Segacs's World I Know

Posts Tagged ‘demerger’

Yes, I actually voted in today’s municipal elections. I wasn’t going to bother. After all, as I mentioned before, lack of decent choices is truly depressing. But ultimately, friends convinced me that I should at the very least exercise my right to vote, so I can exercise my right to complain later.

So I dutifully trotted over to the local polling station and listened to two women in line behind me discuss how they believed Jesus Christ was on their side and he should burn all the evil-doers and how the rioters in Paris were on their side and were burning the evil-doers… yes, these are the people who are voting for our leaders. But I digress.

Anyway, it now seems that Gerald Tremblay has been re-elected as king – er – mayor of Montreal. I guess Montrealers felt that Tremblay, who fought against demergers after promising to decentralize, is bad but Bourque, who pressed for the mergers in the first place, was worse. And I can’t really blame them for that sentiment.

Still awaiting results in my own borough of CDN-NDG. The official results site isn’t much help, either. Typical.

Update: The Tremblay team candidate, Michael Applebaum, has been elected as borough mayor.

Once again, us Montrealers are faced with the choice between really really bad and… really really bad, as we head to the polls on November 6th.

My electoral card came in the mail today, and with it, the inevitable depression that always hits me during a particularly awful election.

See, the crux of the matter is this: If over 60% of Iraqis could face the threat of bombs, guns and terrorism to exercise their right to vote, then who the hell am I to sit at home during even a seemingly inconsequential election? What gives me the right to take my right to vote for granted and to treat it so lightly?

On the other hand, what would possess an otherwise sane person to go out and cast a ballot for someone like Gerald Tremblay, who promises to fix the roads but is really just fixing his coffers after breaking his promise to decentralize and fighting the demergers tooth and nail using every trick in the book?

Or Pierre Bourque, who fancied himself king of Montreal and helped spearhead the mergers in the first place, and is hoping that a few years of Tremblay’s reign will make us forget his autocratic, dictatorial style?

Then there’s third-candidate Richard Bergeron, who promises an all-out war on cars that makes me wonder if he’s secretly having long lunches with “Red Ken” Livingstone.

*Sigh*.

And best of all? The only protest party on the ticket is the ridiculous but ultra-leftist White Elephant Party.

Hmmmm… time for a write-in campaign?

Update: It’s not all boring. At least one guy has a sense of humour:

What is this guy, some kind of comedian? Rick Blue of the satirical duo Bowser and Blue is a council candidate in Beaconsfield. The official candidates list says he lives on “Dork Drive.”

Okay, Bowser and Blue are my first nominees for write-in candidacy.

Better late than never on this one: This would be sad if it were anyone else… but because it’s Gerald Tremblay, it’s extremely funny:

Will Mayor Gerald Tremblay have to stop using “Go” in his election slogan?

Quebec’s language watchdog yesterday said it will investigate complaints that Tremblay is contravening the provincial French language charter by illegally using English on election material.

[ . . . ]

The use of the English word “Go” is not a problem on election posters and billboards because the charter doesn’t apply to signs that feature “religious, political, ideological or humanitarian” messages of a non-profit nature.

But that exception does not extend to pamphlets.

The OLF is also chasing Bourque for the crime of distributing English-only brochures in my area:

Il y a quelques jours, l’équipe Bourque/Vision Montréal a également été montrée du doigt après avoir distribué des dépliants uniquement en anglais dans les arrondissements de Côte-des-Neiges et de Notre-Dame-de-Grâce.

This election is actually very sad, because I detest both Tremblay and Pierre Bourque. I voted for Tremblay last time because he promised to de-centralize the megacity… and he promptly reneged on that promise and spent his entire term trying to circumvent the demerger process. As for Bourque, it was his egomaniacal ambition that sparked the whole merger fiasco in the first place. I have no intention of voting for either of them.

So it’s amusing to see both candidates on the defensive due to language policies designed to oppress the “maudites anglaises”.

The best graffiti of election posters seen so far: on the corner of Sherbrooke and Decarie, under a big poster of Tremblay reading “Go Montreal”, someone scribbled the word “away”. Please, M. Tremblay, just go away.

