In 2009, whistleblowers and media reports revealed that Quebec’s construction industry is rotten to the core, plagued by collusion and organized crime. The scandal has rocked the province ever since, and this fall, after two years of stalling, Premier Jean Charest finally called a public inquiry into the construction sector’s rampant corruption.

Now, Montreal-based magazine Maisonneuve is poised to blow the debate wide open again. In Maisonneuve’s upcoming Winter 2011 issue, an exclusive investigative report reveals the shocking extent of violence and bid-rigging in an unlikely industry: snow removal.

Many Montreal construction companies also operate snow-removal subsidiaries, and it’s clear that the industry’s pervasive lawbreaking reaches deep into plowing. The results? Higher costs for taxpayers and a widespread culture of intimidation. Over the course of a year-long investigation, Maisonneuve’s Selena Ross analyzed hundreds of municipal documents and interviewed over a dozen inside sources. These people—contractors, employees and city bureaucrats—described illegal bid-rigging as a fact of life in Montreal’s snow-removal industry. More crucially, they said, Montrealers don’t understand how fiercely the system is maintained through force and coercion.

“It’s clear that collusion isn’t limited to the construction industry,” says Maisonneuve editor-in-chief Drew Nelles. “This groundbreaking investigation into snow removal is a wake-up call: the Quebec and Montreal governments need to take bid-rigging seriously, or taxpayers will continue to fund crime and corruption.”

Some of the key findings of Maisonneuve’s investigation:

—As in construction, bid-rigging in snow removal is typically organized during private phone calls, with one source describing the conversations as: “This year you get this one,” or, “This isn’t for you. You’re going to bid on it anyway, and we’re going to tell you how much to bid.”

—Snow-removal companies that don’t play along face an escalating series of threats: sabotage, then bankruptcy and even physical violence. Sources described firebombings, sugared gas tanks, smashed windows and beatings. One borough employee added that this was standard procedure for all publicly-contracted industries. “It’s a silent law that you don’t go bidding on a sidewalk contract in Montreal,” he said. “You’re gonna end up in the river.”

—An analysis of the last twelve years of municipal snow-removal contracts reveals patterns that suggest some companies may have communicated before bidding: when a certain contractor won a bid, the same three or four others were often the losers. Some companies in this group rarely, if ever, won contracts, and some small companies bid suspiciously high on large contracts they seemed incapable of fulfilling.

—Borough records are so patchy that it’s nearly impossible to get a good idea of who is bidding, and how much. Out of the roughly 250 contracts from 1998 to 2010, only nine included the names of the winners and losers, the price of the bid and the total value of the contract.

—Companies that have already been convicted of collusion still win borough snow-removal contracts. One company that was found guilty of bid-rigging in 2000 nonetheless went on to win contracts in 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2009; its criminal past was not mentioned in municipal documents.

—Quebec’s auditor general recommends that public employees take steps to avoid rigged bids, such as contacting companies to ask questions when suspicious circumstances arise. But borough employees said they rarely take this advice, and admitted that collusion is simply the way things work in Montreal. “We work with these guys every day,” one municipal source said of snow-removal contractors. “We play like we don’t know anything.”

—Some sources said the mafia was linked to the largest snow-removal companies. “In the end, it all comes down to the mob,” one suggested. But others said that all snow-removal firms participate in collusion, regardless of ethnicity or links to organized crime. “It’s almost not free enterprise, eh?” one source laughed. “It’s almost like warlords trying to take other guys’ stuff.”

“Getting Plowed,” Maisonneuve’s investigative report on bid-rigging in the snow-removal industry, appears in Issue 42 (Winter 2011), on newsstands December 16. To schedule an interview with writer Selena Ross or editor Drew Nelles, please email drew [at] maisonneuve.org.

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