Tag Archives: Montreal election

| Montreal, Opinion

Time to have an adult conversation about municipal corruption

Before a week ago, Benoit Labonté liked the attention.

But then, journalists started to discover things about him.

The timing wasn’t a coincidence. According to anonymous sources that came forward, Labonté’s constant criticism of Mayor Gérald Tremblay and his Union Montreal party as being corrupt was a hypocrisy too outrageous not to be challenged.

When reports by Rue Frontenac’s Fabrice de Pierrebourg (confirmed by Radio-Canada but ignored by TVA) and TVA’s Paul Laroque came out that Labonté asked for and received large cash contributions from city contractors (including the water-meter-infamous Tony Accurso) while he was running for the leadership of Vision Montreal in 2008, Labonté’s first reaction was from the standard politician playbook: deny, deny, deny.

It’s a no-brainer. Either he’s telling the truth that this is a smear campaign against him, or he’s lying. But if he’s lying, then the crime will destroy his political career and nobody will care about the coverup.

When Labonté said he would step down, supposedly to prevent being a distraction to his party, it was pretty obvious to everyone he was guilty. Innocent people don’t resign during an election campaign because of false charges.

But the media had to play along. Without absolute proof of his guilt, they couldn’t report what they were all thinking privately.

When Louise Harel accused Rue Frontenac and others of outright lying, as if these news organizations would all risk their reputations on such a serious accusation without conclusive evidence, nobody could say that was bullshit. When she blamed Union Montreal for making up a story, the media had to assume that was a possibility. (Of course, Union Montreal could very well have had a hand in this story, but they certainly didn’t make it up.)

And so everyone had to act surprised when, a day later, Harel announced she asked Labonté to resign as a candidate for Vision Montreal. (Because the nomination period has ended, Harel could not replace Labonté on the ballot. So the Ste. Marie district of Ville-Marie will have no Vision Montreal city councillor to vote for.)

No apologies

During her press conference, Harel made it a point to “saluer” the work of investigative journalists, supposedly the same ones she had called liars the day before. She offered no apology for attacking their reputations the day before.

Neither did Labonté, who went tell-all in an interview with Radio-Canada television four days later.

I’m sure Rue Frontenac, TVA and Radio-Canada won’t lose any sleep over it. But Harel and Labonté called them liars. They threatened to sue. They attacked the integrity of these organizations. Even though Labonté still denies taking money, it’s clear he attacked them to save his own skin. Don’t they deserve an apology?

They didn’t get one that I could see, even though Labonté did his interview ostensibly to save his reputation.

Only a politician would think he could save his reputation while at the same time admitting he outright lied to people about his integrity.

And yet, journalists are treating his two-hour interview (which Radio-Canada has decided to show excerpts of but not air or put online in its entirety yet) as if he’s come clean and can be trusted. Even though this interview contains such hard-to-believe statements as he lied to protect his party. So all the accusations he’s levelled against Gérald Tremblay suddenly have a new air of trustworthiness to them.

I certainly wouldn’t take Labonté’s accusations against Tremblay at face value, even now that he really has nothing to lose by finally being honest with us. Nor do I take the statements of disgruntled former Vision Montrealers that they warned Harel about Labonté with anything other than a giant grain of salt. But Labonté’s statement (supposedly quoting Tremblay) that this kind of corruption is what municipal politics is all about, that makes a lot of sense.

A poster plastered on the Champ de Mars metro window

A poster plastered on the Champ de Mars metro window

What now?

So now that we know the problem, what do we do? Gérald Tremblay thinks he can clean up city hall, an absurd statement if I’ve ever heard one. Louise Harel still thinks she can sweep up the corruption, even though she was clueless about her right-hand man.

And Richard Bergeron, whose party hasn’t been touched by a corruption scandal yet (notably because he’s the only member of that party who’s ever been elected) sees his numbers slowly climb in the polls.

I don’t think Gérald Tremblay is corrupt. Nor Louise Harel. Nor Richard Bergeron. But if the past few weeks and months have shown us anything, it’s that leaders can’t always account for the actions of members of their parties.

Both Tremblay and Harel were let down by high-ranking politicians. If they can’t trust them, how can they trust all 102 people running as city and borough councillors? Can any of the three parties really vouch for the integrity of that many people?

In Quebec City, the grandstanding is just as theatrical. Pauline Marois is calling for a public inquiry with a kind of urgency that suggests it can’t wait until after the elections. Jean Charest wants to wait for police investigations to end first, and hasn’t committed to anything.

