Former Quebec official says his warnings about collusion in 2002 went unheeded

MONTREAL – A former government engineer says he sounded the alarm on collusion on Quebec government contracts more than a decade ago and warned the highest levels of bureaucracy as well as the transport minister himself, but to no avail.

Francois Beaudry, a former Transport Department official, is telling the Charbonneau Commission corruption inquiry today that he was tipped off about collusion on provincial contracts in 2002 by an informant.

Beaudry says the informant provided a wealth of information, inlcuding claims that construction firms were dividing up contracts among each other and engineers were divulging sensitive information to help construction companies circumvent the bidding process.

Beaudry says the informant’s information was reliable and he was able to successfully predict which companies would win a series of contracts in Laval, a city just north of Montreal.

When it became clear the provincial government wouldn’t act, Beaudry says he suggested to his informant that he go to the police.

But the informant told Beaudry he would never speak publicly about the collusion because those involved in it were part of an influential network with a wide reach.

Beaudry is best known for coming forward to Radio-Canada’s investigative news program Enquete in 2009, where he claimed that Mafia-linked companies controlled much of the road building contracts doled out in Montreal.