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The future A40 station of the Réseau express métropolitain will rise on a site where its builder, the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, lost money in a multi-million-dollar real estate boondoggle it tried to conceal in the mid-1990s.

But that isn’t the only thing the Caisse, the province’s largest pension fund investor, hasn’t told Quebecers about the location for the station on the $6.3-billion, 67-kilometre automated transit network it will own and operate.

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Unbeknownst to the public, which is paying half of the cost to build the REM, the Caisse has been investing in the industrial enclave that surrounds the future “Station A40” for decades, an investigation by the Montreal Gazette has found.

In fact, the Caisse’s real estate ties in what’s known as the Hodge-Lebeau neighbourhood, an area hemmed in by Highways 40 and 15 and the railway tracks on the edge of St-Laurent borough, run long in terms of time span, far in terms of square footage and deep in terms of financial investment.