Collusion between construction companies bidding on public contracts was routinely practiced since at least 1986, a longtime paving company executive told the Charbonneau Commission Wednesday.

Normand Bedard, former president of the Granby-based Sintra paving company, told the commission that other companies involved in the price fixing were Désourdy Paving and St. Paul.

Bedard said he first heard of collusion while working in Granby in 1986, where another boss told him told him that municipal and provincial roadwork was distributed evenly between three local construction firms.

The commission showed that between 1997 and 2002, 63 of 96 government contracts were rigged.

Bedard also said he knew contracts were rigged prior to 1986, claiming he “didn’t invent anything.”

Bedard admitted that he personally participated in the collusion, which was largely based on respecting one another's territories. Sintra had asphalt plants in Sherbrooke, Lac Megantic and Richmond, and had an agreement with its main competitor, Construction DJL, to split work.

Sintra received $1.645 billion in government contracts over 15 years, while DJL earned $884 million in contracts, the inquiry was told.

The collusion came to an end in 2002, Bedard said, as a result of the arrival of a new competitor named Pavage Maska.

The volume of work made up for the decline as the government injected more money into contracts after the De La Concorde overpass collapse on September 30, 2006.

Bedard said that collusion could hike profit margins to around 10 to 20 per cent, far higher than the zero to eight percent that was the norm in non-colluding situations.

However Bedard also failed to provide concise answers about the effects of the collusion on profits, in spite of repeated queries.

The collusion would even extend to private contracts. Companies uninterested in colluding were often seduced through promises of subcontracts on larger jobs, Bedard said. 

Bedard was arrested along with 36 others - including former Laval mayor Gilles Vaillancourt - on May 9, 2013.
 

With files from The Canadian Press