A leap of faith

As thousands of stomachs turned at last week’s announcement of the Montreal budget, which once again reaches into the coffers of demerged cities, no one could honestly say they were surprised. It’s as if screwing the suburbs is a matter of official policy with the Tremblay administration. He waltzed into Megacity Hall by beating out Pierre Bourque on the ‘lesser of two evils’ platform, gladly accepting the support of the suburbs, then suddenly turned on them with a vengeance.

The obligatory outburst of outrage and frustration was further agitated last week by another blast from an unpleasant past—former Côte St. Luc mayor Robert Libman, who wrote a letter to the Gazette admonishing the demerged suburbs for acting surprised at their predicament. With his trademark whiney ‘we told you so’ tone, he pointed out that everyone was amply warned of the costs of demerging—as if repeated advance notice of an impending misdeed actually justifies it.

The Montreal budget situation has escalated into another nasty standoff between the Agglom council and the demerged mayors, who have now embarked on an inconvenient—but morally necessary—boycott of Agglom meetings. The prevailing arrogance at Montreal City Hall precludes any hope that this will remedy the situation, for Mayor Tremblay has demonstrated that he and his henchmen do not trouble themselves with the will of others, regardless of the consequences.

Nowhere has this been more evident than in their recent push for the renaming of Park Avenue—convincing the majority of city councillors to vote for the plan despite overwhelming opposition by citizens. Thousands of potential voters have angrily turned against the mayor on this one issue alone—raising serious questions about the political future of Tremblay’s Montreal Island Citizens Union.

Going after the demerged cities is spiteful revenge, pure and simple, and the campaign will continue because everyone knows it can be carried out with impunity. But there is hope, for it seems only a matter of time before that always-lethal combination of arrogance and sheer stupidity will eventually sink the MICU ship—probably over something as trivial as a matter of toponymy.