This article was last updated on April 16, 2022
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Two most notorious and influential union bosses largely accused of corruption allegedly attempted to acquire the help of Parti Québécois Leader, Pauline Marois, and her businessman husband, Claude Blanchet, in order to try to kill the public inquiry from examining their activities. According to wiretapping recordings from 2009, provided as evidence at the Charbonneau inquiry on Tuesday, the head of the Quebec Federation of Labour, Michel Arsenault, and the president of the FTQ-Construction union, Jean Lavallée, were caught discussing how to convince Ms. Marois and her husband to end the talks of a public inquiry.
Mr. Lavallée mentions in the wiretap that “I want us to get organized and talk to both of them to make sure there is no inquiry.” However in his testimony on Tuesday, Mr. Lavallée denied that he never went through with the plans to contact Ms. Marois, however Mr. Arsenault is heard on tape saying he already had made a deal with Mr. Blanchet, who once ran the union’s multibillion-dollar investment fund. Mr. Arsenault says that “the PQ won’t touch it,” because “I’ll talk to Pauline.”
Even if such a lobbying effort did take place, it did not succeed since in the years following the wiretapped conversation, the PQ opposition under Ms. Marois pressed the Liberals on a daily basis for resisting calls for a public inquiry. However, it must not be ignored that the PQ and Ms. Marois do have longstanding links to the unions, even though Mr. Lavallée claims that he no longer has ties to the party.
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