OTTAWA - A Montreal engineering firm has landed a federal stimulus contract while a top Tory organizer and senator in Quebec was on its payroll.
Senator Leo Housakos was hired to BPR's executive team one week before he was appointed by Prime Minister Stephen Harper to the Senate last December.
The company won a $1.4 million contract as part of a consortium to study the future of Montreal's aging Champlain Bridge less than a year later.
Housakos and BPR said the senator only worked for a wholly-owned subsidiary of BPR, and had no involvement in the contract.
But Housakos' public declarations to the Senate ethics commissioner this year listed his position at both the parent firm and the subsidiary.
His bio on his Senate website said throughout the year he was BPR's vice-president of business development, until it was removed last week after The Canadian Press began making inquiries.
Four executives from BPR and the winning consortium, as well as two officials from the federal corporation that runs the Champlain Bridge, attended a Conservative fundraiser that Housakos organized last May.
