Martin C. Barry
Despite a setback for Rosemère’s town manager whose legal appeal to dismiss an investigation by the Quebec Order of Engineers was recently rejected, Rosemère mayor Eric Westram says he continues to have full confidence in Guy Benedetti.
The Order of Engineers has accused Benedetti of tolerating and participating in collusion when he was director-general of the City of Longueuil from 2005 to 2012.
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Had worked for Longueuil
According to news reports last year and more recently, a former director of engineering with Longueuil testified to the OIQ that Benedetti had asked him make sure the municipal services sub-contractor CIMA+ received a certain contract in 2009.
The OIQ maintains that a system of collusion existed in Longueuil from 2002 to 2009 with the approval of senior bureaucrats and two politically-influential individuals.
Appeal to Superior Court
When charges against Benedetti were tabled in early 2019, long after he had started working for Rosemère, he appealed to the Superior Court of Quebec to order the charges dropped.
He did this after asking the OIQ’s disciplinary tribunal three times to drop the accusations since they were taking so long to process, and the details on which the charges were based were too vague to take seriously, claimed Benedetti.
Mayor Westram reacts
Earlier this week, Rosemère’s mayor told the North Shore News he has long been aware of the charges hanging over the town’s current director-general, but that he supports Benedetti.
“I’m very well aware of it,” said Westram, who was elected in 2017, while maintaining that the previous mayor, Madeleine Leduc, whom he had defeated, would also be aware since, according to Westram, she hired Benedetti.
Says Leduc hired him
“She’s the one who hired him. And she knew about the complaint that the Ordre des Ingénieurs had lodged. She knew about this in 2016, and I knew about it a few weeks after I was elected. “My position is very clear,” he added. “It’s not because somebody is accused that they should be considered guilty. So I told Mr. Benedetti then and I told him again that he had my trust and that otherwise he is my general manager.”