The latest Montreal megacity budget has tax decreases for most of the central and eastern portions of the islands… and tax increases for most of the West Island, including 14 of the 15 municipalities who voted to demerge.

Mayor Tremblay says it’s “not payback” for their votes to demerge… but the map rather belies that statement:

Mayor Gérald Tremblay said that the increases were not meant to punish the demerged boroughs, but were the result of the harmonization of municipal tax rates and the increase in the value of their properties.

What exactly is their justification for raising taxes across the West Island?

Executive Committee Chairman Frank Zampino said that part of the increase in costs is associated with new labour agreements and new responsibilities that have been transferred to the megacity.

You mean, the new labour agreements that were negotiated by unions made more powerful by the forced mergers, who held the city hostage? The same unions that actively campaigned against demergers? Nah, couldn’t be.

If the cities who voted to demerge weren’t sure they made the right decision, this ought to clinch it. The “not punishment” tax increases will last a year, and then the cities who voted to demerge can escape the iron grip of the megacity once and for all.

Demerger activists in cities that lost their bids due to the 35% rule are decrying it as undemocratic:

Disgusted.

That’s how Michael Vadacchino felt about the result of last night’s demerger referendum in LaSalle.

Vadacchino, a borough councillor and leader of the demerger committee, said the system implemented for the referendum vote was completely undemocratic.

[. . . ]

But getting 35 per cent of people to vote at all, let alone the same way, isn’t easy, he said.

“They made the barrier so high, they knew it would be as difficult as possible to achieve.”

LaSalle voted 60% in favour of demerger, but those 60% of votes represented only 20% of all registered voters. People who stayed home, were out of town, or who moved away or even passed away and didn’t get their named removed from the heavily-padded lists, all counted as automatic “no” votes under the 35% rule.

In the other Montreal sectors where demerger failed, the result was even closer. Anjou and Ste-Genevieve are bitter about the 35% rule as well. In Saint-Laurent, 75% of the votes cast were for the Yes side, but they represented only 28.5% of registered voters. Pierrefonds also voted over 70% “Yes”. And Roxboro and Ile-Bizard both lost by razor-thin margins.

The 35% rule was designed as an added hoop for demergerites to jump through before they could get their cities back. But despite that, I’m starting to re-examine it with interest.

Maybe – just maybe – it’s not such a bad idea after all. In fact, I think we ought to immediately apply this rule to all Montreal municipal and provincial elections from now on.

That means that Gerard Tremblay would have to get 35% of all registered voters in Montreal to turn out and vote for him in the next election. No simple majorities for you, M. Tremblay. And Jean Charest would need 35% of all Quebeckers of voting age to turn out and vote for him before he could get back into office.

With this rule, we could ensure that no politican ever got elected to any office… ever again.

A world without politicians? Sounds pretty good to me.

Whatever your opinion of the demerger referendums, the dirty tricks that cost some cities their demerger bid, or the eventual outcome for both demerged and still-merged cities, they changed the face of democracy in Quebec, as Henry Aubin explains (sorry, link requires registration, which makes me feel less guilty about quoting a large chunk of it):

The demerger voters have not only rocked the boat of Quebec authoritarianism. On Montreal Island and Longueuil, they’ve capsized it.

By authoritarianism, I mean that tradition in which elected officials – on both the municipal and provincial levels – bring citizenship to its lowest possible level on the democratic scale. In return for being allowed to vote every few years, grateful citizens are supposed to shut up between elections and let people they’ve voted into office become bullies. The public possesses no automatic right to being consulted between elections on policy issues – a right that in most North Americans and western Europeans take for granted.

[ . . . ]

These results augur a sea change in the way provincial and city governments in the Montreal region will have to relate to citizens. In the most impudent display of people power in memory, voters in many municipalities across the province have insisted on the right to have a say in decision-making between elections.

Legally speaking, the provincial and city governments will be as free as they’ve always been to treat the public highhandedly. But the political ethos has changed.

