André "Dédé" Desjardins (4 July 1930 – 27 April 2000) was a Canadian union official noted for his involvement with organized crime. Desjardins served as the president of the Conseil des métiers de la construction () and vice-president of the Fédération des travailleurs du Québec (Quebec Federation of Labour, FTQ) union between 1970 and 1974, becoming known as Le roi de la construction ("the king of construction"). During this time, Desjardins was involved in the scandal that led to the Cliche commission of 1974–75 headed by Judge Robert Cliche to examine corruption in Quebec construction unions. Afterwards, Desjardins enjoyed much success as one of the leading loan sharks in Montreal until his murder. Despite sharing the same surname, Desjardins is not related to Raynald Desjardins, a notorious mobster related to the Rizzuto crime family.
Rise to power Desjardins was born in the Centre-Sud of Montreal, the son of a plumber, and grew up in poverty. Desjardins went to work as an apprentice plumber at the age of 14, and had a long criminal record as a young man, doing several short stints in prison. In 1949, Desjardins was convicted of robbery and was convicted several more times in the 1950s. In 1957, he joined local 144 of l'Association internationale des plombiers et tuyauteurs d'Amérique union, which he rapidly came to dominate. During this time, Desjardins started to engage in organized crime, running illegal lotteries, demanding payments from construction companies to avoid "delays", engaging in loan sharking, and formed ties with the Montreal Mafia. Desjardins recruited men with criminal records to serve as his officials or "soldiers" as he called them, and rose up rapidly using violence and intimidation. Desjardins ran his loan sharking business from the Café Évangéline, and was so successful that he lent money to other criminals in Montreal, most notably Eugene Lafort, Gérald Fontaine (who was the father of Hells Angel Paul "Fon Fon" Fontaine), and members of the Devils Disciples outlaw motorcycle gang.
The Canadian journalist Michel Auger described Desjardins as a "strong man" who frequently beat anyone who displeased him, and who was much feared in the construction industry in Montreal in the 1960s. Henri Masse, the president of the Quebec Federation of Labor, told the journalist Jerry Langton about Desjardins: "He was a tough guy. But at the same time, you have to remember labor relations back then were tough as well. During strikes, employers would use dogs and thugs and other means". Though capable of being charming and a professed friend of journalists, Desjardins was known for his ruthless methods, at one point leading a delegation of construction workers to storm the National Assembly in Quebec City while the assembly was in session to shut down a meeting of a parliamentary committee that was proposing a bill he disapproved of. Desjardins's tactics paid off and the bill was killed.
Le roi de la construction A man with an engaging manner and immense powers of leadership noted for his walrus mustache, Desjardins quickly rose up the ranks of the union, becoming the general manager of the Construction Trades Council union affiliated with the FTQ and in September 1970 become the vice-president of the FTQ. Desjardins was well known for his lavish lifestyle, which went beyond a union official's salary, wearing a large diamond ring, owning a white Cadillac and frequently taking vacations in Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Desjardins's lifestyle and his domination of a union of 70,000 members gave him the moniker the "King of Construction" (Le roi de la construction). Desjardins had "soldiers" in every union local, who were expected to engage in intimidation and violence, and other criminal activities like drug dealing and extortion. Desjardins was very closely associated with the Mafia during his time as union chief, and his time as president of the Conseil des métiers de la construction union is remembered as a "reign of terror" in the construction industry in Quebec. Auger described Desjardins's time as the "King of Construction" as the take-over of an entire section of the economy by organized crime, through he argued that Desjardins for his all power, was just a French-Canadian frontman for the Montreal Mafia, who wanted control of all the construction unions in Quebec, not just in Montreal. As part of his investigation into Desjardins undertaken in 1972, Auger took photographs of Desjardins on vacation in the Dominican Republic with Louis Laberge, president of the FTQ, together with various Mafiosi and other members of the Montreal underworld. Desjardins was aligned with the Cotroni family, at the time the most powerful Mafia family in Montreal.
Construction had boomed in Montreal for Expo 67, leading to an inflated workforce, and afterwards times were tough for the construction industry in Montreal. As the Liberal Premier Robert Bourassa had promised in the 1970 election that his government would create 100,000 jobs in the construction industry with the James Bay Project, there was much violent competition between Desjardin's Conseil des métiers de la construction and the rival Confederation of National Trade Unions (CNFU) to have their workers engaged in the project. The Canadian historian Desmond Morton noted that were 540 different incidents between the two main construction unions in Quebec on construction sites associated with the James Bay Project between 1970 and 1974, many of them "very bloody".
