MONTREAL – Friends and fellow journalists had begun to wonder what had happened to André Noël, and why he hadn’t had any major scoops lately.
Then they heard the news: The acclaimed investigative reporter for La Presse has been hired as an investigator for the Charbonneau Commission, the inquiry looking into corruption and collusion in Quebec’s construction industry.
Richard Bourdon, a spokesperson for the Commission, would not say what role exactly Noël will play – or whether he will be asked to share his notes and invaluable unnamed sources.
But given his years of sniffing out the details of everything from health care scandals to mafia hits, his skills, if not his notes, will be put to good use.
As his former colleague at La Presse, Fabrice de Pierrebourg, tweeted Wednesday afternoon, “With all the information André Noël has collected, I know of a few people who must be stressing out today :)”
After a stint as an editor for Presse Canadienne, Noël began working for La Presse in 1984. In those 28 years he has won three Judith Jasmin awards – the highest award granted to Quebec journalists – the last time for his investigation with Bruno Brisson in 2011 into the decrepit state of the Champlain Bridge, alerting Quebecers for the first time of the need to replace the bridge, fast.
In 2003 he won the prestigious Michener Award for excellence in Canadian public service journalism for an investigation into residential and long-term-care centres for the elderly and a second series of articles about the wrongful treatment of patients at a hospital in Montreal.
But it was his work in drawing out the connections between organized crime, legitimate business and government – in the book Mafia Inc., for example, co-authored with André Cédilot – that undoubtedly garnered the most attention from the Charbonneau Commission.
Speaking to a radio host on 98.5 FM Wednesday, Noël quoted former Montreal police chief and head of the anti-corruption unit (UPAC) Jacques Duchesneau, who likened efforts to uncover corruption in the construction industry to a relay race.
In the beginning it was bureaucrats and engineers and ordinary citizens and contractors who raised the alarm, then the baton was handed to investigative journalists, and finally to the anti-corruption unit and the Charbonneau Commission.
“That’s the result of the vitality of the press and democracy in Quebec,” Noël said. “Now the bar is in the hands of the Charbonneau Commission, which doesn’t mean that journalistic investigations are no longer useful, they still are. But I’d like to do investigations by other means and with more means than what journalists have at their disposal.”
Among other accolades on Twitter, several pundits pointed out that news of Noël’s hiring at the Commission, which will resume sitting in September, must have reassured premier Jean Charest in his choice of an election date.
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