Ten years ago this month, the massively controversial municipal mergers unified Montreal, creating the visionary "one island one city" that many gleefully espoused and many others vehemently condemned.
Most Westmounters were entrenched firmly in the latter camp, fighting the idea right up until the final stroke of the pen that created the huge megacity of Pierre Bourque's dreams and Peter Trent's nightmares. But no matter how hard fought those battles, no matter how loud the warnings, the provincial government charged blindly ahead and set up what can now be clearly seen as an ill-advised political and administrative blunder that continues to cost taxpayers dearly.
Mayor Peter "I Told You So" Trent, whose anti-merger and subsequent demerger crusades put him in the front trenches of the battle for several years, was recently cited in Henry Aubin's Gazette column for pointing out that overall operating costs across the island have reportedly increased by nearly $1 billion - a huge amount, even by Westmount standards. This all harkens back to those dark days of 2000, when the dreaded Y2K menace was promptly replaced by the much more tangible threat of an island-wide borough system to replace the existing structure of the City of Montreal surrounded by independent municipalities. Trent and a handful of others kept up a barrage of rhetoric that warned of increased costs and decreased services that would certainly result with the mass-centralization of the municipal structure.
Few listened, in fact as Aubin pointed out in that same column, the megacity idea was roundly supported by the French-language media, including the moderate La Presse and its two more diametrically opposed counterparts, Le Devoir and Le Journal de Montreal. Those who spoke out against the mergers were ridiculed in some of the more outlandish pieces, portrayed as a group of misguided souls who just didn't get it or refused to realize what was good for them.
Ten years and $1 billion per annum later, we have to ask just who was misguided after all, and where are the main culprits behind this travesty of judgement? Pierre Bourque, the Montreal mayor who pushed long and hard for the megacity - no doubt fancying himself the obvious choice for the big leader of the big town - skulked off into the shadows after the first megacity election, leaving Gerald Tremblay to deal with the problems he had fought so hard to create. Lucien Bouchard, the PQ premier responsible for pushing Bill 170 through the National Assembly and thus creating the megacity structure, has retired to private life, while Louise Harel, the PQ's Municipal Affairs minister who ushered in the legislation, remains the only player in this whole scenario who actually seems to want a crack at heading this badly flawed municipal entity, having assumed Bourque's old post as head of Vision Montreal - where she currently serves as Opposition leader and Mayor Tremblay's harshest critic. So far, no one has offered taxpayers any apologies for their hand in creating a modified structure which, as our 20-20 hindsight tells us, should never have been tampered with at all.
From rampant allegations of corruption to escalating expenditures and a literally crumbling traffic infrastructure, it would be an understatement to say that Montreal is not faring well, even if these problems are not direct results of the megamerger. Despite the successful demerging of Westmount and several other municipalities six years ago, it continues to flounder in a most ungainly way, desperately trying to keep afloat by taxing everything in sight - including Westmount, whose 2012 bill from the Montreal Agglomeration rings in at nearly $50 million.
Ten years later, it is difficult to look back on those heady days of mergers and demergers with any sense of nostalgia. Aside from the bonding effect it had on Westmounters, creating a patriotic esprit de corps among the countless activists and volunteers who mobilized to fight for their city, there is very little to celebrate in the deliberate dismantling of a municipal structure in favour of a much less efficient one. This is probably why Henry Aubin was moved to point out, in that same column, that the Jan. 1 anniversary of what he described as this "sad misadventure" passed unobserved by the very people who worked so hard to impose it upon us.
On the other hand, a much more appropriate reason to pop a few corks will present itself on June 20, 2014, when Westmounters mark the 10th anniversary of their demerger referendum victory.