The Everything Inquiry

We need a public inquiry. But it needs to be about more than municipal corruption, and it needs to be about more than Montreal. We need an inquiry into the whole system of municipal politics.

It’s clear from the actions of politicians of late that they simply can’t be trusted. We need to, from now on, work under a system that simply assumes that they are corrupt. Rather than punish people when the truth eventually comes out (because in many cases it doesn’t), we need a system that has roadblocks in place to stop every step of this.

I was under the impression such a system was already in place. There’s a reason that donations to politicians can’t be made by giving that politician money. Instead, all funds must go through the “agent officiel”, who keeps track of it. If such a system isn’t in place for leadership campaigns, or for parties in general outside of election periods, then it needs to be.

According to Vision Montreal’s website, the party has raised $300,000 from 1,180 donors. Union Montreal has raised about $105,000 from 297 donors (though that list hasn’t been updated in two weeks). I don’t know if that’s enough to run an election in a city this size (even if you’re not putting up posters). It’s $1,000-$3,000 per candidate.

Not only do I not know if I can trust that this represents all the money going into party coffers, I can’t trust that all this money really originates from the people named in those lists. And I don’t know who those people are. I don’t have time to call 1,000 people and ask if they have any connections with the construction industry.

This inquiry also needs to look to the other side of the equation. If politicians are getting money off the books, how can they spend this money without arising suspicion? Is the money being laundered somehow? Are they buying things outside the official party structure? If so, measures need to be in place to stop it.

We also need to take a step back and ask ourselves if the party system in general makes sense in municipal politics. We need to ask if political parties should be able to accept donations or if they should be entirely funded by the government (presumably based on how many votes they got the last time). We need to look at the way construction contracts are assigned. We need to ask if the contracting of construction work (rather than doing things in-house) makes sense.

In short, we need to look at everything.

Nine days before the election, it’s too late to start now. But starting Nov. 2, the file needs to be opened. The problem is too systemic for whoever is elected mayor to fix it from the inside, no matter their honourable intentions. And you can bet it’s in a lot more places than Montreal.

Of course, there’s no need to take my word for it. The Gazette’s City Eye blog is developing a top 10 list of things to do to combat corruption, taking suggestions from the audience and talking to experts. #1 on the list is the public inquiry, but other items are worthy of note.

| Montreal, Technology

Projet mobilizes the Internet mob

If you notice that online polls are biased heavily toward Projet Montréal, it’s partially because that party’s supporters are young and Internet-connected, and partially because Projet Montréal is pushing its members through Twitter and Facebook to tip the scales of those polls.

Because, in the grand scheme of things, this is where a political party should be focusing its efforts.

Hey, it worked for Ron Paul and Lyndon Larouche, didn’t it?

| Montreal, Technology

Ile Sans Fil in the park

Both Union Montreal and Vision Montreal have an element on their platforms that some technologically-inclined Montrealers might find interesting: free (or cheap) wireless Internet access in public parks and other public areas.

The idea isn’t new. The city first approached the volunteer group Ile Sans Fil more than two years ago to talk about setting up such a system. Ile Sans Fil provides free wireless Internet through more than 150 access points in the city, most through places like coffee shops who pay ISF a small fee.

The city has even conducted studies and hearings on the subject, and a presentation given in November 2007 resulted in only one comment, in support of the project. In a report, filed at the beginning of 2008 (PDF), the city’s commission on economic development recommended setting up a network with Ile Sans Fil.

For various reasons internal to the city’s operation, this issue has been sitting on a shelf since then. ISF even appealed to the public in August 2008, (perhaps prematurely), though specifying that the group wasn’t in danger if the deal fell through. ISF were expecting a call for tenders earlier this year on a free wifi project, which it would then bid on and be a clear favourite for, but it never came.

Both Tremblay and Harel should be somewhat embarrassed to have this on their platforms. Tremblay because the city hasn’t acted on this yet despite the preliminary work being done, and Harel because it was an idea of the Tremblay administration that her party has now stolen.

| Montreal, Opinion, Web design

Dear “Friends of Louise Harel”

Friends of Louise Harel

Friends of Louise Harel

Good for you with the website rallying anglos to the defence of Louise Harel. Providing a new voice in the election campaign is always welcome. And you’re getting the francophone media to use anglo headlines, which is always a plus.

Here’s the thing: Maybe people would believe you more about the surge of Montrealers from ethnic communities who have come out in support of her if the pictures on your website weren’t stock photos from a U.K.-based stock photo service.

