Alan Desousa
Wants new climate of transparency at city hall to become a permanent fixture.
Montreal Mayor Michael Applebaum reversed nearly a century of history in November when he opened the meetings of the powerful city executive committee to the public, but nothing ensures the top decision-making body at city hall will remain open after this fall’s city election.
So with revelations of municipal corruption at the Charbonneau Commission and a series of police raids on Montreal city hall and six borough halls last week serving as a backdrop, councillor Alan DeSousa plans to table an opposition motion at a city council meeting this week to propose the newfound transparency of the executive committee be entrenched in a municipal bylaw.
The question is: will it fly on the deeply divided city council?
All the parties say greater transparency is an elixir for corruption. But this is politics, and an election campaign is just six months away.
“Given what’s going on (with the corruption investigations), who would vote against such a motion?” DeSousa asked. As a Union Montreal councillor, DeSousa served on the executive committee with former mayor Gérald Tremblay until Applebaum’s election as interim mayor in November.
“Who’s against virtue?” Vision Montreal councillor Chantal Rouleau retorted, when told of DeSousa’s comment.
Montreal’s executive committee, composed of the mayor and up to 11 councillors, makes all the decisions at the city level, from the municipal budget to awarding contracts. It also sets the agenda for city council meetings, where some final votes are taken.
Yet as powerful as it is, the executive committee, set up by the province in 1921 as a compromise to remove the city from trusteeship, has always met behind closed doors.
Section 29 of the city charter declares “the meetings of the executive committee are closed to the public” unless it decides to hold a meeting in public.
DeSousa said he studied the executive committee model that exists in other cities, such as Toronto, to draft his motion proposing a slew of amendments to a Montreal bylaw that governs the executive committee.
He acknowledged a more permanent measure than amending the bylaw would be to entrench rules about the transparency of the executive committee in the city charter. However, that would be up to the National Assembly because the city charter is provincial legislation, he said.
The bylaw, under DeSousa’s proposal, would now state: “The meetings of the executive committee are held in public.”
And, following Toronto’s example, DeSousa’s proposal would allow the committee to go in-camera only when an item concerns one of six areas: security of a municipal property, personal information, pending real estate negotiations, labour ne- gotiation strategy, a legal matter before the courts or an opinion covered by professional-client privilege.
The motion would also require the committee’s meeting agenda be made public before the meeting and indicate the general nature of any item that’s to be discussed in- camera. And after an in-camera session, the committee would have to divulge the nature of the mandates that were given to city staff behind closed doors. No vote could be taken behind closed doors, however.
DeSousa noted Applebaum’s new “open” executive committee still goes in-camera often to discuss or take votes without revealing what the matter is about. There are no rules to determine when the committee can go in-camera, he said.
The committee went in-camera on 91 of 460 items of business listed on weekly pre-meeting agendas since late-November, DeSousa said.
Of the 91 items discussed in private, 58 were also voted on in private and eventually made public on a post-meeting agenda, he said. Under his proposal, the committee would only have been permitted to go in-camera on five of the 58 items because only those five dealt with a legal matter, a real estate deal or labour negotiations, he said. The remaining 33 of 91 items were discussed in private, but then withdrawn from the agenda for unknown reasons, he said.
Rouleau said Vision Montreal is wary of the party that’s sponsoring the motion given that Union Montreal denied calls to open up the executive committee when it had a majority on council, she said.
Her party will propose at the council meeting that DeSousa’s motion be sent to the city council speaker’s committee for study and recommendations, Rouleau said.
“Yes, we’re in favour, but let’s do a serious and exhaustive analysis of this proposal,” she said. “We can’t accept it as it is because we have to see what the consequences are in the way it’s written.”
DeSousa said that may only delay it until after the election. “The time to act is now,” he said.
Meanwhile, Projet Montréal will discuss its position on the DeSousa motion in caucus on Monday before the council meeting, spokeswoman Catherine Maurice said.