When you need a friend

Premier Bernard Landry said he was "disgusted" this week by the latest newspaper story about lobbyists and him. He probably wasn't the only one.

The story, in La Presse, said that two years ago, when Landry was finance minister, his chief of staff at the time recommended a friend of the minister as a lobbyist to a group of Métro-Richelieu grocers. The grocers were seeking Landry's intervention to prevent a takeover of the chain by interests from outside Quebec.

It said the chief of staff, Carl Cloutier, told the group that the lobbyist, Yves Duhaime, was "a very good friend" of Landry and "reaches a successful conclusion with all the files he takes on." Duhaime was Landry's colleague in the Lévesque cabinet and has known Landry since the 1960s.

The story said Duhaime was then paid $180,000 by the grocers for two months' work. They wanted him to have Landry get the government's Société Générale de Financement (SGF) to help them buy enough shares in Métro-Richelieu to block sale of control of the chain to non-Quebecers.

When Duhaime told the grocers he would need another six months to get the government to make a decision, the story said, they decided to "turn off the tap." The SGF's intervention became unnecessary when Métro-Richelieu's managers promised Landry they would not hand over control of the chain to outsiders.

This is the latest in a series of disclosures in recent months about friends of the premier receiving lucrative contracts to lobby his government, and the first to implicate someone who was working for Landry at the time. (A former member of Landry's staff, Raymond Bréard, received $200,000 for obtaining subsidies from the government after he left Landry's office and went to work as a lobbyist.)

Publicly, the government has been saying it's not necessary to hire a lobbyist to get access to it. This story suggests that the government, in particular a member of Landry's own staff, has been giving quite different advice in private.

So you can see why the premier might have been disgusted at the story. You can also see why others might have been, too, at the way the government apparently does business.

In the National Assembly, Liberal member Jacques Dupuis suggested the crime of influence-peddling might have been committed, though he did not say by whom.

Denials were quickly issued by most of those concerned.

Landry said Duhaime represented the grocers as a lawyer, not a lobbyist, though other lawyers who worked for the grocers disputed this. The premier also made the point that he met several times with the grocers before they hired Duhaime, though they hadn't got what they wanted from him yet.

Cloutier denied that he recommended Duhaime, as did one of the two grocers to whom he is supposed to have done so. And Duhaime has threatened possible legal action over the story.

But if it's true that there's no such thing as bad publicity, then the story might not be entirely bad for Duhaime.

It pointed out that he has successfully intervened with the PQ government on behalf of other clients before the grocers. And Landry mentioned that since Duhaime hasn't been an MNA since 1985, he won't be affected by proposed legislation forbidding former politicians from lobbying for two years after they quit politics.

So if you need somebody to lobby the PQ government, you could do worse than to hire Duhaime - as your "lawyer," of course. Human nature being what it is, you have to assume that a busy man is likely to return the phone call of a friend and former political comrade-in-arms before that of a total stranger.

You should be aware, however, that such access doesn't come cheap. In addition to the $180,000 Duhaime is reported to have been paid by the grocers for two month's work (which Duhaime disputed), he also pulled down $740,000 to facilitate the sale of the Davie shipyard in Lévis in 1995.

And you'd better move fast, since Duhaime's friend won't be premier forever. Maybe you should start finding out who Jean Charest's friends are, or Pauline Marois's.

- Don Macpherson is The Gazette's Quebec-affairs columnist, based in Montreal. His E-mail address is dmacpher@thegazette.southam.ca.