19-month sentence for fourth accused in Gatineau bid-rigging case

November 22, 2019 – GATINEAU, QC – Competition Bureau

A fourth engineering executive accused in a bid-rigging scheme that bilked the City of Gatineau out of an estimated $1.8 million was sentenced today to 6 months of house arrest, 13 months under curfew and 120 hours of community service.

Claude Marquis, formerly Regional Director, Outaouais for Genivar (now WSP Canada) was sentenced in the Superior Court of Quebec after pleading guilty to bid-rigging in July 2019.

Following a Competition Bureau investigation, criminal charges were laid in June 2018 against Mr. Marquis and three others in connection with bid-rigging on 21 City of Gatineau infrastructure contracts awarded between 2004 and 2008.

Mr. Marquis admitted to joining a scheme in 2005 in which executives from several engineering firms conspired to fix bid prices and divide up the municipal contracts among themselves. The City of Gatineau was not aware of the bid-rigging, which raised the city’s total costs for the affected contracts by an estimated 33 per cent.

All four of the accused have pleaded guilty for their respective roles in the scheme. They received conditional sentences totalling five years and 11 months, and court-ordered community service totalling 260 hours.