Projet director found guilty of electoral fraud
The headline that an ex director of Projet Montréal has been found guilty of electoral fraud sounds serious. Marie Depelteau‑Paquette’s crime is that she did not include overtime pay for campaign workers in 2017 as part of Projet’s expenses, which are limited by law during a campaign.
Depelteau‑Paquette pleaded that she was only following orders – but she’s the one that may have to pay a heavy fine.
Ian 12:14 on 2025-04-25 Permalink
I see no reason not to hold hte bosses responsible, too.
Kate 12:23 on 2025-04-25 Permalink
Yes, but they were not on trial.
The background to this – who’s ultimately responsible for handwaving the issue or, in fact, who brought it to the attention of the authorities – is not clear, but to me, it’s not crucial enough for journalists to spend time digging into it.
I mostly found the headline a more startling than the story, which is about irresponsible bookkeeping, not targeted fraud.
Ian 12:39 on 2025-04-25 Permalink
Fair enough. Just because it wasn’t published doesn’t mean it wasn’t investigated.
Nicholas 21:48 on 2025-04-25 Permalink
The story confused me, but the decision cleared some stuff up, and arguably it’s worse than the story makes it out. I’ll try to summarize, but may make a mistake here or there.
There were four permanent, salaried employees of the party, and during the electoral period they did extra hours. The law says that all expenses during an electoral period should get included, but there are a few exceptions, including regular ongoing expenses for the administration of a party. The DG of PM asked the official agent, the person responsible for all payments and expenses during the electoral period, if these hours should count, and she asked Elections Quebec, who, after some back and forth, said yes. Those employees were salaried, so instead of paying them the party considered giving them time off later, but EQ said both paid and compensated hours counted. The official agent asked the DG for information to include the overtime, at time and a half, as an expense either way, and the DG said that would be fine. Right after the election, they found they had spending room under the limits, but were short on cash (this was 2017, so they weren’t rolling in money). Electoral expenses are partially reimbursed by the taxpayer, as part of public financing, but they must be paid out within 90 days, and without enough cash on hand they might not meet the deadline. The party BoD and, partially, the mayor, said to stop any potential payment and discuss the hours, and that at another board meeting they decided to count the hours as volunteer, at the suggestion of the DG, according to two witnesses. The official agent objected, saying employees can’t legally renounce that compensation, though they then did after the fact. The official agent even paid out of pocket for a legal opinion, beyond that provided by EQ, to confirm she had to include these expenses. The employees still got compensated with time off, that varied based on the number of extra hours that were done, which the judge said showed it wasn’t volunteer hours, even if the time off was taken outside the election period. As well, when the DG went on maternity leave, she told her replacement to hide info about the hours from the official agent, to get one of the four employees to keep two sets of books to both discount the hours officially but count the time off and lastly that the employees taking the time off should do it on days the official agent wasn’t in the office, so the official agent wouldn’t know about the extra time off.
One could argue that things were unclear at the time. But what the judge accepted in her decision was that the official agent tried to get the expenses filed as per the rules given from Elections Quebec and a lawyer she paid out of pocket for advice, and the DG said she would file that but then chose, likely with the encouragement/direction of the board, not to, and to hide the information, likely knowing that was against the law. It may seem as a bookkeeping issue, but given the actions involved, the judge thinks it’s also wage theft and bad faith, intentional circumventing of the law, reporting requirements and other things. And the judge said while others might have been charged, only one was, so she could only rule on that. $5,000 may seem like a lot, but given the specific intentional actions of the DG of the organization, not some low level employee, one could argue the fine and the coverage aren’t disproportionate.
Lastly, to guess at the answer to Kate’s question, Elections Quebec was already aware of the potential for these extra hours when the official agent asked about how to treat them, so when the final report was filed with zero such hours, I’m sure there were questions raised. It could of course have been a tip off from the official agent or one of the four employees, or a board member. I skipped over a few paragraphs of the ruling so I don’t know for sure it wasn’t mentioned, but I didn’t see it.
Ian 11:35 on 2025-04-26 Permalink
Thanks for the breakdown, Nicholas. That’s very insightful.