Just as the demise of the Meech Lake and Charlottetown accords created a political (as distinct from legal) precedent that has made constitutional reform unthinkable, so the collapse of mega-Montreal and mega-Longueuil will make certain practices unacceptable.

No longer will a provincial government dare to transform public institutions without an electoral mandate, as did the former Parti Quebecois government in its breathtaking abolition of more than municipalities.

No longer will a provincial government refuse even to hold public hearings on so vital issue.

No longer will it dare to embark on so sweeping an enterprise without having studies to back it up.

True, this new mindfulness by government will not be automatic. In examining yesterday’s results, politicians are not going to slap their foreheads and renounce arrogance.

No, what will change is the public’s confidence in its ability to stand up and insist on being heard – and not just by the provincial government but also by city governments and other public bodies.

In fact, with all the conflicting studies and pieces of propaganda issued by both sides, it’s almost impossible to predict whether cities that demerged will be better off than ones that didn’t. But for most demergerites, this wasn’t the issue. The point was that the government can’t steamroll over democracy.

And, at least as far as this goes, mission accomplished. Next time, they’ll think twice.

Well, the demerger results are mostly in now. Radio-Canada has the breakdown with cute little traffic lights. Looks like 15 of 22 are out of the Montreal megacity. There were less demergers in other regions.

Stay tuned for the political fallout.

Update: As predicted, both sides are claiming victory:

“I think the word is jubilation that one would apply to what is going on right now in Westmount,” said Peter Trent, former mayor of [Westmount].

And Gerard Tremblay is playing the spinning game, trying to see the silver lining:

“Montreal is bigger and stronger than it was before,” he said, noting that places like Anjou, St-Laurent, Pierrefonds, LaSalle and Roxboro, which weren’t part of Montreal before the forced mergers, now are.

Two of those lost their bids by tiny margins. And all of them had a majority Yes vote, but failed to get the 35% required. If I were Tremblay I wouldn’t be so proud that most voters wanted out.

8:30pm: The polls have been closed for 90 minutes and the results are starting to come in.

So far on the Montreal island, the Yes side has pulled it off in Anjou, Baie D’Urfé, Beaconsfield, Dorval, Kirkland, Île-Bizard, Île-Dorval, Montreal-Est, Montreal-West, T.M.R., Pointe-Claire, Roxboro, and Senneville, among others.

Dollard, my hometown till recently, is still up in the air. The Yes side is leading with 83.95%, but so far only 33.02% of voters have cast a ballot. The magic number of 35% must be reached for the result to count. There are still a number of polling stations to report, though, so it’s looking encouraging.

8:35pm: We did it!!! Dollard has 39.43% voter turnout.

8:40pm: Côte St-Luc and Hampstead are still up in the air; neither has hit the 35% mark yet. Westmount is just a few votes shy, with a lot more polls to count. And Pierrefonds and St-Laurent are both very far away and it doesn’t look like either of them are going to make it.

8:45pm: Off the island of Montreal and around the province, a number of former municipalities reached 35% but voted “No”. These include Aubert-Gallion, Beauport, Black Lake, Bromptonville, Buckingham, Canton Sutton (by a narrow margin), Cap-Rouge, Charlesbourg, Charny, Gallix, Hull, Maple Grove, Melocheville, Metis-Sur-Mer, Mont-Brun, Notre-Dame-du-Mont-Carmel, Petit-Matane, Robertsonville, Saint-Athanase, Saint-Élie-d’Orford, Saint-Émile (also by a narrow margin), Sainte-Rosalie, Sainte-Veronique, Saint-Jean-Baptiste, Saint-Jean-des-Piles, Saint-Luc-de-Matane, Saint-Rédempteur, Sillery, and Val-Bélair. There are close races in a number of others. Oh well, that’s their democratic right and at least the people had the opportunity to decide. And besides, I can take consolation in the fact that the “no” victory isn’t a victory for Gerard Tremblay.

8:50pm: The 35% mark has been surpassed in Westmount, with over 90% of ballots cast voting Yes. As if there was ever any doubt. Cote St-Luc and Hampstead are still shy of the cutoff.

