Serge Menard's shocking claim, that Laval Mayor Gilles Vaillancourt once quietly offered him an envelope fat with cash, raises more questions than it answers. They are important questions that demand answers, and this story can only add to the growing public sense that rot pervades party fundraising.
Menard told Radio Canada this week that back in 1993, when he was the Parti Quebecois candidate in a by-election in a Laval riding, Vaillancourt offered him an envelope -white, not brown -holding $10,000 in cash. Menard refused it, he says, reminding the mayor that the donation limit in those days was $3,000 and asking for a cheque, not cash.
Vaillancourt quickly and flatly denied that anything like that ever happened, but yesterday Vincent Auclair, Liberal MNA for another Laval riding, said the same thing happened to him in 2002, nine years after the date of Menard's tale: a meeting in Vaillancourt's office, a fat envelope offered for help with campaign expenses, and the candidate declining to accept. The only difference is that Auclair's envelope was sealed, he says.
No wonder this story has been big news. In the context of construction-contract scandals, the Bastarache inquiry, and a spate of reports of odd dealings by north-shore mayors, this just seems like part of a disturbingly ubiquitous pattern.
Note, please. that Menard is no lightweight, and is utterly untainted by the suspicion of flakiness that has dogged Marc Bellemare. A former naval officer and crown prosecutor, Menard was minister of justice, public security, and transport during his decade in the National Assembly, then moved to the House of Commons in 2004 as a Bloc Quebecois MP. He is an assiduous policy man who eschews partisan cheap shots. His laser-focus questioning of Brian Mulroney before the Commons ethics committee in late 2007 -about Mulroney's brown envelopes -was the former PM's worst moment of the hearings.
It's important to note that no criminal offence is being alleged here. Donations in cash and exceeding the limit would violate the electoral law, but even the director-general of elections is not pursuing these new reports describing strange old events.
But these claims, unless they're fiction, certainly give rise to questions: Where did the money come from? What quid pro quo was involved? Was this connected in any way to construction? Have other candidates in Laval ridings had meetings in Vaillancourt's office?
Then there are some questions for Menard, too: Why didn't he go to the director-general of elections at the time, or go public? Why come forward with this now? His solid and hard-earned reputation should not give Menard a free pass on questions like those. And while we're at it, why didn't Auclair go the DGE, if he, too, was offered a beneath-the-table campaign contribution?
Political fundraising in Quebec stinks to high heaven. Every day it's getting harder for Premier Jean Charest to resist the obvious need for an inquiry.