Canadians are well-qualified to instruct other countries in how to run elections. . . ha! How low do we go?
By Monique Muise, THE GAZETTE
Gilles Cloutier, an unassuming 73-year-old who has been heavily involved in elections across Quebec since 1956, stunned the inquiry on Tuesday morning with tales of backdoor financing, vote-buying and conspiracy.
MONTREAL – Six decades of political experience, an astonishingly sharp memory and nothing to hide.
On Tuesday, Gilles Cloutier proved that he is, in many ways, everything the Charbonneau Commission hopes for in a witness. For five hours, the now-retired political organizer held the inquiry spellbound with tales of backdoor financing, vote-buying and conspiracy that stretched back all the way to the era of Maurice Duplessis.
There was no hesitation and little prompting as a steady stream of names, dates and dollar amounts poured out of the soft-spoken 73-year-old.
Cloutier began at the beginning, describing how he handed over washer and dryer sets, colour televisions and even “four cows” in exchange for provincial Liberal votes in the 1950s and 1960s. He recalled the legislative crackdown of the late 1970s — when the premier at the time, René Lévesque, introduced new rules forbidding private companies from donating to political coffers. Within a year, Cloutier testified, the companies had found a way around the legislation, asking their employees to write donation cheques and then reimbursing them.
“It was easy” to find volunteers, he said, because they could claim the tax credit at the end of each fiscal year.
By the time the 2000s rolled around, Cloutier estimated that a mere five to 10 per cent of political donations at the municipal level in Quebec were being made legally.
The low percentage was mirrored at the provincial level, he said, with only 15 to 20 per cent of party financing coming from legitimate sources. The numbers backed up the June 2012 testimony of former anti-corruption crusader turned MNA Jacques Duchesneau, who claimed that more than 70 per cent of party financing in Quebec is done off the books.
The dirty money is used for everything from campaign signs to the $200 to $300 payments made to supposed “volunteers,” Cloutier said.
“For 20 years now, volunteers have wanted to be paid. There is no such thing as a volunteer anymore.”
Cloutier’s decades of experience in political warfare did not go unnoticed by the biggest players in Quebec’s construction industry. In 1995, the witness said, he was recruited by local engineering firm Roche, and began using his extensive networks of contacts to secure work for the company in Montreal and the surrounding municipalities.
When it came time for voters to head to the polls, Cloutier explained, he would meet with local mayoral candidates and offer them a deal: the engineering firm would guarantee an election victory, and in return, the winning party would ensure that the company was awarded lucrative city contracts.
“So you were able to promise victory?” asked Charbonneau Commission chief counsel Sonia LeBel.
“Yes, normally,” Cloutier replied. “Sometimes, I could even predict the margin of victory.”
The witness said Roche would “lend” him to the municipal campaigns for the duration of the race, and he would always start by recruiting high-quality candidates. He then ensured they had money to burn and kept the party organized from start to finish. Cloutier said he even instructed candidates on the finer points of door-to-door campaigning. (“You don’t walk on the lawn.”) The final steps involved putting in place a sophisticated communications strategy to carefully manage any campaign blunders, and then implementing a highly organized system for getting people out to the polls. Cloutier’s method worked like a charm in the small town of Ste-Julienne, he alleged, with current mayor Marcel Jetté winning both the 1997 and 2003 elections after striking a deal with Roche.
Documents showing how Cloutier managed two budgets during the so-called “turnkey” elections — one real and one designed to be presented to Elections Quebec — were entered into evidence on Tuesday.
Jetté remains mayor of Ste-Julienne to this day. A call to Jetté from The Gazette Tuesday was not returned.
Normally, only the mayoral candidate in the municipality was aware of Roche’s involvement, Cloutier said — at least until after the election. If the party already had an official agent at the helm of the campaign, he or she would step aside and hand the reins over to him.
Cloutier confirmed that between 1995 and 2009, he organized more than 60 turnkey campaigns on behalf of Roche and, in later years, their competitor Dessau. He lost just “five or six.”
“For an engineering firm, a man who excels at organization and at turnkey elections brings big returns,” Cloutier testified.
Cloutier was full of brief and shocking anecdotes on Tuesday, but the one that really raised eyebrows in the hearing room involved Quebec’s 1995 referendum campaign. Seemingly off-the-cuff, the witness mentioned that the “No” side didn’t follow the rules when it came to financing its ultimately successful campaign. As an organizer in the federalist camp, Cloutier said he used cash to rent huge billboards and to hire security guards to watch them overnight to make sure they weren’t vandalized. Those expenses, Cloutier said, were covered by “friends” and never reported in any official budgets.
He is expected to re-take the stand on Wednesday morning.
mmuise AT montrealgazette.com
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