8:55pm: Hampstead has pulled it off. I guess the largest polls reported last because the turnout in the end was over 50%, with more than 90% of the votes to demerge.

9:00pm: Cote-St-Luc has surpassed 35% and thus voted to demerge. It seems that on the island of Montreal, only Pierrefonds and St-Laurent have not yet reached 35%. Neither seems likely to either, though it might be close.

9:10pm: Final results in Dollard are 85.21% Yes, with 44.12% voter turnout.

9:25pm: Of the 22 former cities on the island of Montreal that held referendums today, 18 have now voted to demerge. Only Ste-Genevieve, Pierrefonds, LaSalle, and Saint-Laurent are still short of the 35% turnout needed to make their yes majorities count.

9:35pm: As several people have correctly pointed out, I’ve made an error. The 35% rule actually states that 35% of all people in each municipality must vote yes in order for the vote to count.

Therefore, the cities of Anjou, Île-Bizard, and Roxboro, contrary to my earlier report, actually failed their bid to demerge. All three had Yes majorities and more than 35% of people voted, but less than 35% of the total people voted Yes.

Ste-Genevieve and LaSalle also lost their bids to demerge, and Pierrefonds and Saint-Laurent appear to be headed towards losses as well.

Therefore, of the 22 cities on the island of Montreal that held referendums, it looks like only 15 will successfully demerge.

9:50pm: Pierrefonds has officially failed its demerger bid.

9:55pm: Dollard’s final results were actually perilously close. 37.36% of registered voters cast a “Yes” ballot, which surpasses the 35% required but is a lot closer than I would have thought. I’m glad now that I urged my friends and relatives in Dollard to take the time to vote. Unlike in most elections *ahem Federal*, every vote actually counts in this one.

Oh well, Dollard is out of the megacity and that’s what matters.

10:00pm: The results are in. 15 Montreal cities have voted to demerge. Anjou, Pierrefonds, St-Laurent, Ste-Genevieve, and LaSalle have all fallen well short of the required 35%.

And 132 people in Île-Bizard and 74 people in Roxboro are kicking themselves right now for staying home.

Hmmm, considering that Dollard and Roxboro had been merged into a single borough, I wonder what happens now that DDO has voted to demerge and Roxboro hasn’t. Does Roxboro become its own borough? Will it be merged into Pierrefonds?

Tomorrow is the last chance to save your cities. So to residents of Anjou, Baie d’Urfé, Beaconsfield, Côte-St-Luc, Dollard, Dorval, Hampstead, Île-Bizard, Île-Dorval, Kirkland, LaSalle, Montreal-Est, Montreal-West, Pierrefonds, Pointe-Claire, Roxboro, Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue, Ste-Genevieve, St-Laurent, Senneville, T.M.R., and Westmount… make sure to take a moment tomorrow and exercise your right to vote. Unlike most elections, this one actually can make a real difference.

A particular shout-out to people living in places where the advance polling turnout was especially low… particularly my home-until-recently, Dollard des Ormeaux. I can’t vote there anymore but I would hate to see voter apathy result in a loss of this chance. Remember: under the system, staying home is effectively the same as voting no. So get out there.

Despite all the dirty tricks, threats, false information and propaganda that has tainted this campaign, one fact remains and that is that the mergers were imposed by steamrolling over democracy in order to placate the unions. And while Bill 9 isn’t a magic bullet, it will go a long way towards righting the wrongs and sending the government a strong message that the will of the people cannot be ignored.

For more information on how and where to vote, see this site.

The French election debate was a bit too boring to hold my interest for more than a few minutes.

Predictably, Paul Martin came under attack, as did Stephen Harper. Also not too surprisingly, most of the commentary seems to agree that Gilles Duceppe scored the most points, and Bloc voters are unlikely to swing back to the Liberals on the basis of this debate. If Harper thought he was going to win any seats in Quebec, he also probably blew his chance tonight.

But in general, the debate was scripted, rehearsed, and had few surprises.

Tremblay versus Trent was much more interesting. Who knew Peter Trent could (sort of) speak French?