technology adopted by the promoter of the REM, the Caisse de dépôt et placement.
All of this does not allow citizens to ensure that there would be no referrals to those who, by Mr. Coderre’s own admission to Everybody talks about it, paid him a lot better than in public life.
Transparency is something that must come before the elections, not after. Otherwise, citizens will be entitled to ask: Who does Denis Coderre work for? Or, more exactly: Who will Denis Coderre work for?