Back in the mid-70's I managed to snag a quick interview with the head prosecutor of the Quebec crime commission while the fellow was in Ottawa.
I thought I'd hit him with a "gotcha" question. I mentioned something about how, outside Quebec, Canadians had a perception that Quebec politics were riddled with corruption. Then I asked, is this really true? I was floored by his response when he said, "Yes, but it's getting better."
That memory came flooding back when I read this morning that Montreal's "anti-corruption" mayor, Michael Applebaum, had been slapped with 14-corruption charges. The charges are said to include fraud against the government, breach of trust, conspiracy and municipal corruption. WTF???
Applebaum only got the mayor's job last November when he stepped in to replace the former mayor, Gerald Tremblay, who resigned because of ...corruption.
Who's next?
plus ça change, plus c'est la même
Well, I always wondered why some were cheering the right-hand man of Tremblay... and was incredulous when he was so well accepted by some...
ReplyDeleteFrom my perch out here on the Pacific, Anon, I don't follow provincial or municipal happenings back east very closely although the headlines never cease to amaze.
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ReplyDeleteChris, for some reason your comment didn't make it through Blogger to show up here. I will copy it over from my e-mail:
ReplyDelete'Could B.C. have been similar, especially from mid-eigthties through the nineties? We won't ever know, but the signals were there. Massive real-estate boom in the lower mainland. Off-shore investors who were blaze about bribes. ALR fiascos. Faye Leung's Brown envelope of money to the Premier. (And one bloody Financial scandal in the NDP too.)
I'm sure there are still many people around who could politically blow up the west coast.'
Well you certainly have revived some old memories. Remember when Grace decreed that the Expo 86 lands on False Creek couldn't be parceled out and then sold them to David Li who promptly parceled it up himself and sold the first chunk for more than he'd paid to the BC government for the whole deal? Forget about how much he soaked Victoria for site remediation costs. Or how about when the BC Libs sold those three Fast Cat ferries for $20-million less than their scrap value? How can you sell three, nearly new vessels for that much below their break-up price?
Oddly enough, unlike Quebec, no one ever goes to jail out here.
Oddly enough the OPP and QPP don't appear to have the same relationships with the governments in their jurisdictions that the RCMP do with the governments in theirs.
ReplyDeleteWhy might that be?