MONTREAL – Former union boss Michel Arsenault explained away a proposed “deal” with the husband of Quebec Premier Pauline Marois as a bad idea he regrets ever bringing up.
The Charbonneau Commission heard in a wiretap last week that the Quebec Federation of Labour was intent on thwarting the creation of any public inquiry into the construction industry and that it wanted a political partner to help them.
In the 2009 recording, then-federation president Arsenault is heard floating the idea of enlisting the support of Pauline Marois, who at the time was leader of the Opposition, to prevent any inquiry from taking place.
Testifying at the corruption inquiry Wednesday, Arsenault explained he had an idea to speak to Claude Blanchet, Marois’ husband, who had business dealings with the labour federation’s Solidarity Fund through a company he owned.
Arsenault told the inquiry during his third day on the stand he was simply “brainstorming” with a former fellow union executive, Jean Lavallee, in the 2009 conversation. Arsenault said he was seeking political alliances to support the federation’s position that a inquiry was unnecessary.
“The PQ won’t touch this,” Arsenault told Lavallee, ex-president of the labour federation’s construction wing.
“I’ll talk to Pauline.”
READ MORE: Wiretap suggests union ready to ask PQ to stop Quebec corruption inquiry
The revelation drew denials of any such deal or union pressure from Marois and the Parti Quebecois last week. But it left the opposition parties in Quebec City wondering aloud just how much influence the province’s largest labour group exerted over the party.
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Arsenault explained he thought using the business partnership Blanchet had with the Solidarity Fund to help persuade Marois to come out against the inquiry was a good idea.
But an embarrassed Arsenault said Wednesday he realized later it was a bad idea. A longtime political attache at the union told him a day after the wiretapped conversation it would be a terrible idea to use Blanchet to get to Marois. Blanchet was himself a director at the Solidarity Fund between 1983 and 1997.
“I’m very uncomfortable with all this,” said Arsenault. “It’s a bad joke that I regret.”
Arsenault said the investment with Blanchet was never intended to compromise Marois in any way.
“If I’d known I was being recorded, I never would have said it,” Arsenault said, adding he never had a conversation with Blanchet and that he has met him only three or four times.
“I thought about it, but I didn’t do it,” Arsenault said.
The Liberals, in power at the time, finally agreed to call an inquiry in November 2011.
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