UPAC’s disintegrating cases encourage corruption to fester
This time last year, I sat down with Robert Lafrenière, then the head of UPAC, to discuss the corruption-fighting squad’s record for 2017. The Unité permanente anti-corruption had recently been beset by setbacks. The arrest of a sitting MNA in a sting operation sent shockwaves through the political sphere. And the suspects in its high-profile Contrecoeur file had been acquitted of all charges after a long trial. But Lafrenière was upbeat about the future. He touted the unit’s “excellent” track record and emphasized the important democratic function of holding the powerful to account. Besides, Lafrenière noted: he wasn’t out to make friends. A year later, UPAC ends 2018 with a whimper. Lafrenière is gone. He announced his departure on Oct. 1 — election day in Quebec — and has never explained the reasons for his hasty, mid-mandate retreat. The MNA arrested under Lafrenière’s watch — former Sûreté du Québec officer Guy Ouellette — succeeded in having search warrants against him quashed, and handily won re-election under the Liberal banner.
He is now sitting as an independent after being excluded from the Liberal caucus and is suing the government for wrongful arrest. The Bureau des enquêtes indépendantes has been tasked with getting to the bottom of a series of leaks about long-running probes into political financing involving former premier Jean Charest and one-time Quebec Liberal Party financier Marc Bibeau. Another of UPAC’s big investigations — the charges against former deputy premier Nathalie Normandeau and ex-Liberal MNA Marc-Yvan Côté — remains bogged down in legal challenges. Former Lachine mayor Claude Dauphin has revealed the probe into his potential involvement in the water-meter contract at Montreal city hall has been closed. UPAC has several vacant posts and is struggling to fill them, although interim director Frédérick Gaudreau blamed negative media coverage for the squad’s recruitment troubles. The year ends on a successful note: Yanai Elbaz, the righthand-man of deceased McGill University Health Centre boss Arthur Porter, was sentenced Monday to 39 months in prison for his role in one of the biggest frauds in Canadian history. UPAC uncovered the bribery scheme surrounding the awarding of the MUHC superhospital contract back in its heyday. The prison sentence after a guilty plea is a small victory. But it also underscores how far UPAC’s fortunes have fallen. UPAC finished 2018 clearly hobbled. And so, too, is the fight against corruption in Quebec. UPAC is just one weapon in the arsenal, but it is an essential one in an ongoing battle from which there can be no respite. It has the exceedingly difficult but fundamental job of detecting malfeasance and bringing the perpetrators to justice. The cases it moves forward and their outcome should serve as a message that the watchdogs of integrity are ever vigilant. When cases fail to launch, fall apart or come to naught, it sends the dangerous signal that there are no consequences for wrongdoing — and that there is little incentive for operating cleanly. The bars are high for laying charges in the first place, or securing a conviction, as they must be in a society predicated on the rule of law and guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Just because there’s smoke, doesn’t mean there’s fire in every case. And sometimes the initial evidence just doesn’t amount to much in the end. But when an organization as crucial as UPAC is spinning its wheels, riven by strife, and left rudderless, society suffers in less obvious ways. Criminals and dirty operators can read, too. When they see weakness, they exploit the cracks in the system. Corruption is insidious that way. It adapts and it scatters to where the light doesn’t penetrate. Quebec has taken tremendous strides toward stamping out corruption over the last decade. There are new eyes scrutinizing contracts, like Montreal’s Bureau de l’inspecteur général, new political financing rules, new transparency standards and higher public expectations. But we can’t take past progress for granted. The war is far from won. A recent report card on corruption issued by an ad hoc oversight committee of experts and academics set up to monitor the aftermath of the Charbonneau Commission has found that three years after the final report was tabled, 70 per cent of the inquiry’s recommendations have been implemented. This group is now urging the Coalition Avenir Québec government to reinforce integrity laws and take steps to help restore trust in public officials. Bill 1, the CAQ’s maiden piece of legislation, may do some of that. It proposes to depoliticize the nominations processes for the head of UPAC and other sensitive institutions. But it may take more robust measures to get UPAC on track.