Voting day is approaching in Montreal with a busy agenda for voters: public safety, neighborhood life, public transport, green spaces, economy, environment, cleanliness, snow removal, parking, housing, taxes… phew… and I have it. past. And as if that were not enough, upstream of the party program, the degree of confidence that a candidate inspires in us plays a decisive role in our choice. I therefore wonder whether Denis Coderre passes the test. I think of him because I have doubts about him.
An investigation by Journal of Montreal recently told us that Antoine Richard, the candidate for mayor of the Verdun borough for the Ensemble Montréal – Équipe Denis Coderre party, is a land speculator with the title of real estate agent which he uses to seize opportunities for carry out flips. Being a real estate agent and a municipal councilor simultaneously, like Michael Applebaum, the deposed mayor of sad memory, should be strictly prohibited by law. The combination of these roles presents all the appearances of a conflict of interest.
PHOTO MARTIN CHAMBERLAND, THE PRESS
Antoine Richard, Ensemble Montréal candidate – Denis Coderre team
The code of ethics and conduct for members of the City of Montreal council stipulates that it is the duty of each of its members to avoid conflicts of interest, even apparent or potential. It goes without saying that a borough mayor has a lot of inside information about buildings located in his borough, whether public or private.
Could Mr. Richard distinguish the public interest that a mayor must defend from the private interests that a real estate agent naturally seeks?
This is the question that arises because this is where the apparent and potential conflict of interest lies that the code of ethics seeks to prevent. Denis Coderre does not see the problem. Far from disavowing his candidate, he reiterates his full confidence in him.
I would be curious to know if Denis Coderre would consider appointing a real estate agent, whoever he may be, to the executive committee of the City of Montreal if he becomes mayor again, if not how to explain that he deems acceptable that a mayor of arrondissement can be? How does Denis Coderre understand the role of borough mayor in Montreal? The Verdun borough has a population of nearly 70,000 inhabitants, significantly more than the population of Granby, Rimouski or Shawinigan, for example.
Businessmen?
Equally disturbing is the case of Demetra Kostarides, who is a candidate for the post of municipal councilor in Côte-des-Neiges for the Ensemble Montréal party. Mme Kostarides is linked to a financial scandal for having been an executive of a financial investment firm convicted of having scammed savers. What’s more, the real name of Mme Kostarides is Kostaredes. According to Finance and investment, a Quebec financial newspaper aimed at investment professionals, “it is this change in the spelling of its name that would have deceived the vigilance of the staff of the Financial Security Chamber (CSF)”. Mme Kostarides is now the subject of a CSF investigation.
The newspaper Finance and investment writes: “How could a representative whose practice rights were suspended in June 2003 have changed the spelling of her name, made a career in the industry under this name and even become a member of the discipline committee of the CSF? This is the kind of question the CSF will try to answer. “Mme Kostarides also had to withdraw from the professional activities of SFL Wealth Management linked to the Desjardins movement.
These companies distance themselves (to put it mildly) from Mme Kostarides, but Denis Coderre defends his candidate.
If Mr. Coderre is elected mayor of Montreal, would he consider appointing Mr.me Kostarides on the executive committee of the City of Montreal, otherwise why does he believe her suitable to act as municipal councilor in the borough of Côte-des-Neiges – Notre-Dame-de-Grâce? Elected municipal officials are not pawns in the service of the mayor of Montreal. They are at the service of their constituents and should be expected to meet the highest standards of probity.
Candidates Antoine Richard and Demetra Kostarides appear to be unscrupulous business people. Businessmen have no place on the municipal council of the City of Montreal. That these two candidates have the confidence of Denis Coderre is strange and raises doubts about his own judgment. The presence of businessmen in politics is poisonous. They are recognized by their propensity to use their function of public servant to their personal advantage in cash or in a roundabout fashion. The Charbonneau commission shed a necessary light on this painful reality. We would like Denis Coderre to have learned some lessons, the first being to never let businessmen come under his banner.
