MONTREAL -- The landmark Quebec election-financing law that inspired similar reforms across Canada has been systematically flouted since its inception, a witness at a provincial corruption inquiry recalled Tuesday.

The elderly political organizer said that, within three years of the Rene Levesque-initiated political reforms of the late 1970s, unscrupulous fundraisers were already circumventing them.

The law was introduced in 1977 by Levesque's Parti Quebecois in the wake of scandals tied to the Bourassa Liberals; it banned corporate donations and limited personal contributions in Quebec.

It has since been emulated in numerous jurisdictions including the federal level, where donations can no longer come from companies and must be less than $1,000 per person.

But the latest witness at the Charbonneau commission, retired engineering executive and political organizer Gilles Cloutier, said the vast majority of money collected by political parties is illegal.

Cloutier estimated that less than 10 per cent of funds collected at the municipal level, and 20 per cent at the provincial level, actually came from legal eligible donors.

As for the rest, he said, corporate money quickly breached the barricade set up by the 1977 law. He said it was easy to find people to pose as donors because they would get reimbursed, along with the added bonus of a tax credit.

"A few years later -- I'd say two or three years later -- the law was being outsmarted," Cloutier, 73, told the inquiry.

"The director general of elections didn't check and it was easy to find strawmen because of the tax credit. Everyone called me because it was essentially a $300 gift."

He cited one historic example of where the law was broken: the 1995 Quebec independence referendum. He said he used unaccounted cash to pay for billboards promoting the pro-Canada side. That side ultimately won by less than one percentage point, and Canada stayed together.

Cloutier's political involvement began with Maurice Duplessis' now-defunct Union Nationale party and carried on with the Liberals through the just-concluded Charest era.

Cloutier, who has been working in municipal and provincial politics since his teens, has been interviewed previously by Radio-Canada's investigative show Enquete.

He is not an engineer but worked with engineering firms Roche and Dessau in business development. His wealth of municipal and provincial contacts was his bread and butter and he was hired to help companies get contracts and rig elections.

He recalled using cows, television sets and washer-dryers as means of bribing voters in the early years.

Cloutier described the 1995 independence vote as a tough battle.

Signs were constantly being destroyed in suburbs north of Montreal, where he was in charge of the campaign. He had to hire private security to help and, Cloutier said, those expenses and others weren't declared.

It's not the first time the pro-Canada side has admitted to ignoring spending limits spelled out in the provincial referendum law.

During the sponsorship scandal an ex-federal bureaucrat, Chuck Guite, described how he would "bend" the rules to fill Quebec with advertising for the No side. He credited the tactic with keeping the country together, and said the now-infamous sponsorship program stemmed from that experience.

The Quebec inquiry is now turning its gaze away from Montreal and beginning to look more closely at financing elsewhere, like the so-called "turn-key" elections conducted in the suburbs.

"Turn-key" elections are when companies, like construction and law firms, provide everything and candidates step right into a privately financed campaign operation.

Cloutier offered the inquiry a crash course in election-rigging.

He said he owned a pair of numbered companies that would launder money destined for political coffers, while he also worked for engineering firms.

Most of his turn-key elections were conducted while he worked for Roche. He estimated that he had organized up to 60 election campaigns while at Roche -- and lost no more than six.

He testified that it was common to have two sets of books, one official document filed with the party and elections officials, and a second set containing the real expenses.

The unregistered cash would pay phone operators, printers, people to put up election signs, and communications firms.

Cloutier said many party official agents were aware there were two sets of books but most did not ask any questions.

Those who did ask questions were told to back off.

He was expected to win and, in most cases, Cloutier said he did. Some elections were so well-organized that even the margin of victory could be predicted in advance.

"In some municipalities, we were able to determine how much a candidate could win by," Cloutier said.

"It gave people confidence to know how much they'd win by."

Cloutier has co-operated with inquiry lawyers and investigators.