THE SNC-LAVALIN GROUP figures prominently in Hydro’s 5,000-page Great Whale impact report. The SNC-Lavalin Group is Canada’s largest engineering firm, and four of its subsidiaries did a total of 26 studies for the report.

Among them is the company Lalonde Girouard Letendre, whose president, Claude Comtois, gave $13,800 to the Liberals. Jacques Bourbeau (who gave $4,100) is the president of two other SNC-Lavalin subsidiaries—Shawinigan Lavalin, which did 18 of the studies, and SNC-Shawinigan, which did one.

The SNC-Lavalin Group has long been tight with Hydro and the Quebec Liberals. It manages about 85 per cent of Hydro’s projects, and has gone into business with Hydro on a number of ventures. Together the two firms did an environmental impact study for China’s massive Three Gorges Dam.

Along with the engineering firm Rousseau Sauve Warren, SNC-Lavalin and Hydro also received a contract in 1992 to construct a hydroelectric project in Iran. (Rousseau Sauve Warren itself did two studies for the present report, and president Roger Warren gave the Liberals $15,000.)

The president of the SNC-Lavalin Group, Guy Saint-Pierre, is perhaps the most prominent Liberal of the bunch. He was Quebec’s Minister of Education when Hydro-Quebec first started digging into James Bay in the early ’70s. Two years ago he campaigned for the Charlottetown Accord and “renewed federalism.” During the five years in question, Saint-Pierre gave $10,750 to the Liberal Party of Quebec.

• THE DESSAU GROUP is a strange case. Two Dessau companies did studies for the report—Dessau Inc., which did 13, and Gauthier & Guillemette, which participated in 37.

Dessau president Jean-Pierre Sauriol gave $8,825 to the Liberals—and $2,000 to the PQ. Paul-Aime Sauriol, another Dessau executive, was also a generous donor. From 1989-1993, these two Sauriol households altogether gave $26,675 to the Liberals and $17,000 to the PQ.

• THE ONLY MAJOR PQ donor heading one of the companies was Paul Lambert of Groupe-Conseil LNR, who gave $11,800. This company (now called Cima-Plus) did only one of the studies.