Suburban Mayors pleased with added powers in Quebec bill
By Dan Laxer
The Suburban
Outgoing Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante, and her successor as Projet Montréal leader, Luc Rabouin, are both reacting badly to the CAQ government’s bid to give the suburbs more power in the Communauté métropolitaine de Montréal (CMM).
The opposition Ensemble Montréal leader Soraya Martinez Ferrada, doesn’t like it any more than they do, but she is laying the blame squarely at Projet Montréal’s feet, saying they should have seen this coming.
The CMM is responsible for planning, coordinating, and financing the 82 municipalities, or the 4.3 million people, spread over its territory. The move is part of Bill 104, “An Act to amend various provisions in particular to follow up on certain requests from the municipal sector.” The bill was tabled last Wednesday by Municipal Affairs Minister Andrée Laforest.
Laforest says it’s about making the CMM more democratic, and getting the suburbs to work together.
Plante took to social media to denounce the plan. “The government must explain its true motivation for changing the governance of the metropolitan region today,” Plante posted on X, “knowing that in eight years, the City of Montreal has never used a casting vote.”
The mayor is the head of the CMM and as such has the right to cast the deciding vote in the event of a tie between the municipalities that make up the council. However, the provincial government says that the city no longer has a majority voice in the CMM. In 2006 it did indeed make up 51 percent of the CMM. But as of last year, due to urban sprawl, that has dipped to just 46 percent.
Until now the city’s majority consisted of 14 council seats out of 28. Under the new law, the city’s seat count would be 12 of 26.
“Instead of reforming democratic institutions without notice,” Plante added, “the government would benefit from working on the fundamental issues that are concentrated in its metropolis.”
Pointing out that between 2017 and 2024 the population across the entire CMM territory increased faster than that of the Greater Montreal area, Martinez Ferrada says that Projet Montréal has failed to create an enviable quality of life for residents. The resulting “urban exodus,” reads a news release put out by the party, “is very real and has accelerated under the (Projet Montreal) administration.
“This relative population loss is the result of short-sighted policies, which are catching up with us today.”
The Association of Suburban Municipalities, representing the agglomeration’s 15 independent municipalities, had high praise for the changes. It said last Thursday that, “this long-awaited reform responds to a recurring demand from suburban municipalities for more equitable and democratic metropolitan governance. Until now the status quo favoured an excessive concentration of power in the hands of the City of Montreal, to the detriment of other municipalities’ voices.”
Dollard des Ormeaux Mayor Alex Bottausci, a co-president of the ASM, said “this bill is a milestone for municipal democracy in Greater Montreal. It’s also a recognition that all citizens are entitled to fair representation in the decisions that affect their quality of life.”
The ASM adds that the same problems also plague the Montreal Agglomeration and it is hoping the Quebec government shows the same concern for the Agglo as its latest move shows for the CMM. n
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