The mayor of Gatineau resigns before the end of her first mandate, exhausted. Others also left in the middle of their mandate. Several mayors expressed their solidarity. And at Quebec City Hall, we fight like hell chest. Is there too much testosterone in our city halls?
No doubt, but by remaining within my areas of expertise, I will be allowed another question: have our municipal councils become unnecessarily partisan?
A little history is in order. There was a time when mayors acted like kings (there were very few women) and masters over their city and their municipal council.
At the time when Jean Drapeau reigned in Montreal, there were practically no municipal councilors who were not from his party. A budget of several hundred million dollars could be passed as quickly as saying, “Passed?” Adopted! »
PHOTO MICHEL GRAVEL, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
Jean Drapeau in 1970
In 1974, the first advisors of an opposition party, the Rally of Citizens of Montreal (RCM), arrived. Drapeau hardly changed its practices, but after the provincial elections of 1976, the Parti Québécois government had no chemistry with a mayor weakened by the Olympic scandals.
The Lévesque government is therefore launching a municipal democracy operation which targets Montreal, but will extend over time to all large and medium-sized cities in Quebec. Since 1978, all towns with more than 5,000 inhabitants must therefore comply with a law governing municipal political parties which become practically obligatory in all large cities in Quebec.
If there are political parties, it is inevitable that some find themselves in opposition, with rights and privileges and, over time, with research budgets, as in the National Assembly.
But by imposing the British parliamentary system on municipal democracy, have we really helped democracy? Do cities like Saint-Jérôme or Saint-Hyacinthe need a kind of municipal parliament, in the same way as Montreal or Quebec?
More often than not, in cities, political parties live and die by municipal elections where they present themselves as “team (insert mayoral candidate’s name here)” against another team named the incumbent mayor. We are not talking here about structured parties like the PLQ, the PQ or the NPD.
When a candidate for mayor – and therefore the leader of the party – is defeated, the elected representatives of his team often find themselves orphans and too easily take refuge in a sort of systematic opposition.
This is, in part, because the functioning of the municipal council is modeled too closely on that of the National Assembly, with question periods for opposition councilors, caucus meetings and partial financing of parties. by the state. But there is also so-called “popular” financing on the municipal scene, and we saw at the Charbonneau commission to what extent there have been abuses in this regard.
In terms of the functioning of the city, as the municipal parties wanted to show that they took their role seriously, we are applying one of the principles of parliamentary democracy as practiced in Westminster, where the old adage: “The duty of an Opposition is to oppose”. So there are municipal councilors who consider that they are paid full time to oppose.
The problem is that instead of promoting the search for consensus, we too often favor confrontation. However, at the municipal level much more than elsewhere, a large number of projects should be the subject of consensus, with municipal councilors trying to improve them rather than systematically opposing them.
This too often leads to debates that become unnecessarily acrimonious and where personal attacks take the place of a political agenda. This is when opposition speech easily becomes intimidation. We noticed it, alas! more and more often in recent years.
And faced with the spectacle of elected officials setting a bad example, it is inevitable that dissatisfied citizens will no longer treat their municipal leaders with a minimum of respect.
In Ontario, municipal political parties do not exist and it is the provincial parties (Conservative, Liberal and New Democratic) that present candidates. But after the elections, municipal political groups are not recognized. Which requires the entire council to work together. This is not always the case – politics remains politics – but this is a much less toxic political system than in Quebec.
It is often said that “too much tax kills tax”. But today, is “too much municipal democracy killing municipal democracy”?
Without abandoning the generous spirit of the democratic reforms instituted at the municipal level during the 1970s, it might be appropriate to examine whether they had the desired effects.
What do you think ? Participate in the dialogue