Montreal quarterly magazine Maisonneuve is set to publish an exposé in their Winter 2011 issue that delves into the corruption and collusion of Montreal’s snow removal industry. Instead of waiting for copies to hit the newstands on Dec. 16, the magazine decided to tease readers about their exclusive investigation which they say will feature details on threats, violence and rampant bid rigging.

“Many Montreal construction companies operate snow-removal subsidiaries, and it’s clear that the industry’s pervasive lawbreaking reaches deep into plowing. The results? Higher costs for taxpayers and a widespread culture of intimidation. Over the course of a year-long investigation, Maisonneuve’s Selena Ross analyzed hundreds of municipal documents and interviewed over a dozen inside sources. These people—contractors, employees and city bureaucrats—described illegal bid-rigging as a fact of life in Montreal’s snow-removal industry. More crucially, they said, Montrealers don’t understand how fiercely the system is maintained through force and coercion.”

Maisonneuve’s Selena Ross undertook the task of writing the in-depth piece, interviewing a variety of sources, all of whom wished to remain anonymous. Without giving too much away, OpenFile Montreal asked her a few questions about the process.

Did you come up with the idea for the piece?

Ross: Yes. I was interested in writing about the snowplow industry, but from a different angle. When I started interviewing people, they were all telling me about collusion and violence right off the bat, so that quickly became what the story was about.

What was the hardest thing about putting together the piece?

One hard thing was sorting through the city documents. I only needed information about a few hundred contracts, but they were buried in thousands of pages of paperwork. It also took some time to get people in the industry to open up to me. I talked to most of them two or three times so that they would get to know me a little. It also took me a while to understand how the whole administrative side works, like the bidding process for public contracts and how the boroughs are managed.

How did you go about getting some of the information you received (data/numbers) and how did you wade through them?

I got all my documents without filing access to information requests. Most of it was available at the city archives, and I also knew some people who worked in borough offices who helped get me a couple of things (nothing secret, but things the boroughs might have wanted me to file a request for). There were a few things that I did really want to get through requests, but by the time I had the details to know what I wanted, they told me I definitely wouldn't get it before my deadline, so I worked around it. With all the documents I did have, I entered them into an Excel spreadsheet, which was invaluable, because I could manipulate the information to see different patterns.

How did you go about finding sources for the story willing to talk (even anonymously)? Were they afraid of the repercussions of talking to a reporter?

I started with one person who worked in the industry, a friend of a friend of a friend, that kind of thing, and then followed up on all the leads he suggested. I knocked on a lot of doors of snowplow companies and hung out at a garage (seriously!). It wasn't just a question of getting them to open up to me, but also a question of deciding who I wanted to talk to, since I was putting myself out there too. So I would talk to my sources about more general stuff, then decide if they seemed trustworthy, and we would just go from there. In the end, many of them weren't too hesitant to talk about collusion, either because it seems normal to them, or because they want it to stop. Once I promised not to identify them, they didn't seem very worried about the repercussions. Actually, some of them thanked me for writing this story because they're sick of having to do business like this.

Are you afraid yourself of exposing these secrets?

I've been a little worried at times, but some journalist friends with more experience writing about crime have told me I'll be OK.

Why do you think this level of corruption hasn't been reported before?

I think people know from the news that this happens in the construction industry, but the details aren't always described, at least not from the perspective of the businesses. Montreal's a funny place: it seems like half the population is shocked at the extent of corruption, and for the other half, it goes without saying. I was really interested to learn how this kind of system of collusion is maintained on a daily basis and I think many readers will be too. I think it fills in some of the blanks of what we already know.