SNC:
1993: My visit to their 1993 shareholder meeting. C.E.O. Guy Saint-Pierre’s
attempt to involve the MUC Police in enforcing his brand of corruption in
business. Well, I stopped it.
In April and May 1993, prior
to the 1993 shareholder meeting on May 11th, I wrote to Guy Saint‑Pierre again
concerning my price for keeping quiet, because he had refused to comply with
my previous demand in 1991 for $1,500,000, or even discuss a compromise. I
myself have been a share holder since
April 1993. See file 37/38 and file 39 respectively.
Simultaneously, I wrote to Stephen Jarislowsky,
President of the investment brokerage firm Jarislowsky Fraser and Associates
Inc. and also a Director of SNC, who seemed sympathetic and indicated that
he would talk to Guy Saint‑Pierre. See
file
59/60 and file 61T .
These actions were intended as warnings to
Guy Saint‑Pierre to settle in accordance with my demand or face certain
exposure at the shareholder meeting for apparent duplicity and corruption. I then went to the shareholder meeting on
May 11th 1993 but was met by a Mr. Louis Laframboise, who engaged me in
conversation; he was a security consultant with the private security Chartrand
Laframboise & Associates of Laval, Quebec. After about 30 minutes of
conversation about the economy, what was wrong with it and why Canada's
leadership seemed incapable of setting it on the road to recovery, he then
indicated that Guy Saint‑Pierre had made a complaint about me to his firm.
Whereupon, over the next 11/2 hours and during the
shareholder meeting, I told him about some of the things that had been going
on, with the aid of some documents; as a result, he then agreed to talk to SNC
to try and get them to settle with me.
He also introduced me to two detectives from
the M.U.C. Police to whom SNC had also complained; after about 30 minutes
conversation they agreed not to pursue their enquiries further. SNC had
apparently been telling stories to them about me threatening SNC - when from my standpoint SNC and their
lawyers had brought the problem on themselves.
DURING THE
SHAREHOLDER MEETING , GUY SAINT-PIERRE ALSO ANNOUNCED THAT SNC WAS “LEGALLY CHANGING ITS NAME” TO SNC-LAVALIN,
TO REFLECT SNC’s TAKE-OVER OF LAVALIN
INC. IN 1991
See: This article from the Montreal "Gazette"
on May 12th 1993 - the day after the shareholder meeting.
Of course, he didn’t know until
after the meeting that I was a shareholder. When this name change occurred, my
shares changed from being “SNC-A” shares to “SNC-LAVALIN” shares. If Guy Saint-Pierre
thought he was being clever at my expense, it back-fired.
It appears to me that this was really just a silly
little game, to try and evade any legal action or otherwise from me. Well, if in fact that’s what it was, it
failed.
Subsequent correspondence between me and SNC (now SNC‑Lavalin) through Louis Laframboise, unfortunately did not lead to a satisfactory settlement, because SNC were attempting to impose unsatisfactory conditions.
That said, Mr. Laframboise must be credited with being
instrumental in arranging for me a consultation with an outplacement firm in
Ottawa – Desroches, Wallace, Bond Inc.. This consultation, with Mr. Desroches,
lasted two hours – time for which they would normally have expected to be paid,
and SNC apparently refused to pay them anything for this. In fact, Mr.
Laframboise told me that the firm did this as a favour to him, in an effort to
assist me.
In the event, though, it
unfortunately became apparent to me that any arrangement involving Desroches,
Wallace, Bond Inc. had little chance of working to my satisfaction, because
there was no guarantee of employment.
At the same time, I thought
I had a better idea, referred to below.
My demand at the time was for either (a) a cash
settlement of $1,689,000 or (b) a reduced cash settlement of $850,000 and cooperation with me, from SNC,
in connection a one‑year research project leading to permanent employment,
proposed by me, which concerned creating jobs by a combination of actions to
improve Canada's exports and re‑training of
professionals displaced from down‑sizing industries (such as engineers),
along with other conditions.
See file 75-84 ( initial project proposal and
conditions) and file 85/86 , which
are the most important items. This proposal (file 75-84) had to be put together
in a very short time. Later (December 17th 1993), I updated it to
take account of proposals in the Liberal Party of Canada red policy book,
“Creating Opportunity”, released that summer (This was shortly before the
federal elections that year, which toppled the Conservative government under
Brian Mulroney and replaced it with a liberal government under Jean Chrétien)
The end result of all this is really
summarized in the final
letter to me from Mr. Laframboise, dated January 14th 1994. In other
words, nothing. Earlier in the year, there appeared to be something there that
I could work with – but, as already indicated, SNC were constantly dictating
unsatisfactory conditions.
In early 1995 I found out that, between September 1993 and
September 1994, SNC collaborated with
A.C.E.C. (the Association of Consulting Engineers of Canada) in researching and
preparing a report, "From Potential to Prosperity:
Human Resources in the Canadian Consulting Engineering Industry" , released in November 1994. This
obviously commenced while I was trying to get something similar started, as
already related.
SNC never once told me
anything about this. Their involvement extended at least as far as their
Vice-President of Personnel Administration, Mr. Gérald Barsalou, who was a Steering Committee member.
(EX. P3,
P4)