Twenty years ago, referendums on demergers allowed 31 Quebec municipalities to regain their autonomy, after a brief marriage that lasted only three years. In Montreal, Longueuil and Quebec, divorces have plunged the cities into sometimes acrimonious quarrels. Two decades later, the dust has settled, but a kind of bitterness remains among demergers and defenders of big cities.
On the South Shore, in the Montreal region, the municipal demergers of 2004 gave rise to difficult tomorrows. The forced regrouping of municipalities which, three years earlier, had tripled the size of Longueuil and had forced the new city to equip itself with higher-level public security services led to an explosion in expenses that the demergers did not. attenuated.
“It was a tumultuous period,” recalls Francine Gadbois, former mayor of Boucherville, one of the South Shore towns that demerged in 2004. “We had always been part of the MRC of Lajemmerais, with Sainte-Julie. […] What I realize is that we were merged for our money. We had a large industrial park. »
But it is above all the costs caused by municipal mergers which have left a bitter taste in the towns which were grouped together against their will. “It cost us excessively more than what it cost us before,” underlines Mme Gadbois.
An amputated city
The municipalities that formed the new city amalgamated in 2001, namely Longueuil, Saint-Bruno-de-Montarville, Brossard, Saint-Lambert, Boucherville, Greenfield Park, LeMoyne and Saint-Hubert, did not have many “friendly atoms” , notes François Laramée, former director of communications for the City of Longueuil until 2010 and today a journalist at TVRS.
As soon as the new city’s first budget was submitted in December 2002, the city’s expenses jumped by 5.4%, while the mergers were supposed to allow economies of scale. And it is the boroughs of Saint-Bruno, Saint-Lambert, Boucherville and Brossard which have suffered the largest tax increases, i.e. 5%, enough to give ammunition to the demergers.
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The referendums held in 2004 allowed Boucherville, Saint-Lambert, Saint-Bruno and Brossard to leave the fold of the City of Longueuil. The big city then lost 40% of its citizens. “Which really hurt the administration [du maire de Longueuil Jacques Olivier], that’s when the results of the referendum in Brossard came out,” remembers Mr. Laramée. “Brossard had significant land wealth. At the time, people expected Boucherville, Saint-Lambert and even Saint-Bruno to demerge, but Brossard was a bit surprising. »
Mayor Olivier did not hide his disappointment after the results were counted. “Brossard was our jewel. It’s a multicultural place that brought a lot to the new city of Longueuil,” he declared.
François Laramée believes that if they had had more time, the Greenfield Park demergers would also have won their case.
Budget impasse
The demergers led to the creation of the agglomeration council to manage common services, such as the police and fire services, the level of which had been increased in 2001 given the importance of the territory now served. The police department therefore had to equip itself with a tactical intervention unit, in particular.
Relations within the agglomeration council were so stormy that the demerged cities blocked the adoption of this structure’s first budget for months, ultimately forcing the Minister of Municipal Affairs at the time, Nathalie Normandeau, to intervene to resolve the impasse which was delaying the sending of tax notices to citizens.
Ten years after the demergers, HEC Montréal professor Robert Gagné looked at the financial results of this dismantling. In his report, he highlighted that before the mergers, Brossard spent 26% less than the average of Quebec municipalities of the same size. Following the demergers, its expenses exceeded those of comparable municipalities by 19%. For their part, Saint-Bruno, Saint-Lambert and Boucherville, which already spent between 2 and 9% more than the average of cities of their size before the mergers, saw their spending jump up to 64% in 2009.
To explain this phenomenon, Robert Gagné put forward several explanations. Among these, he highlighted the fact that before the mergers, the South Shore did not have a structure like the Urban Community of Montreal (CUM) or the Urban Community of Quebec (CUQ), which accentuated the pressure on the costs of services common to the urban area.
In an interview, Robert Gagné indicates that the consolidation of services created imbalances such that richer cities had to finance poorer cities. This principle does not hold water, according to him, and has created strong tensions between municipalities. “Cities pay for services based not on their use, but on their land wealth. And they do not necessarily receive services in return for the same value,” he says. “Residents of the demerged municipalities find themselves subsidizing the central city. In the case of Longueuil, it’s a bit of an exaggeration because the people of Brossard, their central city, are not Longueuil, they are Montreal. »
Francine Gadbois, who left political life in 2009, is sad that after the mergers and demergers, she could no longer inquire about public security in her territory as she did previously with the Boucherville police chief. “I no longer had any information. »And the fire truck purchased by her municipality before the mergers headed to Longueuil after the consolidation of the cities, she denounces. Not to mention the question of financing public transport, which is expensive without its former municipality really benefiting, other than a few buses.
Twenty years later, the dust has settled, but François Laramée questions the merits of grouping services in the wake of forced mergers. “In several demerged cities, 50% of their budget is [affecté] to agglomeration expenses for which they have no say. […] Public security services [de haut niveau] in some cities, did we really need it? » he asks himself.
With Isabelle Porter