Agglo will be hot topic during election: local mayors

BY ANDY BLATCHFORD

andy.blatchford@transcontinental.ca

Local mayors and Quebec election candidates are driving home the message that Montreal’s agglomeration council is going to be a key issue during the provincial campaign.

Mayors in reconstituted cities say Premier Jean Charest will shelve contentious discussions about revamping agglomeration during the campaign.

So Beaconsfield Mayor Bob Benedetti is asking locals to make it an issue.

“(Charest) doesn’t want to make it an election issue,” he said. “I think that (the Liberals) don’t care about us, period. All they care about is getting re-elected.”

Benedetti said little has been done to improve agglomeration — the council in charge of regional services on Montreal Island — since it was formed by Charest’s government in January 2006.

“The day after this election they’ll be working for the next election,” Benedetti said.

Beaconsfield residents are still fuming after being hit with tax increases above 30 per cent following de-merger last year.

Meanwhile, the 15 mayors of the reconstituted cities are boycotting the Montreal-dominated agglomeration council meetings because they have little or no say in decisions.

Instead of fixing the problem, Benedetti said the Liberals have been too busy pulling out the referendum card to scare local federalists.

“After a while you get to know where you stand as an Anglo voter in this province,” he said.

Baie d’Urfé Mayor Maria Tutino agreed the Liberals have used the fear of voting for a sovereigntist party as a tool.

“(The Liberals) are going to throw that red herring into the picture all the time,” she said. “It’s worked before and it might work again.”

However, Tutino maintains the Action démocratique du Québec is a safe option despite some mayors arguing that the party’s position on sovereignty remains unclear.

The Mario Dumont-led party earned the public support of Tutino last month, as well as the mayors of Ste. Anne de Bellevue, Senneville and Montreal West.

Tutino was sold on the ADQ when Dumont said he would abolish the agglomeration council.

“The agglo has to change. It’s obvious to everybody that it’s not working,” she said.

Tutino said the Liberals have turned their backs on the West Island’s de-merged cities — long-time bastions of the party.

“The more loyal you are the more you’re ignored,” Tutino said. “It’s pretty clear we’re being taken for granted.”

Jacques Cartier Liberal incumbent Geoff Kelley said the government deserves more credit for

returning control of local services to

reconstituted cities.

He said regional governance in Montreal was a challenge even before the forced mergers.

“We are aware that the agglomeration council as it is now set up is not working,” he said. “I live in my riding; I pay agglomeration taxes like everyone else.”

The Beaconsfield resident said agglomeration is only 14 months old and discussions between Quebec and the suburban mayors are ongoing.

“We will get it right. There will be a Liberal solution to this problem,” Kelley said.

He said the ADQ promise to dismantle the agglomeration council offers no solution, while the Parti Québécois is the party that forced the mergers.

“I know it’s a very complicated issue and I know there’s unhappiness out there,” he added.

Marquette ADQ candidate Mark Yerbury described agglomeration as a “monstrosity.”

“Mr. Charest had said he would give the autonomy back to the individual municipalities and return them to their former state. That promise wasn’t kept,” he said Monday.

Yerbury would like to see the one-tax system return to local cities and said.

Only the costs of regional services used by each municipality should be shared, he added.

The 49-year-old Dorval resident said the defunct Montreal Urban Community (MUC) was a better model to manage regional services.

Sophia Caporicci, PQ candidate for Jacques Cartier, said her party would give more autonomy to the municipalities.

“It’s very simple, we’re just going to stop all this mayhem and give the power back to the cities,” the 35-year-old Pointe Claire resident said yesterday. “The idea is to treat everybody like allies (and) to redo the whole thing to make it work.”

It was the former PQ government that imposed the municipal mergers in 2002.

“We’re not trying to rewrite history, but trying to learn from our mistakes,” Caporicci said. “(We’ll) clean it up and go from there.”

Meanwhile, Green Party Jacques Cartier hopeful Ryan Young called agglomeration a “mess.”

“This goes against local democracy,” the Ste. Anne de Bellevue resident said. “It’s out of control that these municipalities are now being forced to create revenue streams (for Montreal).”

Young said he would push for radical changes to the agglomeration council.

The 35-year-old John Abbott College creative arts professor is working on a film about the merger/de-merger story of Ste. Anne called “Bon voyage bon village.”

The Quebec election is set for March 26.