The City of Montreal has a new Inspector General charged with monitoring the awarding of public contracts.
The position was previously held by Denis Gallant, who rose to prominence during the Charbonneau commission.
His successor is Brigitte Bishop, a veteran of the fight against organized crime.
The City of Montreal, along with other metropolitan cities, are faced with a constant problem called “price fixing” – when contractors collude among each other to keep prices artificially high.
There’s been an overall improvement since the Charbonneau Commission exposed the worst offenders, which led to prosecutions and, of course, the collapse the Gerald Tremblay administration.
But Bishop says the situation has improved greatly. Contracts for sidewalks, for example, cost a lot less than they used to, and so do road repairs.
A major problem remains, however: construction companies are bidding very low on roadwork – but it turns out that they’re cutting corners in some cases to save on costs.
For the bureau, this is caused by a shortage of inspectors, whose job it is to make sure the job is properly done.
These issues, Bishop said, are part of her future mandate.
“It’s the lacking of surveillance on the site that the problem is – so we denounced it,” she explained. “But what we are seeing is that the City of Montreal is trying to solve that problem. They announced they would face the surveillance on the site, but we’re always going to have to be there and watch.”
“It’s like building a house. If you have a contractor you will have to look and watch what he’s doing, so it’s the same thing,” Bishop added.
Bishop also believes that the city has to clean up its own act. One of the problems contractors complain about is that the city isn’t very reliable when it comes time to pay their bills.
When companies refuse to work with the city, according to Bishop, it leads to less competition between contractors and higher costs for the taxpayers – something the new Inspector General wants to address quickly with the administration.
