An RCMP mafia expert was on the stand Tuesday morning at the Charbonneau Commission, looking into corruption in the construction industry. 

RCMP Corporal Linda Féquière told the Charbonneau Commission of the rise of the traditional Italian mafia through the Cotroni clan in the forties and fifties, the 1970s power struggle in the Montreal mafia and the rise of the Sicilian Rizzuto family in the early eighties.

Féquière told the commission how the Rizzuto clan brought an era of cooperation between the Italian mafia and other alleged crime organizations, notably the Hell's Angels and various Colombian factions.

Féquière's testimony brought the commission up to 2004 and the inception of Operation Collisée, which would see the arrest of close to 100 organized crime figures and the start of the decline of the Rizzuto regime.