The suggestion by Jacques Duchesneau that a preliminary judicial inquiry into construction-industry corruption be held behind closed doors may have some slender merit, but such an exercise should in no way be considered a substitute for a fullblown public inquiry.
And it might well be a bad thing in itself.
Duchesneau, the former Montreal police chief who now heads Quebec's anti-collusion task force, floated the idea during an appearance Sunday on Radio-Canada's popular Tout le monde en parle. He proposed a three-judge panel that would hear witnesses in closeddoor hearings, as something of an exploratory procedure, as opposed to rushing into an open inquiry.
He suggested that people who collaborated with his squad in its investigations thus far did so quite readily when assured that they wouldn't have to testify in open court or at a public hearing: "When we told them we weren't there looking for evidence to charge someone, that's when they started to talk."
There are precedents for this. Five years ago, Justice Jean Moisan conducted such an inquiry into revelations about provincial political party financing that came to light during the Gomery inquiry into the federal sponsorship scandal. The following year, retired judge Bernard Grenier heard witnesses testify behind closed doors about alleged illegal financing of the No campaign during the 1995 referendum.
But it's hard to grasp just what such an intermediary step would really accomplish, since Duchesneau doesn't deny that a public inquiry is necessary in the long run. One can only assume - or at least hope - that listening to what people involved in the construction industry and the Transport Department have to say about the existence of corruption is precisely what Duchesneau's squad has been doing during the year and a half it has been on the case.
The squad has compiled enough information to conclude, as its recently leaked report indicated, that corruption in the construction industry as it affects public infrastructure projects is even worse than has been widely suspected.
No further justification for a public inquiry would seem to be necessary.
If anything, the intermediate step of a closed-door procedure would be more likely to raise suspicions that testimony is being laundered before the public is allowed to hear it. This is precisely the opposite of what a judicial inquiry is supposed to accomplish, which is to restore public confidence in a system in which people have lost faith.
University of Ottawa law professor Ed Ratushny has written a book called The Conduct of Public Inquiries, a comprehensive study of inquiry commissions. Examples he cites include those into the death by Taser of Robert Dziekanski at Vancouver's airport, suspect cash payments to former prime minister Brian Mulroney, the sponsorship scandal, and the imprisonment and torture in Syria of Maher Arar.
Common to all of these, he writes, is that the Canadian public had lost faith in standing government institutions to deal with the issue and tell what went wrong.
Public inquiries, he notes, "continue to be invoked when nothing else seems adequate to satisfy public confidence and there is no end in sight."
This is precisely where we are now with respect to construction-industry corruption in this province. Any intermediate process of the type Duchesneau has proposed would only delay the necessary airing of what has gone wrong and exacerbate the public's loss of faith in our system of governance.