A former construction company CEO says that over an eight-year span, his company was forced to bribe a union chief with $1.2 million.
Serge Larouche told the Charbonneau Commission on Wednesday about the ethically dubious ordeal he had to go through in 1997, when his company Ganotec won a pipefitting contract in the Abitibi region.
Larouche, the former CEO of Ganotec, said that he was told by the company's president, Leopold Gagnon, that the head of the Conseil provincial des metiers de la construction (CPQMCI) union (aka the International) had to be paid off or they would only end up with incompetent workers.
And indeed the workers sent from Local 144 were lazy and failed to get the job done until Gagnon allegedly paid Gerard Cyr $40,000, telling Larouche that, "things work better when Gerard gets his money."
"You had to pay for protection to avoid being hit on a construction site. Sort of what goes on in 90 percent of bars," said Larouche.
"Besides, you wanted to make sure the union sent you welders who could actually weld."
Cyr has been the longtime president of the CPQMCI and the union's local 144, and was so powerful he could dictate which foremen would work on which job site.
That power showed Cyr's reach, because "in theory, unions were only able to refer workers," said Larouche.
Larouche said that at the time he complained to the provincial government, led by the Parti Quebecois at the time but Labour Minister Laurent Lessard allegedly told him that he could not help.
Ganotec gave Cyr $1.2 million between 1998 and 2006, according to Larouche, as the same routine was duplicated in subsequent contracts until the company was finally sold in 2006.
Cyr retired last year.
