Quebec has invested nearly $ 150 million in six companies co-owned by a firm of Michel Ringuet while the latter was an agent of the trust of the Minister of the Economy, Pierre Fitzgibbon.

• Read also: Three ministers may have to sell their business

• Read also: Quebec has invested $ 50 million on the sly in a company close to Fitzgibbon

The investments were made in 2020 and 2021, i.e. before Mr. Ringuet gave up his place to National Bank Trust, as Mr. Fitzgibbon's agent, in January 2022.

The companies in question – Lion Electric, LMPG, E2IP, Averna, Gelpac and Meubles Saint-Damase – all count among their shareholders W Investments, an investment firm co-founded by Michel Ringuet in 2019.

Six of the 13 Quebec companies that W Investments currently has in its portfolio have therefore benefited from a boost from Quebec.

The links between Mr. Ringuet and Minister Fitzgibbon played no role in these transactions, assured the Journal yesterday David Waddell, co-founder and senior partner at W Investments.

“At no time did I know that Michel Ringuet could intervene [on behalf] of the companies we have in our portfolio,” he insisted.

No political intervention

“If we have to support our companies in the portfolio, we will do it, but it is really not through interventions with the minister, whoever he is. This is not a way of doing things at W,” he added.

According to Mr. Waddell, “the majority of growing businesses in Quebec” benefit from state assistance.

"We don't need to know who knows someone who knows a minister," he says. We go to the Investissement Québec site, there is a package of business assistance programs that exist.”

The big bosses of E2IP, Eric Saint-Jacques, and Averna, François Rainville, both maintained in the Journal that they had no discussion with MM. Fitzgibbon or Ringuet about financing their business.

"I don't know Michel Ringuet," said Mr. Rainville, adding that he "always kept very far from politics."

“We generate profits, we are not in difficulty and there is no one who has come to help us out of the trouble”, he hammered. According to him, the investment of Quebec in Averna made it possible to repel a foreign buyer.

Lack of transparency

Patric Besner, vice-president of the Institute on Governance, does not believe that Mr. Fitzgibbon should recuse himself in these files. However, he believes that the minister should have been more transparent.

“Despite the fact that there may not be a conflict of interest, it is certain and certain that both for the company and for Mr. Fitzgibbon, it is not a bad thing to to be even more transparent, especially since it has had certain problems in the past, in particular with the Ethics Commissioner, declared Mr. Besner. In other words, there must be no fault on his side [...] mainly [with regard to] the perception of the population, especially since he became superminister.

– With the collaboration of Philippe Langlois, QMI Agency

Who is Michel Ringuet?

W Investments portfolio companies that received funds from Investissement Québec and the Ministry of the Economy in 2020 and 2021

Electric Lion

LMPG 

E2IP

Averna

Gelpac

Saint Damase Furniture