Suburbs shouldn’t always be agglo losers

Next government should rejig rules for council, Brent Cowan writes.

Last January, Montreal suburbs were blindsided with a sharp increase in their agglomeration taxes. After the usual outbursts of indignation, the increases were absorbed into the budgets of the de-merged suburbs. Suburban councils were left to stew and wonder what surprises lay in store for next year’s budget.

On Thursday, the suburban mayors announced an agreement reached with Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante to integrate them into the budget process, starting in 2020. It is clear that while the mayors appreciate a new openness they sense emanating from the core city, they are withholding final judgment. How much openness to suburban participation there really is won’t be apparent until the 2020 budget, as the one for 2019 is already well advanced.

Their caution is wellfounded. It just doesn’t happen in politics that power is yielded voluntarily. No matter her good intentions now, when push comes to shove and Plante’s political interests pull her in a direction opposite to that of the suburban mayors, it is virtually inevitable that her power will be used to impose her preferred outcome. Being granted a seat at a table in no way assures that you have any influence at all over the meal. That’s just the way the world works. To have influence, you need a measure of power.

By Quebec law, the suburban mayors have a 13 per cent share of any decision, while Plante controls 87 per cent. Until that reality is addressed, any reform to agglo budget planning remains window-dressing.

Thankfully, there is an antidote to the poison pill of fake democracy foisted on us 16 years ago by the Charest Liberals. We can demand that the party forming the next government in Quebec City change the law to finally allow truly representative democracy for all who live on the island of Montreal.

As it stands, the agglo council is controlled by the Montreal mayor. There are a total of 30 members on the council, which she chairs. She appoints all 15 Montreal councillors to the body; 13 of whom are members of her own Projet Montréal party. The other 15 are the mayors of each of the de-merged cities, save Dorval Island, plus one additional councillor from Dollard-des- Ormeaux appointed by that city’s mayor. This sounds reasonable, doesn’t it?

But each councillor does not get an equal say. Their votes are weighted by population. So, for example, if the Senneville mayor gets one vote, the mayor of Pointe-Claire gets about 32 and a councillor from Montreal gets more than 100. All in all, Montreal controls 87 per cent of the votes.

OK, you say, that is representation by population — all very legitimate.

But is it really rep by pop or just an illusion? Well, for a working democracy, it is essential that minorities not be permanent losers, otherwise they begin to realize, as we do now, that they are being played for suckers who pay into a system whose direct net benefits are weighted heavily in favour of everybody else. The only way to ensure there are no permanent losers is to set it up so interests have the possibility of realigning, issue to issue. Then those losing now know they may be winners the next time around.

Fortunately, there is a simple solution. Rather than giving the mayor of Montreal the power to fill all of Montreal’s seats on council, the law should be changed to name each borough mayor to the agglo council. Structured in this way, Montreal’s representation would reflect the weighted interests of 19 boroughs, many of whose mayors would still share party affiliation with the mayor of Montreal, while some would not. On some issues, certain borough mayors might still find common ground with their de-merged counterparts. So today’s losers could well be tomorrow’s winners. Then we’d all win.

Brent Cowan owns a small business and is a city councillor with the de-merged City of PointeClaire. He has a master’s degree in political science from the Université de Montréal.