These aren’t Montrealers, nor are they friends of Louise Harel, so why are there pictures of them on your website? Does Harel not have enough real friends that you’ve had to import pictures of fake ones?

UPDATE (Oct. 5): And I see you’re also plagiarizing blog posts. (Original, FOLH version)

| Montreal, Technology

Montreal parties and copyright

The four major parties vying for control of Montreal city hall (yeah, let’s go ahead and include Louise O’Sullivan) all seemed to have embraced the new online trends. They all have Facebook and Twitter (though some use the latter more than others). The two top contenders also have YouTube channels and upload official candidate photos and campaign photos to Flickr.

But, I wondered, do they really have a firm grasp of social media? We’ll set aside the fact that none of the four websites is fully bilingual, and move on to the fine print: how do the four parties handle copyright?

Since these are campaign websites, one would expect they would want to encourage dissemination of their pictures, slogans and press releases as much as possible. But that’s not exactly the case.

  • Union Montreal is the only party to release its content (Union Montreal’s fine print is still French-only) under a Creative Commons license, though it is the most restrictive of such licenses. It does not allow commercial use of the content (which could conceivably mean not publishing candidate photos in commercial media), nor the creation of derivative works (which would prevent activists from creating mashups of those photos). Also, all the party’s photos uploaded to Flickr are still marked “all rights reserved”, which is the default copyright license.
  • Vision Montreal’s fine print (the only one available in English, ironically), is complete boilerplate legalese: “All content, including texts, articles, photos, images and illustrations, belongs to Vision Montréal or the appropriate authors. It is forbidden to modify, copy, distribute, broadcast, transmit, represent, reproduce, publish, concede under license, transfer or sell said content without prior authorization from Vision Montréal or its appropriate authors.”
  • Projet Montréal’s website has no fine print, no indication of a copyright notice, in either language.
  • Parti Montréal Ville-Marie (Louise O’Sullivan’s party) is vague about its copyright license, saying that use and reproduction of its content can be used only for journalistic and activist purposes.

If these parties want bloggers and others to promote them, especially online, they need to be a bit more permissive than that.

| Montreal, Opinion, Radio

Louise … umm …. uhh … umm … how you say … Harel

It was a train wreck, but we all knew it would be.

A few days after declining to participate in an English-language debate hosted by CTV, Louise Harel willingly subjected herself to a one-hour interview on CJAD on Saturday afternoon.

CJAD hasn’t posted audio of it online, but I recorded it and compiled the best of its unquotable moments. You can listen to it here: Louise Harel on CJAD (edited, MP3)

Her English wasn’t just bad, it was atrocious. During the 30 minutes of interview, I counted a total of 19 times that host Anne Lagacé-Dowson suggested words that Harel was struggling to find. (In one case, it was the word “expensive”.) At one point, Harel gave up entirely and gave an answer in French for the host to translate.

Perhaps Harel and her handlers never listened to the station, but I can think of no worse platform for a unilingual francophone ex-PQ minister and municipal merger advocate than the last great bastion of angryphonism.

It’s noteworthy that Harel chose to come on the Saturday afternoon show of Lagacé-Dowson, the former CBC radio host who left the Corp to unsuccessfully bid for a seat in the House of Commons for the NDP. (She’s now the permanent host 1-4pm on Saturdays.) Normally, high-profile guests sit with Tommy Schnurmacher on weekday mornings or Ric Peterson during the drive-home hours.

Stories about Harel’s genuine but failed attempt to reach out to anglos appear in The Gazette and on CJAD’s website. CTV’s cameras were also in the studio. French media seems to have ignored the gesture entirely. The Gazette has some fun at Harel’s expense, but even that is downright laudatory compared to some of the comments made by CJAD listeners who called in. One said she “exemplified hatred for the English-speaking community” and was “trying to destroy our community,” while another used the word “racist” in describing PQ language policy. No wonder Harel said she was “afraid to speak in English” for fear of committing a major political faux pas and being branded something worse than a green-skinned witch.

All three stories about the discussion also mention the fact that she was 25 minutes late to the interview. (Her explanation was that she was giving another interview to a community radio station and couldn’t get to the studio on time.) It was 1:21pm by my watch when she got in the studio, and she was at the microphone a minute later. She missed about 11 minutes of actual talk time, during which Lagacé-Dowson filled otherwise dead air with a biography of the Vision Montreal leader and took a couple of calls. Cutting out the ads, traffic and news breaks, Lagacé-Dowson and Harel talked for 30 minutes after she finally arrived.

