MONTREAL - Jean Charest has bowed to the inevitable in finally announcing a public inquiry into Quebec’s scandal-ridden construction industry.
For more than two years, the premier stubbornly resisted the mounting calls for such a cleansing exercise, even as his personal credibility and public support for his government plumbed record lows. But the pressure became irresistible over the past month, for two reasons.
First, Jacques Duchesneau, the head of the anti-collusion squad that Charest’s government had set up, confirmed that suspicions of corruption in the industry and in its dealings with governments were entirely founded. Duchesneau himself called for an inquiry.
Second, pressure for an inquiry was coming to bear on the government from within the Liberal Party ranks, which hitherto had stood solidly behind the premier.
Now that an inquiry has been announced, the challenge first of all is to assure its credibility in the eyes of the public, both in the selection of its personnel and in the delineation of its mandate.
The inquiry’s parameters and objectives, as outlined by the premier Wednesday, on the whole measure up to what those who have been pressuring the government were calling for in the way of a corruption probe. As well, the nomination of Superior Court Justice France Charbonneau, a former crown prosecutor and member of the Quebec Bar’s disciplinary committee, inspires confidence.
Once it gets under way, its primary function is to clarify the workings of the industry and its relations with the governments that contract the services of companies within it for public infrastructure work. An important offshoot of this mandate will be to explain how the system has been manipulated to the detriment of the taxpaying public.
It should be kept in mind that such a systemic analysis is the inquiry’s prime purpose. Much as the public might like culprits to be fingered and pilloried, that part of the process of dealing with the construction problem is rightly the task of the police and the justice system. Indeed, the inquiry has to beware that it does not handicap police investigations and prosecutions by putting evidence out of bounds, since testimony at inquiries cannot be used as evidence in subsequent court proceedings.
It must also be careful to protect individuals who agree to testify, and to avoid smearing people’s reputations. Public inquiries such as this one get intense media coverage and are liable to hear false accusations that subsequently get widely reported to the detriment of innocent parties. Prior screening of testimony is vital in this regard. Another consideration is that victims of intimidation could be put at risk of violent reprisals if they are forced to testify in public. Thus, while closed-door hearings in some instances might rouse suspicions of coverup, their judicious use could be vital to getting at the whole truth.
Finally, the inquiry commission must come up with convincing recommendations to ensure that industry practices are rectified in the public interest. This would include new procedures for transparency in contract-letting, tighter industry regulation and more effective penalties for violators.
Some potential recommendations are readily apparent even before the inquiry holds its first session. A recurrent theme of investigative media reports on construction-industry practices is that a very few companies tend to wind up getting the lion’s share of contracts in a given area. Typical is a Gazette report Wednesday that three industry groups garnered almost 70 per cent of Transport Quebec’s asphalt contracts provincewide.
The obvious answer to this, as suggested by independent experts, is to open bidding for infrastructure contracts to firms from outside the province, since limiting access to in-province firms tends to favour the formation of cartels. Another is for provincial authorities to look outside the province for guidance on what projects should cost. There is no reason why, as has been the case, paving roads in Quebec should cost significantly more than in New Brunswick or Ontario. With the knowledge of what constitutes a fair price, Quebec bureaucrats should be able to demand that price for work they contract.
The inquiry is late in coming, but better that than never. The challenge now is to do it right, in such a way that failing public confidence in the system is restored and optimal value is henceforth obtained for public money.