Moisie, QC

1994 – Closure and Disposal – Assorted Sources

It appears that my suspicions have been correct if one is to accept the detail in the following book:

The book provides detail pertaining to the disposition and sale of the Pinetree Line radar stations which were located at Falconbridge, Lac St. Denis and Moisie.

You be the judge.

The following detail has been extracted from pages 285 to 290 of the book "On the Take".

Of all the base sales, the one at Moisie caused the biggest controversy. It sparked a brief RCMP investigation, and it showed public servants what can happen when they confront a cabinet minister.

The Moisie radar base, which comprised 290 hectares of land and ninety-three houses and had once employed 170 people, was something of a hot potato because it was near Sept-Iles in Brian Mulroney’s riding of Manicouagan. And it was desirable because the land fronts the Moisie River, one of the ten finest salmon rivers in the world. The other side of the property runs along the St. Lawrence River. Although fishing in the upper section of the Moisie River was leased to private concerns by the provincial government, the water beside the base was public. With fishermen coming into Quebec from all over the world to fish the Moisie, the base was a potential gold mine for anyone interested in a luxury camp.

Such a development was the dream of the local people, many of whom survived on welfare payments. The radar base had been the economic lifeblood of the community, and now the locals were desperate for something, anything, that would take its place.

In 1985 the estimated value of the base was between $4.5 million and $6 million; one estimate came in at $3.6 million for the houses, recreational facilities, and administration buildings and another $814,000 for the land. When the government put the base out for tender in February 1988, a familiar phenomenon occurred: the offers that came in were far, far below the appraised value. The two highest bids were submitted by Raymond Lefebvre et Fils Ltee, a Shawinigan company whose business agent was Conservative Party organizer Jean-Guy Cote, and by Sept-Iles hotel owner Pierre Thibeault. Thibeault was the choice of the town councils in both Moisie and Sept-Iles as well as the Sept-Iles chamber of commerce; they believed he had the best plan to develop tourism on the base. There was a preliminary round of bidding that saw Lefebvre move ahead, but then more property was added to the package, and on the second round Thibeault came in ahead.

Just a minute, the politicians said. Both Cote and Jean-Claude Gosselin, an unsuccessful Tory candidate in the 1984 federal election and another aide to Stewart McInnis, interfered in the process at this point – something they admitted later, but without any apologies. Hylands reported that Cote and Gosselin insisted on a meeting with him. When they arrived at his Montreal office they were accompanied by Lefebvre, and Lefebvre’s brother-in-law, a man called Luc Olivier. "Cote came in like he owned the whole government", Hylands told Gazette reporters. "He said he had worked on cases like this before and that there were always ways of arranging things". The men told Hylands the purpose of the meeting was to find a way to help Lefebvre win the bid.

Hylands was summoned to another meeting in Ottawa in May. This time Gosselin was there with Raymond Lefebvre and Luc Olivier as well as Public Works officials including Liliane Poirie, the minister’s chief of staff. Hylands had informed his superiors about the meeting before he went and was surprised that no one told him not to go. The purpose of the get-together was again quite clear – the base was to go to Lefebvre. Almost immediately after the meeting Gosselin was sent to a diplomatic posting in Jamaica; he denied knowing who Cote was when contacted later by reporters. Ron Lefebvre, the aide who had negotiated the Lac Saint-Denis deal, replaced him. (He is not related to Raymond Lefebvre). After some manoeuvring Raymond Lefebvre was allowed to tack an extra $2,500 onto his bid with an offer of $187,500.

It soon became clear that a close friend of Mulroney’s was also involved in this mess: Sept-Iles land surveyor Rodrigue Tremblay, who had been the 1984 campaign organizer in the riding and had been appointed to the board of National Museums in December 1984. Once Lefebvre’s bid was cinched, Tremblay emerged as a spokesman for the company.

Gosselin wasn’t the only one transferred out of harms’ way; so too was Hylands. He was pulled off the file and colleagues were told not to have any dealings with him. At a lunch with a Gazette reporter, Cote and Olivier defended the process saying their man won because he was the highest bidder. "For us to win, it was like a Cinderella story. It was like winning the jackpot in the lottery".

As the Gazette discovered, Rodrigue Tremblay soon showed his hand; he was the individual whom people contacted to buy houses on the property. He told one prospective buyer that even though Raymond Lefebvre et Fils had bought the base,a new company was being formed and the ownership of the property would be transferred to it. Soon after the sale, the transfer did take place and a numbered company bought the property.

