MONTREAL—Are there are more big fish about to be caught in the net of Quebec’s anti-corruption unit? That’s the question on everyone’s minds in the wake of Thursday’s arrest of former provincial deputy premier Nathalie Normandeau on multiple corruption charges.

For there are a lot fewer than six degrees of separation between some of the seven suspects arrested this week and the governments of two recent Quebec premiers.

Ernest Murray, for one, was a Parti Québécois insider who worked in Pauline Marois’ constituency office at the time that she was turfed out of government in 2012. But his actual ties to the PQ come nowhere near Normandeau’s association with past and present Liberal governments in general and former premier Jean Charest in particular.

I was on hand, reporting on Charest’s 1998 transition from Parliament Hill to the leadership of the Quebec Liberals, at the time of one of his first encounters with Normandeau.

He was on an introductory tour of Eastern Quebec; she was the mayor of Maria, a rural municipality set in prime Liberal territory.

They clicked right away. On the turboprop plane ferrying us back to Montreal, Charest spoke of Normandeau in glowing terms. He described her as the kind of candidate he hoped to recruit and, eventually, build a provincial cabinet on.

Given the timing of the tour — only a few weeks after Charest had been anointed Liberal leader — she may have been one of the first if not the first candidate Charest set his sights on in his new role.

Normandeau ran for the Liberals in 1998 and won a seat on the opposition side of the national assembly. Five years later, she and her leader made a successful crossing to the government benches.

In opposition as in government, Normandeau was never very far from Charest. Eventually she became deputy premier. The anti-corruption unit alleges she was rigging the system almost from the time she took her seat as an MNA.

The charges laid against her this week extend over a 12-year period. It begins less than two years after her entry in provincial politics.

Additional conspiracy, bribery and fraud allegations cover her tenure in cabinet.

Normandeau’s lawyer, Maxime Roy, has said his client has broken no laws. The anti-corruption unit claims it has a solid case.

As far as I can tell, no Canadian politician serving at as high a level as deputy premier has ever faced charges as serious for acts allegedly committed in office.

By comparison, a decade ago, the federal sponsorship scandal yielded no accusation against an elected official.

Thursday’s arrests eclipsed that day’s Quebec budget. Instead of promoting his mid-mandate agenda, Premier Philippe Couillard was forced to go in full crisis-management mode. This is not an issue that will go away over a few news cycles, and not only because the legal battles could drag on for years.

Ten members of the current cabinet — including the premier himself — served alongside Normandeau in Charest’s government.

When the public inquiry into corruption led by justice France Charbonneau declined to issue any formal blame a few months ago, the Quebec Liberals had grounds to hope they had outrun the ethical clouds of the recent past.

But the anti-corruption unit still has 46 ongoing investigations on its books. Thursday’s arrests could be the tip of an iceberg.

The scope of the collusive rot the anti-corruption unit alleges it uncovered in Quebec’s provincial circles is disturbing. But so is the fact that some of the practices that led to this mess remain commonplace in other provinces.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

Every post-mortem of the collusion/corruption issue in Quebec party politics has fingered the obligation placed on members of Charest’s government to reach an annual fundraising quota as a powerful incentive to stretch and potentially break the rules.

And yet, in Ontario, it is not only still possible to obtain privileged access to the premier and the cabinet for donation amounts that would be illegal at the federal level and in almost half of the provinces, but there are — to this day — fundraising targets assigned to those who sit in premier Kathleen Wynne’s cabinet and to those who aspire to become ministers.

Chantal Hébert is a national affairs writer. Her column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.

Read more about: