The Parti Québécois used to swear by Jacques Duchesneau. Now it swears at him.
The report by the former head of the provincial anti-collusion unit leaked last September – by Duchesneau himself, it turned out – was long on conclusions but short on supporting evidence. Nevertheless, the PQ was only too glad to treat it as gospel to revive its demands for an inquiry into public-works contracts.
“The situation is very serious,” PQ leader Pauline Marois said in response to the leak, in a statement you can still find on her party’s website. “Corruption has moved into the heart of the state. Organized crime, the Mafia, has infiltrated the government.
“These are proven facts.”
That was then. Now, the PQ’s leader is questioning the credibility of the source of those “proven facts,” while the party’s lawyer tried to destroy that credibility in cross-examining Duchesneau before the Charbonneau Commission last week.
Before he gave in to the PQ’s demands for an inquiry, Premier Jean Charest warned that reputations would be damaged by public hearings.
After Duchesneau’s public testimony before the Charbonneau Commission, maybe the PQ has learned to be careful what it wishes for.
Duchesneau implicated the PQ, along with every other provincial party, in testifying that illegal party fundraising takes place on such a scale that to describe it as scandalous would be an understatement.
Confidential sources have told him that no less than “70 per cent of the money dedicated to the parties at the provincial level doesn’t come from official, registered contributions,” he said. The parties solicit “dirty money” – contributions not reported, as required by law – to help pay for their election campaigns, he alleged.
Strictly for the sake of argument, let’s suppose that Duchesneau’s rule of 70 per cent – not two-thirds, not three-quarters, but 70 per cent – applies to the Quebec Liberal Party. In 2008, the year of the last general election, the party reported a record $9.3 million in contributions. If that $9.3 million represents only 30 per cent of what the party actually collected for its election campaign, as Duchesneau suggested, then the Liberals would have received another $21.6 million in illegal contributions. That would have given them $30.9 million to spend on their campaign – more than $20 million above the legal spending limit of $10.5 million for that election.
(The Liberal Party reported spending $8.6 million on the campaign. That was more than any other party, but still nearly $2 million below the legal limit.)
This raises a question: How could a party spend three times the legal limit on an election campaign, involving $20 million in illegal spending, without anyone noticing?
Here’s another question:
If it’s so easy for parties to solicit unreported contributions, why is it necessary for companies to disguise illegal corporate donations as legal personal ones, as some have been caught doing?
And here’s a third question:
If the political-financing rules have been flouted on such a scale, is it the rules that are ineffective, or the chief electoral officer, who is supposed to enforce them?
The parties deny that they’ve been breaking the law, and the chief electoral officer denies through a spokesperson that the parties have been getting away with it because he’s been asleep on the job.
The chief electoral officer complains that Duchesneau hasn’t kept his promise to turn over the information on illegal fundraising that he says he’s dug up.
And Le Devoir has reported that the Charbonneau Commission’s lawyers and investigators are “not thrilled” by Duchesneau’s 50-page report on his findings, which he has given to the commission but which it has not released.
For the time being at least, Duchesneau’s allegations remain unproven.
But since he gave his testimony, he has been hailed in the street as Quebec’s version of the untouchable Eliot Ness, while an already-muddied political class has been spattered some more by headlines about “dirty money.”
Now Péquistes as well as Liberals might have reason to be relieved if Charest calls a general election to be held while the Charbonneau hearings are adjourned for the summer.
Also adjourning is this column, until early August. Have a good summer.
dmacpherson@montrealgazette.com
Twitter:@MacphersonGaz