Editorial: Former Quebec cabmin Normandeau facing corruption charges

Former high-ranking Quebec politician Nathalie Normandeau was arrested by the province’s anti-corruption squad in mid-March — the first former natural resources minister in Canada to face arrest in recent memory.

Normandeau, 47, was once a rising star in provincial politics, having served most recently as deputy premier and minister of natural resources and wildlife in Jean Charest’s Liberal government.

In the earliest years of Charest’s government, which first defeated the Parti Québécois in 2003, Normandeau served in several posts, including minister for regional development and tourism, minister responsible for the Gaspésie–Îles-de-la-Madeleine region and minister of municipal affairs.

The mining community across Canada will chiefly remember her role in unveiling Quebec’s ambitious multi-decade and multibillion-dollar Plan Nord to build massive infrastructure in Quebec’s far north to open it up for more resource development.

From humble small-town roots, she served as a member of the National Assembly (Quebec’s provincial parliament) for the riding of Bonaventure in the Gaspésie region from December 1998 right up until her surprise, sudden exit from politics in September 2011 at the height of her powers, even as she was being touted as the next Liberal party leader and premier.

At times her love life became front-page news in Quebec: in 2009 she admitted to dating François Bonnardel, a caucus member of the opposition Action démocratique du Québec party, and when she was romantically tied to former Montreal police chief Yvan Delorme, who unexpectedly resigned in 2010 from the force, which was later probed by the RCMP, leading to officer suspensions. But she may be best remembered in the province for accepting 40 long-stemmed roses on her fortieth birthday plus Céline Dion and Madonna tickets from now-disgraced construction boss Lino Zambito.

In 2014, Normandeau appeared before Quebec’s Charbonneau Commission (officially named the “Commission of Inquiry on the Awarding and Management of Public Contracts in the Construction Industry”) to answer questions about alleged illegal campaign fundraising by engineering and construction companies to which she awarded large contracts as municipal affairs minister from 2005 to 2009.

The commission was formed to address the corruption allegations that swirled around the Charest government in its latter years and ultimately led to its defeat by the Parti Québécois in September 2012.

The commission released its final report last November, detailing how Quebec’s political class co-opted the province’s engineering firms to become de-facto fundraisers for the province’s main political parties. Normandeau’s name appeared 175 times in the report, according to Macleans.

As the commission made plain, corporate political donations to provincial parties are illegal in Quebec, but to get around the rule, businesses in the province would often lean on their employees to make private “straw man donations” in their place.

At the same time, cabinet ministers in the Charest government had an unwritten rule that each one had to raise $100,000 a year, with Normandeau raising $747,000 between 2005 and 2009, with her chief of staff Bruno Lortie actively soliciting funds from engineering firms, thereby raising conflict of interest concerns.

Zambito himself testified that everything given to Normandeau, including the roses, was “business development” for his firm Infrabec.

In mid-March 2016, Normandeau was one of seven people arrested in a scheme that allegedly saw political financing and gifts exchanged for large government contracts. She faces charges of fraud against the government, bribery of a public servant, conspiracy, corruption and breach of trust, and is due to appear in court in Quebec City on April 20.

Others being charged include her chief of staff Lortie, two former execs of engineering firm Roche, and another former provincial Liberal cabinet minister.

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http://www.northernminer.com/regulatory-issues/editorial-normandeaus-heart-will-go-on/1000571636/