Segacs's World I Know

Posts Tagged ‘gerald tremblay’

Mayor Gerald Tremblay is promising $10 billion to fix the infrastructure and drainage systems in Montreal, after yesterday’s flooding:

Montreal Mayor Gerald Tremblay called the sudden downpour of rain an “act of God.” But he spoke Wednesday about the need for the city to take steps to ensure such acts don’t end up causing headaches for residents every time they occur.

“We can’t correct a system that has been in place 50-60 years ago and that has to be revised for the 21st century,” said Montreal Mayor Gerald Tremblay.

“That’s why we have to invest billions of dollars.”

Tremblay has promised to devote $10 billion over the next 20 years to replace the system, and he has the full support of Quebec Premier Jean Charest.

Let’s put aside the issue of whether newer is better, in light of the fact that one of the worst spots is the brand-new L’Acadie interchange, just completed this year after millions of dollars of taxpayer money were spent. Our system isn’t bad because it’s old; it’s bad because it’s bad. Montreal has lousy roads, legendary potholes, poorly-maintained pipes and water mains that have a habit of bursting in the wintertime. This isn’t new and it’s not going away anytime soon.

These are empty promises for Tremblay to make. Today, he’s placating angry people who have water damage in their basements or who got stuck on flooding highways yesterday. And by the time he actually has to spend a dime, someone else will be in office – both his office and Charest’s. They’ll have other spending priorities, like referendums or language police. And we’ll all forget about it… until the next flood.

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.

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?

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?

The megacity mayor will debate the former Westmount mayor and demerger activist this Sunday.

Should be interesting, if only because the whole merger/demerger campaign so far has been run on emotions and passions, manipulation tactics, misinformation, and dirty tricks. Citizens were deprived of any kind of chance to debate the issues when the mergers were forced upon us in the first place. So there’s been inadequate focus on the real facts.

I’ll try to watch… hopefully it’ll be over by the time the Sopranos season finale begins.

I’ve maintained all along that one of the strongest arguments against the megacity – and, consequently, best reasons for demerger – is that the major unions would have less power and therefore wouldn’t be able to negotiate contracts that are ridiculously costly to the city.

Now it seems that the City of Montreal is trying to remove that incentive by hurrying to sign union contracts with city employees:

After all the delays in settling on new contracts, why the sudden rush now? At a minimum, any contracts signed in this uncertain period before demerger referendums should contain a clause exempting any boroughs that vote for independence on June 20.

Anything else risks locking any demerging boroughs into costly contracts that could, if city hall weakens, even include wasteful minimum-staffing clauses or the expensive four-day week.

[ . . . ]

The temptation to hog-tie any breakaway boroughs by trapping them into onerous contracts must be formidable. But if Tremblay thinks suburban voters are angry now, then he really doesn’t want to see their reaction to open-handed, hastily-signed new contracts.

I’ve lost count of the number of dirty tricks that the pro-mergerites have employed so far. Outdated registration lists containing names of people who’d been deceased for a decade, no door-to-door registration but door-to-door verification of list deletions, scare tactics and overly-biased campaign materials… not to mention the way the merger itself was carried out in the first place, as a steamroll over democracy.

Given all that, I find it hard to be surprised at this latest tactic. If Tremblay wants to cut off his left foot to avoid allowing citizens to demerge, then he’s a bigger fool than I thought. Unfortunately, it will once again be Montrealers who will pay.

Well, firstly, it was #1 topic of conversation at tonight’s seder. Considering a large portion of my attending family went to either the grade school or the high school sometime in their lives, it was certainly on the list of topics to discuss. As I’m sure it was at a lot of people’s seders.

Really, if you think about it, whatever sick freaks did this didn’t time it very well. Not only is the school is closed for Passover anyway, but there’s gonna be a lot of angry Jews discussing it at their seders and demanding action.

In the blogosphere, I see that LGF and Burnside have picked up the story. And Stefan Sharkansky wonders whether officials are too politically-correct to release information that would seem to implicate Palestinian-sympathetic vandals as the responsible parties:

The CBC and the Toronto Star might not want to confront the unpleasant truth about the motives and identities of the arsonists, but at least some Canadian journalists are doing their jobs:

The CTV network quoted sources who said the notes denounced recent attacks against Palestinians, including the killing of Sheik Ahmed Yassin, leader of the Islamic Hamas movement, and threatened further attacks.

The contents of the note and the name of the “unknown organization” that signed the note should be released.

If – and this is a big if – what CTV said is true about the content of the note, then it must – and will – be dealt with. Especially considering the note threatened future attacks, which is truly chilling:

“Our goal was only to sound the alarm without causing deaths. . .but this is just a beginning. If your crimes continue in the Middle East, our attacks will continue,” the letter reads.

There’s no telling whether the assholes who did this were using it as an excuse or cover-up, or whether they really are affiliated with some Hamas-sympathetic group. Not yet anyway. My sense is that the police will release details when they see fit, and until then, they might be keeping them under wraps to help them do their jobs. And anything that increases the chances of apprehending the responsible parties is okay with me.

And the political reactions continue. Here’s PM Paul Martin:

“This is not my Canada. This is not our Canada,” he told reporters in Burlington, Ont.

“They are attacking all of us. And it is only if we are unequivocal in that statement that we join together that we are preserving our values.”

And of course, Justice Minister Irwin Cotler (a UTT grad himself) wasted no time ringing in:

“As students, we experienced anti-Semitism, but it was an anti-Semitism of ignorance, of stereotype, of prejudice. What we have witnessed here today, it’s anti-Semitism of hatred, racism and violence.”

“We will not be intimidated and we will act and we will bring the full force of the law to bear against those who commit these cowardly hate crimes,” Cotler told reporters.

And Mayor Gerald Tremblay:

“These acts will not be tolerated in our city and must be denounced as emphatically as possible,” he said.

It’s good that people are taking this seriously.

Never once in eleven years of Hebrew school did I feel unsafe in my classroom (except for maybe the fear of exams, or a test tube exploding in a science lab). The current students, who are pretty much exactly like me, won’t have that luxury.

I’m just plain angry now. There should be a special section of hell reserved for anyone who targets or frightens innocent children.

Another update: It seems Michael Demmons has picked up the story. And Ted Belman at Israpundit posted about it, and included an e-mail from Lori Anders, who was a grade ahead of me in high school. The Globe and Mail, Gazette, and La Presse all have plastered the story prominently on their front pages. And the AP story is being picked up off the wires by publications as remote as the Kansas City Star.

The irony seemed to escape Mayor Gérald Tremblay, when he campaigned against Anne Myles in the Beaconsfield/Baie d’Urfé borough by-election on the grounds that she can’t speak French.

Myles ran on Tremblay’s ticket in the original election, and then later quit his party to run as an independent. Tremblay’s stung, and is trying to save his megacity against the demerger movement, which Myles staunchly supports, by pushing forth a decentralization vision.

I guess he doesn’t realize that the only reason Myles’ French ability is at issue in the first place is that predominantly anglophone Beaconsfield and Baie d’Urfé were forced to become part of this megacity.

Just demerge already and get it over with!