Civic Alert: No protest as faulty as Charest’s broken pledge

Their latest position, reported elsewhere in this issue, is by far the toughest so far. But it is not enough. When the votes are counted on Mar. 26, Charest must notice that his policy was costly.

This is the already the case on the South Shore, with a full defence being mounted by the Liberals, and a shade of reform even being embraced by the PQ. On the Island, there remains a lack of focus on the wrongs done to suburbanites.

Municipal leaders have just a few more days to find the key issue that will cause voters, lifelong Liberals or not, to express their disapproval of Charest’s duplicity and neglect.

Failure to indicate a meaningful protest action would line them alongside the government. They would be as much at fault as Charest himself.

These voters cannot accept the unconvincing Liberal party line that a half demerger is enough.

Also not be forgotten is the Liberals’ effort to make demerging so difficult that almost half the votes cast were disqualified and the resulting reform — the agglom — was so bad that it has become indefendable

Even Gérald Tremblay has now agreed to look at improving it! Local MNAs are embarrassed at defending it.

The Liberal guilt is not only confined to their harmful errors, but also includes their gross disregard of the original demerger promise on which their majority government was elected.

Municipal leaders must now correct these mistakes.



Words not enough



The mayors are not mincing their words. Now they are totally frustrated with trying to find an accommodation with the Tremblayites, even more with the impenetrable Montreal bureaucracy and the dishonest government

Last week they jointly issued a statement that told how it is, not what the MNAs are trying to portray. They were elected to represent 230,000 citizens, they recalled. The government does not keep it promises.

The government has passed on the opportunity to make an anticipated “significant gesture” towards taxpayers, they said. It has accepted the dysfunctional character of the agglom and endorsed the unfair, inequitable actions of the body it had created.

That’s pretty heavy hitting from one government to another. Even La Presse, saturated with election coverage, found space to record this suburban position, which was, itself, not an everyday occurrence.

But the mayors’ words are not enough.



Another way



To an extent, the election has created a pause in municipal affairs. That, and spring break time, has given the exhausted mayors a chance to recoup. Their leader, Karin Marks, has taken two weeks’ leave in the south. She will be back by Advance Polling Day

Meantime, the mayors prepare their positions. Pointe Claire’s Bill McMurchie, is Vice-President of the mayors’ association and central to the election on the West Island

He is a major figure in Jacques Cartier riding, won by Geoff Kelley with a huge majority in 2003, and a place where other mayors have pledged their allegiance to the ADQ.

“Eight out of ten people here would tell you that Jean Charest did not live up to his referendum promise. That is the case even if the citizen may know nothing about municipal politics and even less about provincial ones!” was McMurchie’s reading of his constituents.



Only two weeks



That is a very strong condemnation, so how will it translate in voting?

“Most recognize that we are far better off under the present regime than in the megacity-- by having absolute control over local expenditure and taxes,” replied the veteran mayor. “This advantage will repeat itself over and over again in the years to come.

“In addition, there is a substantial body of the legislature that would like something on the Island that fosters cooperation rather than confrontation. So the government can’t be as happy either.

“However, when it comes to the electoral process, it’s not one issue that will determine how a person will vote or what party he will support, but a series of things

“Is there discontent enough to vote the other way? There have to be some pretty strong candidates, and there appears to be no effective opposition in Jacques Cartier.

“So for it to be valuable, it has to be expressed in some other way!”

There are two weeks remaining to find that way!



Career ending



Given that four mayors — three from the extreme west of the island — were supporting the ADQ, it was expected that one of them would be a strong candidate to challenge Geoff Kelley and, in fact, a beacon for Mario Dumont.

In fact, for a time, expectancy was high that the colourful anglophone mayor of francophone Ste-Anne-De-Bellevue, Bill Tierney, would carry the ADQ banner.

But that is not to be.

Tierney is a part-time mayor presiding over a town with big development prospects. He leads his council with six standing committees that meet monthly with citizen members and where the decisions are made.

He sits on the agglom development commission and is a suburban representative on the UMQ board.

Tierney is also coming to the end of a 35-year teaching career, lately at John Abbott College. This is his last semester. He has two classes of young CEGEP social science students, who work as hands-on interns helping dementia patients at the Veterans’ Hospital.

“The timing of the election was terrible,” he admitted, “coming right in the middle of the term. I could not leave the students and at such a crucial moment.”

It is that kind of integrity that would have made him the sort of representative badly needed in legislatures. He also has an admirable ability to work in all sections of society.



Chance for ADQ



“It’s not that a heroic decision – it’s a lot of work that I can’t do at this stage. Frankly, my last experience of a party — in Gerald Tremblay’s for a time — was not very happy. I’m not a good corporate citizen, tending to think I should vote for those who voted for me, not the party. That’s Montreal’s trouble!

“Besides we are saying to people ‘You don’t have to vote Liberal because you are living in a ghetto. There is another party and it has looked at our issue with a lot of openness.

“If the ADQ only wins a balance of power, or if it becomes the official opposition, that will help our position.”

Could the ADQ yet become the Island’s decision-maker? I feel Dumont needs to produce a more cohesive municipal policy than he has managed so far. And then loud voices have to point his way.



Social studies



Belated TMR’s Vera Danyluk and Beaconsfield’s Bob Benedetti broke the suburban mayors’ boycott of the agglom council last week. Both asked about the Big City’s proposed 10-year, untendered recycling deal. But there was little point. Montreal councillors’ doubts in caucus a week earlier had caused the deal to be postponed, if not dropped.



Informal Attempts to have a public consultation on the recycling deal have failed so far, but on Monday evening Alan De Sousa, the executive committeeman pushing it through council, hosted a low-key review of the scheme for Danyluk and a few other mayors.



Back-door In a personal sort of Henry Kissinger back-door mission to China, Bob Benedetti spent an hour last week at Big City Hall trying to open Gerald Tremblay’s mind on cooperation with the suburbs.



Expanding The AMT is considering more trains on the CP line with plans to redevelop a service to Chateauguay. There will be more traffic around the Côte St Luc loop, too, as the AMT wants a Mirabel station with possibly 400 riders a day and a stop at the university development in Outremont. These, and an extension of the Deux-Montagnes line to St Eustache, could mean a payoff of fewer vehicles on the Ville-Marie Autoroute!



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