Glorious Graft And Corruption

Those are ugly words, graft and corruption.  Those with a public conscience feel their private life could not possibly sustain an attraction to such socially-averse activities.  To simply surrender your personal sense of values and morals for the sake of acquiring illegal shekels.  Who needs it to complicate their lives, make them feel shamed of their choices?

Well, perhaps those who view that others before them have succumbed, and lived to tell the tale.  The very fact that it is an open secret, that it is suspected by a wide audience that this is precisely what occurs.  And that the odd man out may have retained his personal pride in his ability to resist corruption, but in the process he also loses the opportunity to swell his bank account.

Retired city of Montreal engineer Luc Leclerc, testifying at the Charbonneau Commission, hot in the wake of his colleague, former city engineer Gilles Surprenant's revealing revelations, admitted that he psychologically resisted the formula initially, but not all that strenuously that it didn't take long before he progressed from casually accepting generous Christmas gifts from construction bosses, to envelopes with $1,000 bills.

"When in Rome, do as the Romans", he explained.  For it was the common currency of the time in Quebec; wine, meals, golf rounds, none of which generosity would interfere, of course, with the ability of civil servants to do their jobs straightforwardly and without prejudice.  He worked for the city for two decades, and during that time estimates cash bribes, along with additional benefits, came to about $500,000.

That half-million, plus 'free' work on the construction of his home, 'free' vacations, and other generous freebies had its price.  And the taxpayers of Quebec paid it.  Working in tandem - Mr. Surprenant who testified previously to the Commission and averaged his take-home cash bonuses courtesy of the Mob at $700,000 - expertly inflated project estimates, and Mr. Leclerc found the solution to allow contractors their "extra" charges.

Those "extras" represented unbudgeted work that hadn't really been performed.

"Quebecers today are in fact still quite attached to the image of the government that emerged in the 1960s during the Quiet Revolution.  That is, the notion of government as holding the key to the collective development of francophones and their entry into modernity - even if the government's role has gone through many changes in the last 40 years."  Joseph Facal, former provincial cabinet minister, currently professor at the HEC business school.

As far as obeying a civil code of ethics was concerned, it sounded good but was quite dispensable.  Golf holidays in the Dominican Republic are expensive.  Having one's vacations paid for by generous contractors is an appealing alternative to sitting at home.  Once Luc Leclerc accepted that first $1,000 bill, the word on the street was swift and irrevocable.  He was caught up in the system.  So why struggle against it?

The public works engineers team, he said, was "putty in the hands of the contractors who wanted to corrupt us."  On the other hand, if the feeling wasn't reciprocal, if the civil servants weren't open to corruption, it wouldn't have happened, for it is is not a universal expectation in all jurisdictions.  And although it was an open secret, that the contractors were benefiting hugely at the expense of the public, "I just think nobody took the bull by the horns", said Mr. Leclerc.

Certainly Mayor Gerald Tremblay took no action.  He's 'resting' now, poor dear, taking some time off work.  Being in the hot seat of public anger is not a happy situation, not at all. And while no one has yet suggested that the mayor himself was the personal beneficiary of ill-gotten gains, his political party most certainly was.  And it is clear that Mayor Tremblay well knew the routine; he was exposed to it, and expressed a desire not to be informed directly, preferring 'not to know'.

Journal de Montreal columnist Benoit Aubin has written of an atmosphere of tolerance of the gross inefficiency, corruption and indifference to waste in the civil service.  "The largest supplier of stable, well-paid jobs, the traditional bastion of Quebecois French power, and, in the eyes of many, the main motor of our economy, the heart of our citadel.  But look at what it has become.

Ah, yes, resistance was futile.