The text messages at the heart of the scandal that helped bring down former Quebec Liberal Party leader Pablo Rodriguez appear to be a cut-and-paste job, according to a report commissioned by the party.
The report was ordered by the Quebec Liberal Party after the Journal de Montréal published text messages last November suggesting that party members were allegedly rewarded with money — payments reportedly nicknamed "brownies" — to vote for Rodriguez in the leadership contest.
Jacques R. Fournier, a former chief justice of the Quebec Superior Court and current lawyer, was tasked with examining whether payments intended to influence votes were made, identify individuals and amounts involved and the number of votes concerned.
In his 39-page report, made public by the Quebec Liberals on Wednesday afternoon, the lawyer said he found no evidence of any wrongdoing.
But he also said he couldn’t rule out the possibility that there was vote-buying during the leadership race, noting he lacked coercive or institutional investigative powers. He relied only on voluntary statements from the various witnesses.
In particular, he said there is nothing to implicate Liberal MNA Sona Lakhoyan Olivier or Coalition Avenir Québec MNA Alice Abou-Khalil in the exchanges, despite 98.5 FM having identified them as the purported authors of the texts. Liberal MNA Fayçal El-Khoury was also cleared of being implicated in the text message exchanges.
Text exchange that brought down Quebec Liberal leader was doctored, report finds
The lawyer's report concludes that messages published in the Journal de Montréal are not part of the discussions between April 11 and 13, 2025, that he reviewed, and that it is only through cutting and pasting, after having removed a portion of the original text, that the source could have included them in the chain of texts.
"Also, there is no date that allows us to place the additional extracts in time, or to know their origin," the report says.
Fournier goes on to say he was unable to identify who may have made or received payments, the amounts involved or the number of votes affected. But, he concludes, his analysis found the alleged activities did not affect the leadership race's outcome and that Rodriguez’s leadership campaign committee had no knowledge of the affair.
This report is "obviously" incomplete, said Dany Doucet, publisher of the Journal de Montréal in a statement Wednesday. He said Fournier does not know the identity of the news agency's sources and even admits in the report that he did not have access to all of the information.
"We therefore wish to reaffirm that we stand 100 per cent behind all our articles published in connection with this political scandal that forced Pablo Rodriguez to resign," Doucet said.
"Everything we have published is rigorously accurate and carried out according to professional standards, and we will always continue to protect our sources."
On social media, Rodriguez thanked Fournier for the rigorous work on the investigation and producing the report on Wednesday.
“His report clearly shows that my team and I never took part in or witnessed any wrongdoing during the leadership race,” he said.
The allegations of vote-buying during last year’s leadership race are also the subject of an investigation by UPAC, Quebec’s anti-corruption police.
That investigation is continuing. And the National Assembly's ethics and professional conduct commissioner, Ariane Mignolet, is still investigating Lakhoyan Olivier, who was kicked out of the Liberal caucus in December pending the results of that investigation.
Quebec’s Elections Act was amended in the wake of the scandal. Prior to the adoption of Bill 14 in December, Élections Québec confirmed the Electoral Act did not prohibit someone from making a donation in exchange for a vote during a leadership race, though it was not permitted in general elections or byelections.
That loophole was closed. The new law also regulates mayoral and party nomination races. It provides for a fine of $5,000 to $20,000 for a first offence, and $10,000 to $30,000 for any repeat offence within 10 years.
Written by Isaac Olson
Audience Relations, CBC
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