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Some companies have changed names. Others are under new management. A few have merged. But as a joint Montreal Gazette-La Presse investigation reveals, one thing that hasn’t much changed under the Coderre administration is that the majority of municipal engineering and infrastructure contracts remain in the hands of the same key industry players.

That’s one of the main findings of the two newspapers’ analysis of the companies doing the most business with the city of Montreal since Denis Coderre became mayor in 2013. The analysis was done using data provided by Montreal’s finance department regarding payments made by the city to its suppliers between Jan. 1, 2013 and Oct. 2, 2017. The Montreal Gazette and La Presse received the information after trying for more than two months to glean the data from different sources, such as the city’s contract database, Vue sur les contrats, which proved to be a veritable obstacle course.