Tremblay testifies at Zampino trial
Gérald Tremblay testified Tuesday at the trial of Frank Zampino on corruption charges. Tremblay denies having deliberately turned a blind eye to the complicated system of payoffs that existed at city hall during his administration, and continues to insist he did a good job as mayor.
DeWolf 17:43 on 2025-05-06 Permalink
He would have had to be astonishingly, magically ignorant not to know what was going on right under his nose. But he’s also right that he wasn’t a bad mayor, he actually accomplished quite a bit that we still benefit from today, like the Quartier des spectacles, Bixi, the first (rudimentary) expansion of the protected cycling network…
DeWolf 17:46 on 2025-05-06 Permalink
It might also be too much to give him credit for all the good stuff because the things I mentioned were actually the result of enlightened people working for his administration. Maybe he just had a very light touch, for better or for (much) worse.
bob 18:53 on 2025-05-06 Permalink
Are you serious? He is as corrupt as the day is long, but it’s all water under the bridge. Our taxes should indeed just be paid directly to crime. At least the gallant purveyors of cones are well compensated. Cones forever!
Blork 19:07 on 2025-05-06 Permalink
It occurs to me that maybe he was aware of what was going on, but he was so naïve as to not even think it was “corruption.” Maybe he just assumed that was the normal way to do things. (Mayor Chauncey Gardiner.)
walkerp 19:15 on 2025-05-06 Permalink
Oh please
[thousand rolleyes emojis]
Nicholas 19:45 on 2025-05-06 Permalink
Not be it for me to defend the ex-mayor or corruption. But imagine you’re about to open your first restaurant in a few weeks, and someone shows up at your door and says “It’s dangerous out there, you wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to your restaurant. I can help protect you, and ensure that all your garbage will be picked up, and it’ll only cost you [$500 more per month than you were going to pay for garbage anyway].” You say no thanks, and then garbage starts showing up in front of your business, threatening letters, etc. And the guy comes back and says, “Man, looks like you have a garbage problem, can I help? You know, garbage men want to get paid, you don’t want them protesting out front on your opening day.” And you calculate that with expected revenues of $200,000, that extra is only 3%. So maybe you let Mr. 3% take his money and you actually get some stuff done, finish your project, people are proud of you.
It’s impossible to have zero corruption in a large organization like a city of two million people. You want it to be low, but zero is never going to happen, someone will steal a post-it. So now it’s just a matter of degree: if you’re going to have to accept some corruption, maybe a bit more than you’d hope is ok. Maybe you don’t look too hard, you let people know what big projects you want done and say so long as they get done you’ll be happy. Maybe you realize if you spend all your time fighting it, all the people skimming money off the corrupt system will find a way to stop everything you want do, you’ll have nothing to show for your work, and you’ll get thrown out of office a failure.
Is this moral, just? Absolutely not. Corruption is corrosive to democracy in so many ways. But I can understand why someone who thinks they can’t beat them will just ignore it and try to get some things done. Even if in hindsight it turns out UPAC did an awful lot and maybe good people could have fought it and won. I wish this wasn’t the case, but I think a lot of people running large organizations or companies know there’s fraud going on and they figure they can’t stop it all, concentrate on their big goals. No idea what happened in this specific case.
Ian 20:42 on 2025-05-06 Permalink
Is it wrong for a man to steal bread for his starving family? No. Let’s say his family don’t like bread, they like cigarettes, and instead of giving them away for free, he sells them at a price so low it’s practically free?
Joey 10:50 on 2025-05-07 Permalink
Well played, Ian…