Civic Alert: Too soon for summer hibernation

But it is too soon to relax. Save the Park supporters are not alone in wanting to hear that council has found a solution to the artificial turf saga. Many, including some councillors, would have liked to have seen it dealt with before the FCM.

There will be much work to be done on the alternatives to meet the soccer and other recreational needs. Council should be concentrating on the future. Why prolong the turf issue?

Council’s June meeting is this Monday evening — early this month (June 18). The next general meeting is scheduled for August 27. This is a 10-week hiatus, which is probably unprecedented.

A change of routine in summer may be recuperative, but two months is pushing democracy to the extreme.

Composition proposal

Meantime, Council eagerly hopes for the latest shoe of municipal reform to drop. The current session of the National Assembly ends next week, so everyone is being pressured to bring through anticipated reforms.

The local agglom is now discredited on all sides. Big Montreal Mayor Gerald Tremblay got a near unanimous endorsement of his plan to adopt a council made up of all the Island's elected officials, including suburban mayors. That is just as the Transition Committee proposed two years ago!

Tremblay proposes dropping the ludicrously undemocratic system which enabled him to nominate the Montreal members rather than allowing voters’ to be represented.

He has not yet apologized for pushing Jean Charest into it, nor has Charest acknowledged his folly in supporting it!

The Liberal government has put a high priority on reform of all the aggloms. The ADQ, as official opposition, requires it and is committed to abolishing them. Before accepting any compromise, the ADQ has undertaken again to consult the mayors.

The PQ, as the second opposition party, has made a backroom deal to support the Liberals; they claim credit for the forced-mergers, but not Charest’s imperfect demerger solution!

So the players have lined up — Charest, Dumont, Tremblay. The omens seem good for at least major reforms of the Montreal council.

Quebec calls again

At the Union of Quebec Municipalities conference at the end of last month, the Island mayors were represented by Bill Tierney (Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue) and John Meaney (Kirkland). Premier Jean Charest and his Municipal Affairs Minister Nathalie Normandeau went out of their way to promise them reforms.

Then last Wednesday, a delegation of nine mayors, who made a 12-hour drive to Quebec City, got a rewarding welcome from Raymond Bachand, the Minister responsible for Montreal who is leading the reform plans. There, too, were Normandeau and the Montreal Liberal caucus.

Their evening meeting took place in the cabinet offices, although Charest was not present. Nearly all the local MNAs took part.

“I have never come away so convinced that the Liberals were listening to us,” enthused Beaconsfield’s Bob Benedetti.

The situation was confirmed with a separate meeting with the ADQ and a group of MNAs led by Martin Camirand, a former member of the St Jérôme executive who is now opposition spokesman for municipal affairs.

“They were also very understanding of our position,” Benedetti added. “It was 3 a.m. when we got back, but all felt optimistic about what we were told.”

Intensive negotiations between the mayors ant the minister have been going on ever since, both by phone and e-mail.

In the demerger years, the mayors and other activists fought for the council to have such a composition. But it does not transform it.

With the hindsight gained from attempting to unravel Montreal’s inside workings — particularly the domination by the central functionaries rather than the elected — the mayors want something more.

It could be good for Montrealers, too.

Corporate model

One possibility, inspired by the unanimous report of the Pichette Commission of 1993, is a series of municipal corporations. They would be similar to the established STM, which operates the Metro and bus services with its 7,500 workers.

Its management is at arms length from the political control, although the agglom is responsible for the funding and major decisions.

Many regional services could be operated in the same way. Tremblay is, in fact, suggesting that water provision should be one of them. This is complicated under the present agglom because Pointe Claire operates its own system. Citizens there are paying the debt of building the plant, but because of agglom rules must also pay a share of Montreal’s water costs, even though they do not use it.

Liberal votes on the West Island are threatened if the double-pay method is not changed, hence Tremblay’s eagerness to alter it.

Other departments that could be operated similarly include police, fire, evaluation, regional parks and even the local Arts Council.

In a sense this is turning back the clock to the old MUC, which controlled most of these services before 2002. The big difference: there is no likelihood of the suburbs having any veto as with the MUC.

Waste reform

Other tasks that might qualify for regional supervision are the disposal of garbage and recycling. These have become Montreal’s liability although door-to-door collection are local responsibilities.

With the need to decrease the garbage and increase recycling, local direction is in the best position to promote these goals. If huge landfills are to be managed, or — very unlikely — a new incinerator is to be built, only then is it possibly a regional matter.

More feasible Island-wide might be the operation of composting facilities. However, we may need multiple plants once we take kitchen waste seriously, so perhaps this should be a local service rather an Island-wide one.

In the longer term, Mayor Karin Marks is thinking that treatment methods could become very local and responsive to those creating waste rather than giving the problem to someone else.

The idea of these separate companies is very promising. In the business world such organizational models are common. Sprawling corporations make sure that operating divisions have the freedom to work efficiently to meet their goals. Why not with Montreal?

Legal timeline

The Liberals have yet to admit it, but the demerger law was framed to punish those suburbs that took advantage of the party’s demerger promise. Mario Dumont defined it as being politically expedient rather good government.

He could make sure that its successor is more good government and less politics.

Major administrative changes would be involved in the corporation proposals —and they are only part of what is being discussed with Bachand and the ADQ.

Whatever finally surfaces, I hope there will be the opportunity for proposals to be thought through.

The rush at the end of a parliament with new legislation — sometimes changing hourly — does not seem the best setting for implementing such fundamental reform.

Bring back Lortie!

Perhaps next week’s law will set out only broad government objectives. Then wise men could fill in the details so that the precise laws could be adopted in the fall with time to make good budgets for 2008.

Where would those highly competent people come from? Why not ask Pierre Lortie if he would, with the Transition Committee, revisit and adapt their two-year old work.

They were, on the whole, Montrealers, who knew more about what was needed than a minister from the Gaspé or Quebec City bureaucrats!

It wasn’t the Lortie team that got us into this mess. They predicted it. They could provide a sound short-cut to get us out!



Community activist Don Wedge can be reached at calert@web.net. His columns are archived at www.westmountexaminer.com, go to Opinion.