Related
A Superior Court judge has decided the six-year prison term recommended in the case of former Laval mayor Gilles Vaillancourt fits the crimes to which he pleaded guilty.
Justice James Brunton made the decision Thursday at the Laval courthouse. While doing so, Brunton said the joint recommendation does not go against the interests of justice.
On Dec. 1, Vaillancourt, 75, admitted he was part of a system of corruption and collusion in which he collected a percentage of the contracts awarded by the city between 1994 and 2010.
Vaillancourt will probably benefit from a Quebec Court of Appeal decision delivered earlier this year, on Feb. 1, which should make him eligible for parole after he has served only one-sixth of his sentence as opposed to the usual one-third. The option is available to some first time offenders whose crimes were not violent.
In 2011, the Conservative government removed the eligibility to the earlier parole. But a man who was sentenced in Montreal in 2014, for crimes that took place before the legislation was changed, contested the Parole Board of Canada’s refusal to consider giving him an early release. The appellate court ruled in the man’s favour, setting a precedent that will probably apply to Vaillancourt because the time frame for the crimes he pleaded guilty to ended in 2010.
On Dec. 1, Vaillancourt pleaded guilty to being part of a conspiracy to commit fraud, fraud and breach of trust. As part of an agreement negotiated before he entered the guilty pleas, Vaillancourt agreed to return more than $8.6 million to the city of Laval. By the time he had appeared in court that day he had already had some of the money transferred from a Swiss bank account and the balance was in the process of being transferred.
In 2015, the city of Laval filed a lawsuit against Vaillancourt and other people who are currently charged in Project Honerer. As part of its claim, the city estimated that Vaillancourt made more than $12 million through the system of collusion that he oversaw. The city agreed to drop the lawsuit as part of the agreement reached before Vaillancourt pleaded guilty.
According to a statement that his lawyer, Nadia Touma, read into the court record on Dec. 1, Vaillancourt “never withdrew any sums” from the two Swiss bank accounts he had set up to hide the money. She also said that if it weren’t for Vaillancourt’s “willingness” to return the money, the city probably never would have recovered what it has.
She also noted to Brunton that Vaillancourt began doing volunteer work at Partage Saint Maxime, a charitable organization connected to a parish in Laval. According to Touma’s statement, Vaillancourt began by working in its kitchen two days a week in 2013 and eventually, in 2016, had increased his workload to five days a week.
Vaillancourt had spent most of his adult life as a politician in Laval. He was first elected to council in 1979. A decade later, he became the leader of his municipal party and won six elections in a row from 1989 to 2009. He resigned on Nov. 9, 2012, as allegations of corruption were swirling around him. Search warrants were carried out at his home in October 2012 and he was arrested there on May 9, 2013.
