Mayors cry snub over lack of invitations to Charest rally

BY ANDY BLATCHFORD

andy.blatchford@transcontinental.ca

Beaconsfield Mayor Bob Benedetti said Premier Jean Charest snubbed de-merged city mayors last month and now the Liberal leader has stuck out his cold-shoulder again.

Charest’s campaign bus rolled into Dorval for a pre-election Liberal rally last Thursday evening, but Benedetti and other West Island mayors were left off the guest list.

“I’m not surprised that he didn’t invite me after what I’ve been saying in the papers,” Benedetti said Friday morning.

But Jacques Cartier MNA Geoff Kelley said the rally was announced on short notice, so invitations were only extended to local Liberal Party members.

Kelley said omitting local mayors was not deliberate.

Still, Benedetti believes the slight was intentional.The mayors of Montreal’s 15 reconstituted municipalities have been critical of the government-created agglomeration council, which oversees regional services on the island of Montreal.

The mayors maintain the agglomeration’s structure is undemocratic and Montreal has unfairly dumped some of its financial burdens on their taxpayers.

“I suppose it would have been courteous to invite the mayors, but I guess in election time if you’re not saying what they want you to say, they don’t want you there,” Benedetti said of the Liberals. “I would have been interested to hear what (Charest) had to say to the West Island and I’m sure some of my colleagues would have been.”

The morning after the event, which drew more than 100 people to the Dorval Hilton, Kirkland Mayor John Meaney was not even aware of it.

“I don’t even know what you’re telling me about. I wasn’t invited,” he said last Friday. “I didn’t know nothing about it; that shows you how far I am away from them.”

Meaney said he wouldn’t have gone anyway.

He recalled how Charest never came through on a promise to meet the mayors before last month’s election call.

“I’m just going to bide my time and look after myself,” he said. “Let (Charest) go do what he has to do and we’ll have to look after the election and see what’s there.”

Still, two of Beaconsfield’s six councillors — Jim Hasegawa and Roy Baird—- received invitations. Hasegawa, a long-time acquaintance of Kelley’s, said he had mixed feelings about attending the rally.

“I was shocked when the others weren’t invited,” he said, adding an unforeseen commitment kept him from going, thus helping him avoid a difficult decision.

“We have to be very solid in Beaconsfield as a council,” Hasegawa said. “If the mayor comes out and says something, and I go and say something else to Charest, it’s not going to jive.”

Baird did not attend either.

Kelley, meanwhile, said the goal was to attract a flock of supporters on short notice for Charest’s appearance, so local riding associations phoned their members.

“Whenever the (tour) comes around the idea is to fill the hall, so that was our overriding concern,” he said. “It was sort of last minute so I honestly . . . hadn’t thought of inviting John (Meaney) or Bob (Benedetti).

“It wasn’t an oversight it was just something I didn’t think of.”

He said the event, aimed “to inspire the troops,” was a success. “The premier was pleased so that’s always good,” he added.

Dorval Mayor Edgar Rouleau and councillor Claude Valiquet were the only de-merged city council members present at the event. Rouleau and Valiquet said they showed up in support of Marquette Liberal MNA François Ouimet.

Still, Rouleau said Charest could have spared some time to meet with mayors while he visited the West Island last week.

“We are waiting for him,” Rouleau said. “It’s a bit disappointing he can’t find one hour or half an hour. We’ll even go to Quebec City if we have to.”