Greylisted for snow-removal ineptitude, a company still scores Montreal contracts

Pavages D'Amour gained infamy in 2017 when Montreal cancelled its five-year snow-removal contract with the Sud-Ouest borough, but Radio-Canada has learned that the company is still landing city contracts.

It won seven other contracts with Montreal in the past 18 months.

Snow removal in the the Sud-Ouest borough consistently lagged behind other parts of Montreal, and the company also faced fines when a plow dragged trash along the street in Pointe-Saint-Charles and a sidewalk plow mangled a bike in Griffintown.

The city cancelled Pavage D'Amour's $5-million contract, fined the company $150,000 and put it on the so-called "grey list" for two years.

Greylisted companies can still apply for contracts, but the city can ignore them, even if they submit the lowest bid. 

At the time the contract was cancelled, a city official said it seemed the company "bit off more than it could chew."

Pavages D'Amour also had contracts for snow removal in three other areas of Montreal: records show the contract with Ahuntsic-Cartierville began in 2016 and ends this year; the contract for Lachine began in 2016 and ends in 2020; and the contract for Pierrefonds-Roxboro began in 2014 and ends this year. 

Focus on roadwork

Since being greylisted, the Dorval-based firm has bid on contracts for roadwork.

On that front, Pavages D'Amour has a much less dismal record. On one contract in Outremont, the city gave the company a score of 90 per cent for the job.

Other contracts include a 2018 commission worth $2.4 million for sewer, water and roadwork in the Mercier neighbourhood, and a $362,000 contract to build a bike path between Kirkland and Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue in the West Island.

Pavages D'Amour should be off the grey list by the end of the summer, which means it could once again start bidding on snow-removal contracts.

Even though the city didn't break any rules by awarding Pavages D'Amour, the fact they won them shows that the policy on evaluating service providers can be easily skirted, said opposition leader Lionel Perez.

Perez created the grey list as a member of the Coderre administration. He tabled a motion last month to give the policy more teeth, but it wasn't adopted.

Sylvain Ouellet, who is responsible for infrastructure at the executive committee, says the text of the motion tabled last month by the official opposition was not legally applicable.

He said the Plante administration is reviewing the policy but won't necessarily make it tougher.

Instead, the administration may implement varying degrees of sanctions, so that contractors that operate in different sectors aren't unfairly penalized for doing a poor job at things that aren't part of their core business.