An explosive societal, legal, and political scandal has rocked the staid world of non-profit companies with the December 10, 2025, press release by Quebec's version of the FBI, the Unité permanente anticorruption (UPAC).The communiqué announced the arrest of the five former members of the Board of Directors of Faubourg Mena'sen, a non-profit seniors residential housing complex in Sherbrooke. They are accused of selling the entire assets of the non-profit, including 172 units housing 250 tenants, to a private for-profit company and pocketing gains in the amount of almost $20 million. One of those five former directors, Serge Dubois, a long-time member of the Quebec Bar, has been alleged to have orchestrated the fraudulent scheme.Questions have been raised as to the close business or personal relations of Sherbrooke Liberal MP Elisabeth Brière to persons who organized or rubber-stamped the fraudulent scheme and as to the inexplicable silence of then-Housing Minister Sean Fraser..WATCH: Carla Beck on pipelines, trade, gun policy and Saskatchewan healthcare.But for the integrity of a Quebec Superior Court Judge and a three-Judge Bench of the Court of Appeal, and also the courageous and relentless largely pro bono campaign of a Quebec sole practitioner, Maître Louis Fortier, this story would already have been relegated to the court archives. To ensure that the $20 million doesn't disappear, the UPAC has issued freeze orders on 57 bank or investment accounts, four properties, and three vehicles in the possession of 24 physical or legal persons or trusts, including the five accused former directors.On the eve of Parliament’s review of Bill C-9, Sean Fraser’s personal brainchild, and his obsession with wanting to radically lower the evidentiary threshold to be met for a successful prosecution of ordinary Canadian citizens for “hatred”, the Faubourg Mena’sen story raises questions about then Housing Minister Sean Fraser's dismissive whatabouttery with respect to the Faubourg Mena'sen.In May 2024, on behalf of the 250 defrauded senior citizens he represented in a certified class action, Maître Louis Fortier urgently requested the intervention of the Minister of Housing..In August 2024, Sean Fraser replied in a letter to counsel that since the low-interest loan guaranteed by the CMHC had been repaid, there was no reason for the CMHC to intervene in the Superior Court class action. What then about the 250 senior citizens whose rights to subsidized lodging evaporated with the sale of the residential complex to a private for-profit company?Public documents show that, over the years, the CMHC invested $7.5 million in the housing project, guaranteed bank loans, and offered payback terms as low as 2%. When approached by Maître Louis Fortier to join in the class action to defend CMHC’s duty to the Crown as a public funder, Sean Fraser gave a less-than-elegant brush-off to the barrister..HAUBRICH: Time for feds to give up on gun confiscation.Maître Fortier pointed out to Fraser the recent sale of Faubourg Mena’sen for $18.25 million, a price well below its Fair Market Value, and the tripartite participation of CMHC in the increase in value of the property:1. Guarantee of loan granted to Cité des Retraités de l’Estrie;2. Subsidies to tenants;3. Payment of the difference of interest payments by the Non-profit (2%) and the market in the 1980s (18%).During Spring 2022, a group of Sherbrooke citizens approached the Liberal MP for the riding, Elizabeth Brière, seeking her involvement. Brière declined, replying that “everything was done by the book.”.What Brière didn’t disclose was her own blatant conflict of interest via her personal and professional relations with the protagonists in this made-for-TV drama.Brière’s husband, Notary Public François Sylvestre, of the firm Monty Sylvestre, Conseillers juridiques inc., had drafted a legal due diligence in connection with the legality of the sale of the properties owned by Faubourg Mena’sen and forwarded it to the attention of the acting notary who drafted the Deed of sale. This legal opinion is at the epicentre of the alleged fraudulent scheme of $20 million.Prior to her election as a Liberal MP for Sherbrooke, MP Brière practiced as a Notary Public and partner at Monty Sylvestre, on the same premises where Serge Dubois practiced as an “external legal counsel.”.OLDCORN: Trump’s immigration crackdown is warranted — Biden and Obama created the mess.Maître Louis Fortier put his request to Fraser in the following words:[Translation] “While a serious housing crisis is affecting the entire country, we ask you, in your capacity as Minister of Housing and Minister responsible for CMHC, to order CMHC without delay to intervene vigorously in the class action and the derivative action in order to recover Canadian taxpayers’ money that was illegally diverted, and to ensure that the [Faubourg Mena’sen] becomes what it was before the fraud of which it was a victim.”In a letter dated 26 August 2024, Sean Fraser replied to Maître Fortier as follows:[Translation] “I understand that you have already received replies from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation informing you that the CMHC is not involved in this case as the agreements entered into with this organization have now expired. After review of the situation, I hereby inform you that I share the position of the CMHC on this question.”.To paraphrase Chief Wiggum in The Simpsons, "Okay, folks, show's over. Nothing to see here.”In fact, upon a cursory review of public records, there is something to see. The timelines and the actors raise serious questions about impartiality and conflict of interest, an increasingly bugbear issue for the Liberal party.So, what to make of Sean Fraser’s hands-off approach to this issue? Loan repayment under CMHC funding agreements impacts liabilities, but the duty of care doesn’t disappear in cases of fraud. CMHC’s exposure and duty to protect the public interest remains in cases of negligence, misrepresentation, or intentional facilitation of fraud. There are varying thresholds for wilful blindness, misuse of CMHC branding, but in the Faubourg Mena’sen affair, there is an overarching issue that can’t be ignored — that CMHC invested $7.5 million in the non-profit over the years, and the increased value was pocketed by directors in a sale that has directly triggered the major criminal fraud case that has hit the news..WELLS: Old World or New World — whose side are we on?.But, given the Minister’s current zeal to water down evidentiary safeguards in his current campaign to erase hatred within the hearts of Canadians, why the reticence to address a fraudulent scheme where the accused and their accomplices are members of the noble profession or skilled artisans in statecraft?Fraser is only too ready to stigmatize ordinary Canadians or even jail them for being “involved” with detestation or vilification, whatever that means, but this selective enforcement amounts to turning a blind eye and, whether intentional or not, falls well short of his duties to uphold the rule of law. The political context sows further unease.Let’s return to the timeline. Maître Louis Fortier’s letter to Fraser was dated May 1, 2024. Housing Minister Sean Fraser replied “nothing to see here” on August 29, 2024..What happened in the meantime? The Green Slush Fund scandal revelations by the Auditor General in June 2024, probably the overriding factor leading to the stonewalling of Parliament in Fall 2024 and the eventual downfall of Justin Trudeau in the tumult that followed.The last thing that the Liberal Party of Canada needed in the wake of the Green Slush Fund fiasco was public disclosure of the direct “involvement” of Elizabeth Brière, in a cover-up of an alleged fraud arising out of a deal that was rubber-stamped by her husband, and has since led to the arrest of five former directors, one of whom shared business premises with the MP prior to her entry into the political arena..JÄGER: A secular nation has no business funding religious animal slaughter.“Nothing to see here, folks?” This is a Liberal government train wreck.More tellingly, it is a sign that the onus of proof should be reversed any time a Liberal minister or insider or “friend” derives inexplicable profits without any proprietary interest.