The story was far from over. The loser, Thibeault, was upset, and so was Moisie mayor Bernard St. Laurent. In fact it seemed everyone in the area was upset except Mulroney’s office in Sept-Iles and Tory party officials. One of these, a party organizer in the riding, took St. Laurent aside during a casual street interview with a Gazette reported and warned the mayor not to talk to the press.

Another unhappy man was Diarmid Hugh Hylands. He believed there had been improper political interference in the deal. He would not have recommended Lefebvre as the best purchaser. Hylands had studied the man’s history and discovered that he was a salvager, not a developer. In other words, his interest was in selling off everything of value on the property to make his profit. Lefebvre had done this before at a Miron Cement quarry he’d bought; Hylands believed it would happen again, despite Lefebvre’s written commitment to spend $340,000 developing the base. Thibeault’s bid was different, he told a producer at the CBC’s Fifth Estate when the program was considering a story on the sale; the bid complied with federal land management policy, which takes into account economics, the environment, and social benefits.

The deal was formally announced on July 26, 1988. After mulling it over for a few days, Hylands wrote Stewart McInnis a personal letter about the whole mess, telling him about the meeting with the political aides and explaining how he had been pulled off the file. McInnis did not bother to reply. By late September the Gazette had published details of the letter, the RCMP had started an investigation into the sale, and the Liberals were hammering McInnis in the House, demanding to know why he hadn’t taken action on Hyland’s serious complaints. All McInnes’s answers were damaging. He figured the letter was just a bureaucrat complaining about a "personnel issue", he told the House, and he saw no reason to give the letter to the Mounties. Yes, he admitted, his aides had met with officials in charge of the sale, but there was nothing improper about this. Then Defence Minister Perin Beatty got into the act, and the government line began to tack and shift. Beatty told the House the RCMP had already looked into the sale and concluded there were no improprieties. He also assured the House that no officials in the PMO were involved. The next day Beatty had to correct his statement in the Commons; this time he admitted the RCMP had opened a new investigation and that a junior official in the PMO had made "entirely routine" calls about the file.

Just as Dr. Duquette had done at Lac Saint-Denis, Lefebvre decided the August 1 closing date was inconvenient for him, and he refused to take possession of the base until November 1. This meant National Defence spent $20,000 a month on security, heat and upkeep during those months, and another $10,000 draining the pipes. If these costs had been factored into the final price, Thibeault’s offer, obviously would have been far more attractive.

Hyland’s predictions about Lefebvre came to pass. By 1990 the land had not been developed for tourism and all the promises of the millions to be invested in jobs and development, commitments required in the tender, blew away with the wind. Only one man was hired to work on the base. By 1990 Lefebvre’s group had sold fifty-one houses for between $20,000 and $30,000 each, for a profit of over $1 million. Then they stripped the base of everything salvageable, including the equipment that had been left behind to help open a bank, a restaurant, a post office, and other small businesses. Lefebvre’s group made millions from these sales. Nothing he did was of any help to the local economy.

The personal fallout on this case was also heavy. If there was a lesson learned during the Mulroney years, it was the serious consequences of standing in the way of a cabinet minister or the prime minister. Nor was it smart to speak publicly about one’s concerns to the newspapers.

In St. Laurent’s case, he went from being a popular mayor to a pariah in the community and he felt he had no option but to resign his office. A few weeks after the sale of Moisie was raised in the Commons, the country went to the polls, in November 1988. Mulroney’s riding had changed slightly and he now represented Baie-Comeau; the new MP for Manicougan was Charles Langlois. Langlois made it clear to St. Laurent’s successor, Daniel Raymond, that it would be a good thing for the council to pass a resolution saying it did not support the old mayor. Without such a resolution the Mulroney government would not be inclined to do anything for the riding. The resolution was passed at the first meeting of the new council late in 1988. St. Laurent had always been well liked in the community; now he found people avoiding him. The best job he could find was as a jail guard.

Thibeault was a prosperous businessman before the sale, but he claimed that he had lost about $1 million, $200,000 of which he spent preparing his bid. Worse was to follow. Thibeault owned a company that did building repairs, many of them for Iron Ore of Canada, which had a big presence in the area. That work – including one $450,000 contract – dried up almost completely. Another problem surfaced at his hotel in Sept-Iles. Until he complained about the land sale he had plenty of government business, but after the story became public, he lost his federal clients.

As for Hylands, after his colleagues were ordered to ostracize him, he retired and went off to holiday in Europe. Shortly after his return he had a serious heart attack.

But Bernard St. Laurent survived to triumph another day. On October 25, 1993, he was elected as a Bloc Quebecois MP for Manicouagan, Mulroney’s old riding. His old constituents decided he was on their side after all.

Report pertaining to

Falconbridge, Ontario

Lac Saint-Denis, Quebec