COGIR, Across Continents: Denis Coderre Reveals List of Mystery Shoppers | Municipal elections in Quebec 2021

The Montreal squad leader first released a nearly complete list Wednesday afternoon, with one exception: an organization that would like to remain anonymous for the time being.

That company, Transcontinental, finally agreed to lift the confidentiality agreement it had signed with Denis Coderre before he re-launched himself on the political scene last March. I announced this in the evening.

At the request of Denis Coderre and in the public interest, TC Transcontinental lifts its confidentiality agreement and confirms that it has retained the services of Denis Coderre for strategic advice in relation to the circular economy and the company’s recycling investments in East Montreal, between July 2019 and March 2020, and then between November 2020 and March 2021In a statement sent to Radio Canada, she said she would not make any further comments on the matter.

Earlier today, the Denis Coderre team indicated that this mystery shopper currently wishes to remain anonymous, but would be willing to reveal his identity and the mandate entrusted to Mr. Coderre. To the city’s moral advisor in the event of a Montreal squad leader victory on Sunday.

More than double the mayor’s salary

According to documents provided by the party, Denis Coderre earned $458,263 in 2020, more than double the mayor’s salary, which is about $200,000.

Of that amount, $93,835 comes from his retirement pension as a federal representative — which Radio Canada revealed on Tuesday — and $364,428 comes from his management firm’s earnings.

Coderre also claims to have paid $187,850 in provincial and federal taxes last year.

Documents indicate that Denis Coderre did business between 2018 and 2021 with eight companies and organizations.

One such company is real estate giant COGIR, a well-established developer in Montreal, which required the services of Mr. Coderre from June 2019 to March 2021, in particular to carry out international developments in the United States and Europe.

Denis Coderre has also worked for the International Automobile Federation (FIA) and as a consultant for Stingray, whose senior president, Eric Boyko, is actively campaigning for the return of professional baseball to the capital.

While away from City Hall, Mr. Coderre was also a consultant to the entertainment studio Félix & Paul as well as a member of the Eurostar board of directors, where he represented Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec.

Ambassador of the Jewish Public Hospital Foundation, he was also a strategic advisor to Parc Oméga, a zoo located in Outaouais.

Four days of questions

This disclosure of interests, which is usually a formality for election candidates, piqued the curiosity of Mr Coderre’s opponents and journalists for several days due to his initial refusal to publish his tax return and his client list. and employers.

To the extent that he was not required by law to report this information, Denis Coudrey confirmed that he would present it to the ethics counsel in the City of Montreal in due course, should he be elected on Sunday.

However, Mr. Coderre agreed to release this information during the 2013 and 2017 election campaigns.

On Monday, the Montreal squad chief defended himself by assuring voters that there was “nowhere to hide” in his income and contracts, explaining that he could not reveal the identity of all of his clients and the nature of his mandates due to confidentiality agreements. It has all been lifted since then.

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Valerie Blunt believes her main town hall opponent lacks transparency.

Photo: Radio Canada/Ivano Demers

On the sidelines of his private press conference, a few minutes after the unveiling of Dennis Coudrey’s former clients, his chief opponent, outgoing Mayor Valerie Plante, lamented that the Montreal squad leader insisted on retaining the identity of his last client.

I launched Transparency is not an a la carte list. We are transparent or not. Especially when you aspire to become the mayor of a city, you have to be transparent across the board. This is what Montreal residents expect.

Projet Montréal president also believes that the fact that Denis Coderre worked at COGIR from 2019 to 2020 makes him ineligible to talk about housing and density, which is one of the challenges of the current election campaign.

The outgoing mayor also lamented that her rival’s party has not yet published a financial framework, while pre-polling is over and voters will be called to go to the polls for regular voting within three days. I’ve never seen that, I fell.

clearly, Transparency is not a core value Dennis Cowdrey, Ms. Blunt concluded.

Coder explains himself

The main person, who did not organize a press event on Wednesday, finally appeared before the press at the end of the evening, after a gathering of gunmen in the Plaza Center Ville.

Mr. Coderre told reporters that they now have All That Needs… All That Needs to do their job. However, he opposed the idea of ​​passing all of his tax returns to the press, as tradition dictated.

There he answered, we’ll stop there with one. There, I saw exactly how much I was earning, and my deputy’s pension, it was a year, that’s enough.

You have my list, you know how much I earn, I paid a lot of taxes, and then I’m proud to work for it.

He also asserts that his electoral commitments do not reflect the mandates entrusted to him by his clients when he was working in the private sector. She has absolutely nothing to doHe replied indicating that he had written a book, Looking for Montrealto confirm his ideas.

It’s not because I worked for COGIR that we can’t bring developers together, explained.

Mr Coderre also denied that his Transcontinental tenure was linked to the future of Publisac, as some media reported earlier. He explained that instead he was asked for advice on setting up a new factory in eastern Montreal.