Besides for the James Bay Project, Desjardins's union played a major role in causing the $1 billion cost overrun on building the facilities for the 1976 Olympics in Montreal, which nearly bankrupted the city. In May 1970, the International Olympic Committee declared that Montreal would host the 1976 Summer Olympics and construction of the facilities for the Olympics began later that year. The Montreal journalist Kristian Gravenor called Desjardins a "legendary" criminal who more than anyone else caused the "screwed up Olympics" that almost bankrupted Montreal and did so much to cause the decline of Montreal, which lost its status as the business capital of Canada to Toronto in the 1970s. The French architect Roger Taillibert and the Montreal mayor Jean Drapeau discovered that various "delays" on building the Olympic stadium were caused by the Conseil des métiers de la construction, and the two tried hard to win over Desjardins, buying him a lunch at the exclusive Ritz-Carlton hotel in a vain attempt to end the "anarchic disorder" on the Olympic stadium construction site. Finally, Bourassa made a secret deal to buy off Desjardins, which finally allowed work to proceed. In his 2000 book Notre Cher Stade Olympique, Taillibert wrote "If the Olympic Games took place, it was thanks to Dede Desjardins. What irony!".
On 21 March 1974 as part of an extortion attempt against the sub-contractors working on the James Bay Project who refused to fire two workers belonging to the rival CNFU union, workers belonging to Conseil des métiers de la construction union destroyed the LG-2 construction site, causing $35 million in damages. The workers on the LG-2 site used their bulldozers to destroy the site they were working on while other workers set buildings afire. Desjardins was charged with incitement to violence as a result of the riot, but was never brought to trial. In response to the violence at the LG-2 site, which confirmed long-standing rumors about thuggish practices on the part of construction unions, the Premier of Quebec, Robert Bourassa, appointed a commission consisting of well-respected judge Robert Cliche, prominent Montreal labor lawyer Brian Mulroney and vice-president of the Centrale de l'enseignement du Québec Guy Chevrette to investigate corruption in the construction industry in Quebec. The legal counsel to the Cliche commission was another prominent Montreal lawyer, Lucien Bouchard. The commission had a narrow remit to examine only the question of freedom of expression within Quebec construction unions, but the commission soon began examining the question of the relationship between the construction unions and organized crime.
The Cliche commission established that the Quebec construction industry was dominated by casual brutality with thuggish union bosses teaching union organizers how best to break legs. Workers who complained about corruption on the part of their bosses had their dogs murdered and their teenage children beaten up. The columnist Peggy Curran wrote that the Cliche commission uncovered:
...tales of nepotism, bribery, sabotage, blackmail and intimidation; charges of union organizers with criminal records who gave lessons in how to break legs; thugs-for-hire who would happily beat up a rival union organizer's teenager or strangle their dog. Almost as frightening was an aura of complacency, a 'So what?' and 'What you gonna do about it?' reaction from key witnesses and from union rank-and file. As one union delegate put it, "How do you think a government commission is going to settle problems if the workers themselves are not willing to respect the law? By increasing the number of baseball bats in circulation?".
During the hearings, a connection was established between Bourassa's office and Desjardins. It emerged that Bourassa's special executive assistant, Paul Desrochers, had met Desjardins to ask for the support of his union in helping the Parti libéral du Québec win a by-election in exchange for which the province would guarantee that only companies employing workers from the Conseil des métiers de la construction union would work on the James Bay project. The hearings had already established that the Conseil des métiers de la construction had donated to the Parti libéral du Québec generously and there were links between several ministers in Bourassa's cabinet and the Conseil des métiers de la construction. An aide to the Labour Minister, Jean Cournoyer, was overheard in an intercepted telephone call to Desjardins arranging for him to have his thuggish "soldiers" pack a reelection rally for Cournoyer in his St. Jerome riding. Cliche asked Cornoyer: "How could you tolerate illegal acts without doing anything? The disruption of a parliamentary commission by union goons, for example?" In response, Cournoyer replied: "I am only the labor minister. I don’t have the police". The exchanges between Cournoyer and Cliche grew increasingly heated as Cournoyer disclaimed responsibility for his portfolio under that the grounds that he was too busy to look into allegations of union corruption, leading Cliche to scold him: "“Responsibility, and I’m talking on a much higher plane, responsibility for a ministry and its faults cannot be explained by saying: 'I don’t have time' or 'I’ve got too much work'". Bouchard had wanted to call Bourassa as a witness to testify about his links with Desjardins, but Mulroney prevented this, saying having the Premier of Quebec testify before the commission would be a violation of "executive privilege".