As Cole Porter put it in “Another Op’nin’, Another Show” to open his hit musical Kiss me Kate, there really is no business like show business. And there is nothing more insidious than the omertá of the Mafia and the corruption of politicians. Madame Justice France Charbonneau’s enquiry into construction in Quebec ran an extra two years and produced a libretto of more than 1600 pages. There will be the appropriate clucking of tongues, promises of definitive action and the report will be filed and forgotten.
What surprised the enquiry more than anything else was that the politicians were skimming more money from construction in Quebec than the Mafia. That poses a challenge to the Mafia bosses and their henchmen in the biker gangs. There could be more “examples to others” swimming with the fishes and the fecal matter in the St. Lawrence River.
The Superior Court Justice actually said that “This report tries to address the problems with concrete solutions.” That might mean there could be more recalcitrant contractors wearing concrete boots looking up from the bottom of the river.
What the report misses is the ingrained lassitude of Quebecers towards this stealing. There is something of a measure of pride in how efficiently the skimming is done. The analysis shows that the Mafia and bikers are getting about 2.5 per cent of contracts while the politicians are easily taking at least 3 per cent. Along with the middlemen engineers and civil servants, Quebec is being tithed more than 6 per cent of its construction expense. And that adds up to billions of dollars every year. It is paid through taxes.
But that is considered chicken feed to the better organized and better connected Calabrian Mafia in Ontario. Also known as the ‘Ndrangheta, these mobsters have become wealthy patrons of the arts and politics in Ontario and few in the know would dare make even casual allegations in light of their power and position of privilege.
In a life in politics, you keep tripping over these people. They are well-educated professionals, they have successful businesses, their memberships are impeccable and they marry well. Their golf handicaps are low and they winter only in the best parts of the Caribbean. They leave the pimping, strippers and strong-arm stuff to the biker gangs. They are a tight-knit family and they have come a long way from Calabria.
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Copyright 2015 © Peter Lowry
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