Charbonneau Commission - corruption, criminals, and politicians

lagatta wrote:

Red as in Liberal, not red as in even vaguely socialist or progressive. My district is Projet Montréal, but it will be hard to win the mayorship. Bergeron has been giving good, precise sound bites, but alas he really isn't very charismatic and sadly that counts. But then, I don't personally think Coderre is very charismatic either.

The situation in Montreal is rather disheartening...

I used to like Louise Harel... but since her transfer to municipal politics, I've soured quite a bit on her. And Vision Montréal, despite its name, is still a hodge-podge group that has absolutely no articulated vision for the city.

I like many of Projet Montréal's proposals, and its vigor in pushing for better collective transit solutions is much needed, but Richard Bergeron irks me majorly. He was terrible, just to cite one occurrence, during the student strike, adopting very reactionary positions.

Let's not even talk about Coderre...

Who does he think he is Guy Lafleur or maybe Stan the Man.

Well, I've certainly voted PM, but I agree with Unionist and Bärlüer, sometimes Bergeron goes beyond nerdy engineer to be oddly reactionary. I thought the smoking stuff was almost tongue in cheek, but he seemed oddly out of touch with the student movement - and the people who voted PM in in the Plateau and Petite-Patrie and were in the streets banging "casseroles".

I'm having a good online dialogue with my PM city council member (François Limoges) as we struggle to push through the projected bicycle path on my street and meet with the usual boneheaded resistance from "local merchants" (who afterwards will use the path and its bicycles as tourist advertising, natch).

http://www.journalderosemont.com/Actualites/Vos-nouvelles/2012-10-29/art...

Torontonians will remember such "local merchants" opposing the much-needed St. Clare streetcar!

I do think Projet Montréal could do with another spokesperson. Bergeron has great ideas about public transport and I agree with him about the need to push through some tramlines - in particular lines parallel to the oversaturated orange line of the métro - since the extension to Laval, it is impossible to get a seat or scarcely to get in the door from Jean-Talon into downtown during rush hour. But he is frankly too odd, and not consistently progressive.

Harel is not the evil person anglo media makes her out to be, and progressive in some social respects, but she his absolutely dim about environmental questions.

Yes, she was very leftwing in the PQ, and most active in support of Vickers and Angus railway yard workers. Certainly remember that. I'd most certainly never demonize her because I don't think she understands how important it is to oppose a "big-dig" (Décarie east) in the East End. She is just a bit out of touch with modern ecosocialist thinking.

Her English is not bad at all - I listened to her in English on CBC Radio-Noon today. I know her husband quite well from Palestine solidarity stuff.

I just HATE the way anglo media depicts her.

(and a superficial aside - she is a role model for all of us gals who have decided either to stop colouring our hair or never doing it in the first place. I let mine go grey - actually very silvery with black undertones - because some women like her showed it could be possible without looking senile or mumsy. This is hard for women with hair as dark as mine was. Alien being in the mirror and all that).

Now we have a "sex" angle more explicit than Lino's romantic gift of roses. One of the engineers, Gilles Vézina, admitted that he was offered escort services as well as the usual bottles of fine wine, restaurant meals and hockey tickets.

Vézina refused, he said, because he was a newlywed at the time, and also said that unlike the usual presents, "prostitutes" were not an acceptable gift.

He said he was unaware whether any of his colleagues had accepted such a gratification.

http://tinyurl.com/VezinaEscorts

As the remains of gunned-down Mafia don Giuseppe Di Maulo lie for three days of viewing in an east-end Montréal funeral home with underground parking, so mourners can arrive and leave discreetly, The Di Maulo family has occupied the entire funeral complex, which has room for seven different funeral ceremonies.

See that the funeral is NOT at the church near my place in old Little Italy, but at Notre-Dame-du-Mont-Carmel, in St-Léonard (farther east)

http://tinyurl.com/DiMauloFuneral

Not just escorts but a love-nest to "party" with them in, in an apartment building with a swimming pool in the St-Mathieu area (west end of downtown Mtl): http://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/regional/montreal/201211/13/01-4593527...

Yes, there have been several mob-related murders hereabouts of late, either among the Mafia or ancilliary gangs. 

Who needs the NHL? Pass the popcorn... 

The Commission is taking an extended "Temps des fêtes" holiday - no, they aren't all taking a long beach holiday in some sunny hotspot. There seems to be simply too much material, and certain delays in getting key witnesses to take the stand. http://www.ledevoir.com/societe/justice/364978/l-enquete-publique-tourne...

Not returning until the 21st of January. 

Lots of other names are coming out, notably Union Montreal people (Claude Dauphin, Sammy Forcillo, Marc Deschamps), Liberal people (Joel Gauthier, former head of AMT and former managing director [I think?] of the PLQ), Leo Housakos, Benoît Labonté, etc.

Yes, of course there was corruption, collusion and bad police work there, but there was mostly class and racial bias, and seeing street sex workers as "garbage". It is very important, but shouldn't it go in the ongoing thread on this subject?

Though like many other people, I don't think Willy Picton did this on his own. And police were seen at the pig farm parties. 

No matter what other bribes were offered it seems you got a seat at a Habs game as well. No wonder they have been sold out for years.  Businesses giving away freebies to clients is a short step from businesses giving freebies out to public officials. The crooks even wrote the ticket bribes off as a business expense.

This highlights one of my bet peeves about our tax system.  Business people take each other to every kind of entertainment imaginable and they get to right it off as a business expense. The rest of us taxpayers subsidize their fun.  Their employees get to buy their own tickets at full price.

Quote:

Since January 2004, for instance, the Habs have sold out every game played at the Bell Centre. The arena seats 21,273 and there are about 15,000 season tickets. The waiting list for season tickets numbers 4,000, Beauchamp said.

According to Forbes Magazine, the average cost of a Montreal Canadiens ticket is $96 — among the highest in the NHL.

That's when any are available.

For the Habs' next home game, Saturday against Philadelphia, a pair of tickets side by side can only be had second-hand and the price on one website ranged from $184 to $1,298 for a pair.

Some Montreal municipal employees managed to get tickets for $0.

In exchange, they did a few favours for construction bosses.

Some allegedly doctored work plans, approved false expenses, or shared inside information that ensured certain companies won bids and subsequently inflated the price of a project.

Their work helped businessmen set up a construction cartel in the city, in which a small cabal rigged bids and overcharged for public works. Under that system, illicit profits were divvied up between companies, municipal officials, political parties, and the Italian Mafia.

In at least one case, the hockey tickets appeared to have been as coveted as a bribe.

During recent testimony at the inquiry, engineering firm boss Michel Lalonde said he bought season tickets worth $14,015 for a civil servant in one borough.

He said the official demanded those tickets, for the 2007-08 season, on top of a three per-cent cut on contracts that had been previously paid out.

"The demand (for tickets) was high in those days — probably because the Canadiens were winning more often," Lalonde testified.

That year, the Canadiens finished first in the Eastern Conference. Lalonde said the tickets were passed off as a business expense.

Each of the City of Montreal public-works bureaucrats to testify has admitted to taking hockey tickets.

One described it as standard procedure.

"It was common practice in the city. It was part of a business model," Gilles Vezina, a now-suspended engineering department employee, testified.

http://thetyee.ca/CanadianPress/2013/02/10/HKN-Illicit-Habs-Tickets-2196...

Yes, they are really throwing the book at them. Hope they have the firm evidence to make it stick.