As the Charbonneau commission exposes many of Quebec's corrupt enterprises, North America's biggest municipal anti-corruption unit, located in New York City, comes to mind.

New York's anti-corruption unit has an annual budget of $20 million and access to most of the city's administrative system.

The Department of Investigation team in the Big Apple investigates about 14,000 tips, complaints and requests for investigations every year.

N.Y.C. commissioner Rose Gill Hearn said the anti-corruption unit has about 1,000 cases open for investigation at any given time.

"We are permitted by law, access to contracts, databases, the physical premise, premises of city offices. We don't need subpoenas to get that information," Hearn said.

Last year, the anti-corruption unit arrested more than 800 people after investigations pointed in their direction.

New York City's former inspector general Thomas Thatcher said a company's record of performance is not the only thing a municipality should look at before handing over a project.

"It's not enough to look at a company and say they have a superb record of performance. You must also look — do they have the ethics that we want them [to have] as part of this project?" said Thatcher.

Unlike many North American cities New York is not obliged to award a contract to the lowest bidder, something that has seemingly been a big part of the scheme in Montreal.

Lino Zambito, former vice-president of Infrabec Construction, told the Charbonneau commission on Thursday that nearly a dozen companies in his line of work colluded to divvy up the business from the City of Montreal. The companies would not underbid each other and maintain a rotation to ensure that every company got contracts.

This confession had Montreal Mayor Gérald Tremblay requesting that the province bring in legislation to give cities more discretion in awarding public contracts.

Tremblay added that, had his government known about this information in 2004, action would have been taken sooner.