Debt of $ 400,000
Ensemble Montréal inherited a debt of $ 400,000 in the 2017 defeat. A debt that he is still dragging today because Denis Coderre left the ship rather than participating in the recovery of the finances of the party of which he was the leader. We did not see him again until last March (four years later) after he had decided to return to the fold to be Ensemble Montréal’s candidate for mayor again.
Mr. Coderre assures that it took him all this time to rebuild his health. Yet he gave Paul Arcand a first interview barely six months after the 2017 election, followed by public appearances cleverly distilled over the years to keep the mystery going about his possible return to municipal politics. He also got down to the task of writing his program book Find Montreal, whose publication shortly preceded the announcement of his candidacy.
Mr. Coderre returned to Ensemble Montreal a bit like a hair in the soup. It is as if he had resigned himself, for lack of anything better, to taking over the leadership of the party he had created in 2013. Did he consider the creation of a new party and then give it up? Only his tailor knows.
Anyway, I am worried that we may add a new debt on the shoulders of a party whose finances are already heavily weighed down, especially since if Denis Coderre loses again, we will not be surprised not that he was running away as quickly as he came back. I would be curious to know how the financing of his current election campaign is going. In 2017, his party spent $ 1.5 million compared to $ 1 million for Project Montreal. This year, Valérie Plante’s party entered the campaign with a well-stocked chest of over $ 400,000.
At the start of the campaign, Denis Coderre played the emotional card by talking at length about the personal transformations he says he experienced after his defeat in 2017. As if an election could be used to heal his ego and to close the circle of updating his inner self. I am not sure that Denis Coderre convinced many Montrealers of his transfer by this way of doing things. As a reminder, Mayor Jean Doré lost in 1994 and he too wanted to return to the helm four years later to continue the work of democratic refoundation of Montreal that the RCM, under his leadership, had undertaken in 1986 after 30 years of administration of Mayor Drapeau, but he did not make it a personal matter. He did not seek to create an amalgam between his personal difficulties and the difficulties of Montreal.
Transparency
The transparency displayed by a candidate is likely to inspire confidence. In this regard, candidate Coderre’s evasive responses about a possible contribution by the City of Montreal to the return of Major League Baseball to Montreal are disappointing, because rather than clarifying things, he adds a layer to the riddle by claiming that now is not the right time to talk about it, that there are other priorities during this campaign, that negotiations must continue, etc. We know that Denis Coderre wants baseball to return to Montreal. Finding all kinds of excuses for not saying anything about its aims is an affront to the intelligence of Montrealers.
He is hardly more convincing about his intention to allow the construction of buildings exceeding in height Mount Royal. A proposal which he then tried to dilute the scope by speaking instead of density and the need to have an “intelligent” discussion on this subject. It is not normal that the promoters are the only ones who know what he means. Mr. Coderre should have the decency to communicate to Montrealers the conclusions of his meetings with real estate developers who want to build high up in downtown Montreal. After all, it is their city.
The last of these secrecy concerns his work as a consultant. He refuses to provide information about his income and the names of his clients. In the context of an election, I have no doubt that his clients would agree to release him from confidentiality agreements if he so requested. Mr. Coderre assures that he would respect the law if he was elected on November 7. He suggests that he will publish the full list of his clients and that he will complete an expression of interest as required by law.
What he does not tell us, however, is that the declaration required by law requires the mention of the positions held by the elected official at the time it is made. If elected, Mr. Coderre will have no legal obligation to declare the names of his clients for the past four years. Mr. Coderre was mayor, he knows this law. In the middle of an election campaign, he plays the finest, he shows a lack of frankness, to say the least, not honorable.
* The author was a member of the executive committee of the Montreal Metropolitan Community. Candidate of the RCM (Rally of citizens of Montreal) for mayor in 1998. He was leader of the official opposition. He chaired the ad hoc committee that gave birth to the first code of ethics for members of the Montreal municipal council adopted in June 1990. He is a retired lawyer.
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