Twenty years later | The impossible balance sheet of municipal mergers

(Quebec) Twenty years ago, in January 2002, Quebec experienced a major transformation. Dozens of towns and villages have been merged into regional hubs, municipalities called upon to clearly play a role of local leadership. This round of municipal mergers was the culmination of many years of reflection…and tension.

Denis Lessard
The Press

A few days before the announcement of his resignation, on December 19, 2000, Lucien Bouchard had presented these municipal mergers as the most important reform to have occurred in Quebec in 150 years. “No government had the ability and perhaps the courage to tackle this big chunk. This legislation is one of the major reforms put forward by the various Parti Québécois governments,” he noted on the day Bill 170 was passed by the National Assembly.

A few months earlier, in private before a group of advisers, the same Prime Minister had seemed more perplexed: “I am in favor of the merger of Jonquière and Chicoutimi, but I know that I will not see that in my lifetime”, said this son of the region. Saguenay, the city born from their merger, now exists.

Quebec swallowed Sainte-Foy after an epic clash between the late Jean-Paul L’Allier and Andrée Boucher. Illustration of the acrimony of the debates around this issue, the Minister of Municipal Affairs at the time who piloted this reform, Louise Harel, was not kind to Ms.^me Boucher, mayoress of Sainte-Foy, downright hostile to the merger. “When she talks, I feel like it’s toads, mud and grass snakes coming out of her mouth,” Ms.^me Harel, who later apologized.

The mergers are the culmination of a reflection begun 30 years earlier.

In 1965, the Bélanger commission on municipal taxation already observed that municipal organization was often irrational, that municipal services and equipment were misused. Its main recommendation was to carry out ambitious groupings. In the late 1960s, Unionist Robert Lussier recommended the establishment of new urban communities. Three years later, Lawrence Hanigan’s report on Montreal proposed reducing the number of municipalities on the island from 29 to 19.

Twenty years later, a new report recommended the creation of a council for the entire territory of the metropolis. Jean Drapeau hammered home “An island… A city”. A mantra echoed by Pierre Bourque in May 1999 before the Board of Trade of Metropolitan Montreal.

160 cities merged

A decisive step was taken towards the mergers in November 2001. The citizens then elected their mayors, the presidents of the boroughs and the councilors of the towns which were to see the light of day in January 2002. With the stroke of a pen, we proceeded the merger of 160 towns and villages in nine municipalities comprising 60% of the population of Quebec.

Seven cities in particular emerged as a result of the new distribution of the cards.

Montreal absorbed about twenty neighbors. Quebec has regrouped with Sainte-Foy, Charlesbourg and L’Ancienne-Lorette. Gatineau now stretches from Aylmer to Buckingham via Hull. Longueuil goes from Boucherville to Brossard. Sherbrooke swallowed Lennoxville, Rock Forest and Fleurimont. Trois-Rivières swallowed Trois-Rivières-Ouest and Cap-de-la-Madeleine. Chicoutimi joined forces with Jonquière and La Baie to form Saguenay, a name chosen to avoid displeasing the residents of one or other of the former municipalities.

Elsewhere, almost everywhere, more modest groupings are appearing. Lévis with Saint-Nicolas, Saint-Romuald among others. Other medium-sized cities have swallowed up their neighbours: Shawinigan, Rimouski, Val-d’Or, Saint-Hyacinthe, to name but a few examples.

Twenty years later, Louise Harel considers that her reform was necessary and deplores the fact that, when it came to power in 2003, the Charest government accepted the holding of referendums which somewhat fragmented the unified territories.

Politically, this operation was a way of the cross – Louise Harel had to submit 18 memoirs to her colleagues in the Council of Ministers, worried about the consequences of this upheaval. More than Camille Laurin for Law 101, which had to go back to the drawing board 14 times. She had to suffer the wrath of the PQ caucus on about thirty occasions.

Montreal on the brink of bankruptcy

And all this process had been initiated to solve the recurring financial problems of Montreal, she underlines. “Montreal was on the verge of bankruptcy in the years 1997-2000. It had been necessary to create a public institution, the Société Marie-Victorin, to accommodate the transfer from Montreal to Quebec of facilities such as the Biodôme, the Planetarium, the Botanical Garden”, essentially an accounting operation which enabled the City to balance its budget.

Chairman of the committee charged by Lucien Bouchard with making proposals on Montreal, Louis Bernard still believes that the mergers have delivered the expected economies of scale. “Having one water treatment plant is better than having five on the same territory”, he illustrates. In addition, the standardization of services has improved the lives of residents of less favored areas in the past.

At the time, his proposals for the establishment of 29 districts, under the supervision of the center, caused discord.

The population was going to “go up to the barricades”, swore Luis Miranda, mayor of Anjou, and Peter Yeomans, mayor of Dorval, warned that there was no question of his city letting itself “be siphoned off its wealth for a city that is in total mess”.

Liberal leader Jean Charest was rather in favor of mergers, but one of his deputies, Roch Cholette, elected in Hull, had an unexpected resolution adopted by a general council of the PLQ. If elected, the Liberals promised, the forcibly merged towns could be liberated in referendums. These took place in June 2004.

The “demerged” cities became functional again in January 2006.

In Montreal, 14 cities separated from the metropolis, all in the West Island, except for Montreal East, which could then count on significant revenues from the presence of refineries, remembers Louise Harel.

Even before the Bernard Committee on Montreal, another group had been tasked with thinking about municipal taxation, with the aim of reducing the number of cities. “We had to work on the fairness of taxation for those who receive the services. To achieve this, we proposed a review of the structures, for tax reasons. But I had little hope that the government would touch the structures. To my surprise, the government even went further,” observes its former president, former mandarin Denis Bédard.

A lot of water has flowed under the bridge since then. There was the financial crisis of 2008. Then “came the pandemic, with its consequences on city centers and the budgets of public transport networks”. The true results of this reform will probably never be achieved, regrets Mr. Bédard.

Boroughs everywhere…

Its recommendations for amalgamation have been applied fairly faithfully to Quebec, Trois-Rivières and Gatineau, for example. In Montreal, the situation has always been much more complicated – the boroughs are responsible for snow removal and garbage removal, for example. Under Jean Charest, they were granted the right to tax citizens directly and sign contracts. The borough formula – originally “districts” – was designed for Montreal. Louise Harel decided that the label would be useful for all merged cities, recalls Bernard Guay, kingpin of the Bédard committee.

The one who for a long time was the expert in municipal taxation in the government has a more critical look at the results, 30 years later.

“When a government lacks money, it often proposes structural reform,” quips Pierre Prévost, associate professor in the political science department at UQAM.

In his view, mergers have been beneficial, especially for medium-sized cities. “Instead of balkanizing decision-making centers, bickering over responsibility for a landfill, for example, everyone was now pulling in the same direction,” he summarizes. But these regroupings also had political consequences: for a long time Louise Beaudoin attributed her defeat in Chambly to the merger of this city with Saint-Bruno.