Quebec inquiry hears there was a price for defying the mayor of Laval

MONTREAL – A provincial politician has told a public inquiry that he paid a steep personal price when he ran afoul of the controversial ex-mayor of Laval, Que.

The onetime Liberal MNA says he became persona non-grata in Laval when he spoke publicly in 2010 about a cash-filled envelope he was allegedly offered by then-mayor Gilles Vaillancourt.

Vincent Auclair says he was shunned at public events in the municipality. And he says he didn’t get much support either from his provincial party, which never defended him publicly.

Vaillancourt has been accused of handing envelopes to several politicians, including federal NDP Leader Tom Mulcair who says he turned down the offer.

The long-dominant mayor, who won six straight elections, recently resigned in scandal and has been slapped with a slew of corruption charges.

Auclair says his cash offer came in 2002. He spoke publicly about it eight years later, when controversies about Vaillancourt began appearing in the media.

However, when he went public, Auclair declared that he’d refused the envelope offer. He modified his story on the witness stand today.

Auclair has now explained that he actually accepted the envelope, after resisting at first, and then quickly turned it over to a provincial Liberal party official and asked him to solve the problem.

Auclair was a three-term MNA in the Laval of Vimont.

Montreal La Presse recently reported that Auclair and Mulcair discussed, in 2006, their respective encounters with the Laval mayor.