Charbonneau commission holds lesson for other public inquiries
Quebec’s public inquiry into corruption in the construction industry served as a timely reminder that it’s a rare commission that lives up to the expectations that preside over its creation

thestar.com
Nov. 26, 2015
By Chantal Hebert

The release on Tuesday of the long-awaited report of the Quebec public inquiry into corruption in the construction industry served as a timely reminder that it’s a rare commission that lives up to the expectations that preside over its creation.

It did not formally blame a single elected or non-elected individual for the corruption and collusion that has run rampant in the province’s governance system. The commission sketched out patterns of systemic collusion in some details but failed or declined to connect the dots.

Justice France Charbonneau and her co-commissioner former Quebec auditor general Renaud Lachance, could not even agree that an indirect link between illicit industry donations to the province’s political parties and the awarding of public works contracts had been established.

As Justin Trudeau’s government ponders how best to fulfil its commitment to a national inquiry into missing and murdered aboriginal women, the Quebec experience offers a few pointers.

That starts with a workable mandate.

The Charbonneau commission has been compared to the decade-old inquiry into the federal sponsorship program. But justice John Gomery’s work was focused on a single federal program. Charbonneau’s mandate was more open-ended. The construction industry interacts with Quebec politics at all levels of government.

The line between an overabundant choice of avenues and a lack of direction is a thin one. From the outside, the Charbonneau commission frequently looked like a rudderless boat on an ocean-fishing expedition.

Just prior to its year-end break in 2012, the inquiry released an extensive blue-ribbon list of guests at a Montreal private club. The rationale for bringing up the list remains a mystery. There are other examples of testimony of little apparent relevance to the final report.

Gomery’s sponsorship inquiry heard from two (past and present) Liberal prime ministers. The Charbonneau commission - even as it deemed to explore the issue of political financing - called neither former Quebec premier Jean Charest nor any other provincial leader to testify at its public hearings.

Then there is the matter of the perils of an elastic timeline.

The Charbonneau inquiry was set up in 2011. It was subsequently extended twice for a total of 25 months. Its four years of existence stretched over three Quebec governments and as many premiers.

With every extension, the impetus that had led to its launch seeped away. The reputations of some public personalities were left twisting in the wind for months.

Last year, former construction magnate Tony Accurso threw a bombshell at the inquiry hearings when he testified he had funnelled $250,000 to former Montreal police chief Jacques Duchesneau to pay off the debts accumulated over the latter’s failed 1998 mayoral campaign.

Accurso claimed he had a paper trail to document the payoff. But on Tuesday, the commission reported the promised proof never materialized. That was after Duchesneau spent a year under the cloud of Accurso’s allegations.

The Charbonneau commission cost Quebec taxpayers $45 million. Its final report ran at more than 1,700 pages. On Tuesday, Philippe Couillard’s government threw it out to the public with no advance lock-up to give the media the opportunity to take stock of its voluminous content and its 60 recommendations.

The predictable result was that much of the initial coverage focused on the bright shiny object of the irreconcilable difference of opinion between the two commissioners as to the relationship between party financing and provincial public spending. Quebec’s ruling political class had a better day Tuesday than the commission that reported on the many failings on its watch.

Ultimately, the Charbonneau’s commission best accomplished its mission on the front of public awareness. Its hearings vividly illustrated the toll that corruption and collusion have taken on the province’s public services. And they did demonstrate that the problem was systemic. Time will tell whether those findings translate into a lasting change in ethical culture.

The upcoming federal inquiry into missing and murdered aboriginal women will also serve a public education purpose and it will undoubtedly raise the profile of an issue that cries for more attention.

But based on Quebec’s just-completed inquiry, care should be taken to ensure that the exercise results in more than allowing a government to tick a sensitive item off its bucket list.