Why bother?

I’m not quite sure why Harel decided to be interviewed on CJAD. Perhaps it was to prove a point that she doesn’t hate anglophones. Perhaps it was just to get it over with. Or perhaps she lost a bet.

But listening to the interview, it becomes clear why Harel chose not to participate in an anglo television debate. She has literally nothing to gain from such an embarrassment. Her approval among anglophones according to the latest La Presse poll is an astonishingly low 6%, way below Gérald Tremblay and Richard Bergeron. I think George W. Bush has better support from anglo Montrealers. Stumbling through severe language difficulties to give un-nuanced explanations of why she supports policies that anglophones are most opposed to is an exercise in futility. “For Harel to try to debate in a language she doesn’t really speak would have been an excruciating waste of time for both her and any listener who isn’t a masochist,” says Gazette columnist Don Macpherson.

CTV offered simultaneous translation, which would have given us something similar to what we had in the 1997 French leaders’ debate where Preston Manning spoke in English to a French audience. That might have been easier for everyone involved, but it’s easier still to simply write off a segment of the population you have no chance of winning anyway. The BQ and PQ don’t campaign for anglo votes, so why should Harel?

Irrelevant? I think not

I don’t think that mastery of the English language should be a requirement for being mayor of Montreal. The city has had mayors in the past whose English skills have been sorely lacking, and so far no civil wars have erupted. Richard Bergeron’s English isn’t all that much better.

But there’s this talking point circulating among Harel supporters (and militant sovereignists) that the ability to speak English is completely irrelevant to the job of mayor.

Sorry, but it’s not. No matter what the law or the city’s constitution says, Montreal is a bilingual city. The national anthem at Canadiens games is sung in two languages, we pay for our shish taouk with bilingual money, and panhandlers start off their begging with “anglais/français?”

Harel herself is the first to admit that this lack of skill is a strike against her. The job of mayor isn’t simply about creating legislation and voting in city hall meetings, it’s about being a leader, about representing Montreal on the national and international stage, and (for better or for worse) about giving speeches, cutting ribbons and writing those letters you see on Page 2 of municipal newsletters and festival programs. And like it or not, these things require the use of English.

This same irrelevance argument is made about Harel’s views on Quebec sovereignty. Even asking the question is considered “totally out of line.” Since when is someone’s political views irrelevant to politics? Sure, Montreal’s mayor doesn’t have the power to make a unilateral declaration of independence, but identity politics have defined political discourse here for decades, and there are plenty of related issues (language, for example) that do have an impact at the municipal level. Playing this not-my-jurisdiction game seems ludicrous to me. If Stephen Harper were asked a question about his views on health care or education during a campaign, would those too be considered “totally out of line” because those things are provincial jurisdiction? Of course not.

No platform

I get the point: We know she’s a sovereignist, we know she can’t speak English very well, and we know she brought in those forced municipal mergers (which, despite the stereotype, didn’t just piss off anglophones in Montreal). We should be debating the “issues” instead. Looking forward, you know.

But we can’t. Because over a week into the campaign, Vision Montreal hasn’t released its platform yet. Neither has Tremblay’s Union Montreal, although one can extrapolate their policies from the past eight years of governance.

And because Vision Montreal is a shell of a party that really has nothing to define itself by other than its revolving-door leadership post, we have to wait until a platfom is released to debate the issues. (Though apparently Harel and Trembaly don’t – they already had a debate, with Jean-Luc Mongrain on LCN, before releasing any platforms.)

If Harel wants to move on and keep the momentum she’s built up, and maybe even attract a few anglo votes on the issues that really matter, that platform needs to be released soon. And it better have some good ideas.

| Montreal, Opinion, Web design

Union Montreal’s new website

Union Montreal's "English" website

Union Montreal's "English" website

I got an email Friday morning, just as the municipal election campaign officially began, informing me that Union Montreal has redesigned its website.

So, of course, I checked it out with my usual critical eye. I was pleasantly surprised by what I found. The design was clean and simple, the page looked fine even with the style sheet turned off. They’ve got the usual Facebook and Twitter and YouTube and Flickr accounts. They’re even releasing their content under a Creative Commons license.

Great, I thought. So where’s the English version?

After a bit of searching, I could find some pages that had a link at the bottom that said “English”. That would bring me to an English version of those pages. But then I’d click somewhere and it would bring me back to the French website. Or it would be the English page and all the navigational text would be in French.

