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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)