I asked the guy who emailed me, Marc Snyder, what’s up with all that. He said they’re working on it:

We’re progressing in the right direction: I think this is what a work-in-progress is all about ;-)

Building a website that’s bilingual isn’t easy. Most cool content management systems don’t think of building in support for bilingual websites. So many do so through third-party plugins. In this case, the website is WordPress based and they’re using the Qtranslate plugin.

But to launch a website so publicly without even basic information in English (at first, there wasn’t even an English bio for the mayor) seems a fairly major gaffe. Even now, most of its content isn’t accessible in English. Instead, you get a short apology with a link to the French version.

Remember, this is supposed to be the anglo party, embracing both languages of this diverse metropolis. Vision Montreal, with ex-PQer Louise Harel who speaks little English, and Projet Montréal, which doesn’t even translate its name into our language, both have better English versions of their websites.

Maybe next time someone from Union Montreal criticizes Louise Harel for alienating anglophones, she can point out the fact that people don’t need to look up what “Arrondissement de militantisme” is before they can donate to her party.

Oh wait, she can’t. Neither can Michel Richard Bergeron. Because both Vision Montreal’s donation form and Projet Montréal’s donation form have random untranslated bits of French on them.

I realize this is small-time politics and we’re not dealing with real big budgets here, but these are forms people fill out to give you money. If you’re so careless about translation, I can only imagine what kind of controls you have on the $100 I’d be putting in your campaign fund.

Colour me pas impressionné.

| Montreal, Opinion, Public transit

Time for new blood on the STM’s board of directors

Brenda Paris

Brenda Paris

Mayor Gérald Tremblay got yet more bad news when he found out that the president of his party, Brenda Paris, has defected to rival Vision Montreal to run as a borough mayor.

In addition to her various roles with government and non-profit organizations in the city, Paris is a member of the Société de Transport de Montréal’s board of directors. There, she serves as the “transit users’ representative”, which means she represents regular people like us who take the bus and metro to work every day.

It’s one of two seats on the board set aside for this purpose. The other is for a paratransit users’ representative, and is currently held by Marie Turcotte. Both Paris and Turcotte have served since 2001, making for quite a long tenure.

All the other seats on the STM’s board are held by municipal politicians. Borough mayors, city councillors, or representatives of on-island suburbs. Now, having declared herself as a candidate, Paris has become one of them. (One might argue she was already one of them being president of a political party.)

I’m pretty sure that when the “transit users’ representative” was added to the STM’s board, this wasn’t what they had in mind for it. There are already far too many politicians on the board, and far too few people from the community.

I don’t know Brenda Paris, and I have no reason to believe that she’s anything other than an outstanding person. But after eight years on the STM’s board, I think it’s clear that she has more connections to municipal politicians and civil servants than she does regular transit users. It’s not a personal fault, it’s just the natural progression after eight years and being so involved in politics.

The STM has done a lot for transparency, and is continuing to improve (putting documentation online, for example, and releasing annual reports with useful statistics), but there are serious deficiencies, starting with the board of directors itself. While the agendas for meetings are published in advance, the items are vaguely described, and there is no supporting documentation available. Reference could be made to a new bus route in the agenda, but a description, map or schedule of that route isn’t available before or at the meeting to interested users.

At the meetings themselves, time is set aside for questions from the public (which usually comes in the form of complaints about individual cases of inconvenience from people who clearly have nothing better to do with their time), but when it gets down to business, there is never any discussion of the millions of dollars of projects approved unanimously. The actual meeting, with a dozen items on the agenda, lasts for less than 10 minutes, with the secretary noting only who was present and who moved and seconded various motions.

It’s time for a new transit users’ representative on the STM’s board. Perhaps even one selected by the transit users themselves instead of by political appointment. (I focus on Paris and not Turcotte here, though if a paratransit user was willing to serve on the STM’s board I would suggest change there as well.) And I think some consideration should be given to term limits for these positions.

I don’t know if Mayor Tremblay has the power to remove Paris from the STM’s board because she defected from his party (or whether he’d be so petty as to remove her strictly for that reason), but even if that doesn’t happen, I think she should recognize it’s inappropriate for her to continue serving on this board in this capacity.

I’m sure Brenda Paris is an asset to the STM, and would even suggest that she be appointed to one of the political seats on the board in the event she wins in November’s election. But she’s taking up a seat that needs to be filled by someone with new ideas and a better perspective on the issues that transit users face every day, someone whose votes won’t be clouded by the worry of how they might be seen on the campaign trail.

For that reason, I respectfully suggest that she resign.