Riding revisions: opponents are plotting their course
Map is final, electoral chief says, but minorities want the last word
Even if Quebec’s chief electoral officer considers the issue closed, some minority and municipal leaders in Montreal are mobilizing to fight the province’s new electoral map.
As the groundswell of opposition grows, some are talking about raising funds for a possible legal challenge to the new map, which west-end politicians consider a stab in the back because of previous assurances it wouldn’t change.
And the Greek community in Laval is in the same foul mood, saying the new map is splitting their community between two ridings. In fact, the new map has the community’s largest orthodox church, Holy Cross, in one riding while the parishioners are in another.
“Manon Massé must be happy,” an angry Chomedey MNA Guy Ouellette said in reference to the change, which means the loss of 2,500 of his riding’s voters. “The map suits her. I can tell you what the consequence here will be. People won’t vote.”
“The result is undemocratic,” added veteran Montreal city councillor Marvin Rotrand, who has been mounting a campaign against changes to the map on the island.
“It will be up to the citizens to fight this. A legal challenge is being examined.”
Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre has waded in, describing the new map — which will mean Montreal has 27 ridings instead of 28 — as disappointing because it reduces the city’s political clout in the National Assembly.
“It’s unacceptable when we know the population of Montreal never stops growing,” Coderre said.
At issue is the new provincial electoral map set to kick in for the 2018 general election.
It was created by Quebec’s Commission de la representation électorale (CRE). Officially, the commission’s mandate is to maintain a balance in the voting populations per riding — in other words, their electoral weight — at the same time as holding the total number of seats in the legislature to 125.
After an arduous process that included consultations, the commission presented a first draft map in 2015 with what is supposed to be the final map published two weeks ago in the Gazette Officielle.
But as a survey by the Montreal Gazette reveals, emotions — particularly among minorities — are running high because the final result ignores many of the complaints voiced by groups during the consultation process.
At the same time, the CRE appears to have caved in to appease Québec solidaire and its MNA Manon Massé which had its supporters march in the streets to save Sainte-Marie-Saint-Jacques from the chopping block at the last minute.
POPULATION DECLINING
The story unfolds this way. The commission’s initial 2015 plan was to merge the Montreal ridings of Mont Royal and Outremont at the same time as abolishing the riding of Saint-Maurice in order to create two ridings in the Laurentians and Lanaudière. The logic was that Montreal’s population is declining while in the Laurentian and Lanaudière regions it’s booming and the map should reflect this.
That plan didn’t go over well. Montreal residents and the Quebec Liberal Party — which holds Mont Royal and Outremont ridings — mobilized and made a case against the idea. In Laval, Liberal MNAs and the Greek community opposed changes to their map, too, because it proposed to split off a large part of the riding of Chomedey into neighbouring riding of Fabre.
And at least in the case of Mont-Royal and Outremont, the battle appeared to be won. When a revised map appeared Feb. 7, the merger idea was scrapped as the commission heeded complaints such a plan would disrupt what is referred to by the bureaucrats as the riding’s natural communities.
It went so far to recognize a number of real estate projects in Mont-Royal will mean a spike in population in the riding in the coming years.
But determined to drop one of the island’s 28, the commission went off in a different direction. The new plan was to carve up Sainte-Marie-Saint-Jacques and create a super downtown riding called Ville-Marie.
BACK TO PLAN A
While voters in Mont-Royal and Outremont breathed a sign of relief, Plan B went over like a lead balloon among the ranks of Québec solidaire. Massé, who holds Sainte-Marie-Saint-Jacques, mobilized to stop the change.
By March, when the CRE tabled its new final map in the National Assembly, it was back to Plan A, with the merger of Mont-Royal and Outremont. Despite reports the names disappear, the riding’s new name will be Mont-Royal—Outremont.
While the commission still abolishes Saint-Maurice, Sainte-Marie—Saint-Jacques is not touched. It also decided to change the name of Crémazie riding to Maurice Richard riding.
And this is where we are today. Officially, Quebec’s Liberals are not pleased and have accused the CRE of ignoring the pitch to leave Mont Royal and Outremont intact.
The party’s immediate problem is the merger will mean two sitting Liberal cabinet ministers, Hélène David in Outremont and Paul Arcand in Mont-Royal could find themselves in a battle to represent the one riding.
Premier Philippe Couillard has tried to walk the line on the issue.
“Let’s take steps one at a time,” Couillard said last week. “We are aware of the new reality and we will adjust.”
On the ground, the new demographics are not going over well with critics who say merging the two ridings — which also implies shuffling voters off into Mercier and Notre-Dame-de-Grace as the borders get moved — disrupts habits and traditions that have existed for years.
In the big scheme of things, Mont-Royal’s voting base of mostly minority community voters takes a hit from an influx of new voters from largely francophone Outremont, while many of Outremont’s voters wind up mixed into the ridings of Mercier and D’Arcy McGee.
In fact, D’Arcy McGee — the only riding in Quebec with a predominantly Jewish voting base as well as English speakers — gets an addition of about 15,000 voters formerly in the Côte-des-Neiges— Snowdon area of Outremont.
There are fears in the Jewish community that the one riding in Quebec that traditionally elects a Jewish MNA could one day not have the votes to maintain the tradition.
“The government I am part of respects that it’s before a final decision,” said D’Arcy McGee MNA David Birnbaum. “That does not mean I am not disappointed and confused by the final decision.”
“SPLIT IN TWO”
Many of those voters headed to D’Arcy McGee are from the Filipino community, who say they felt their votes carried weight in Mont-Royal but will not in D’Arcy McGee.
“We are shocked to learn that after explicitly saying it would not do so, the Quebec Electoral Commission proposes that Mount-Royal and Outremont become one riding and much of the remaining Snowdon neighbourhood be added to D’Arcy McGee,” said Corazon Santiago-Aberin, president of the Filipino Association of Montreal and Suburbs
“That means our community is split in two and our voting weight is unfairly diminished.”
In Outremont riding, the small Hassidic community gets split down the middle with part of it landing in Mercier, the rest remaining in the new Mont-Royal—Outremont.
“You have a natural community cut in two,” an official, who did not want to be named, said.
But if the provincial parties appear resigned to the new map, the public and municipal leaders affected are waking up.
CONFRONT REALITY
Rotrand said what irks him is the flipflop: he and others believed the battle to keep Mont Royal and Outremont separate had been won.
He ripped into the CRE for not thinking outside the box and eliminating one of several sparsely populated ridings in Quebec in Abitibi-Témiscamingue or the Lower St-Lawrence instead.
“It’s time for someone to finally confront the reality of sacrosanct rural ridings having a disproportionate rate in the National Assembly,” Rotrand said, noting the idea that ridings have to be kept small to ease access to the MNAs is outmoded.
“We no longer live in the era of the horse and buggy. We now live in the era of email, cellphones and the Internet, and there is no difficulty communicating. Skype has done away with the idea rural areas need to have more representation. Quebec has not adapted.”
Last week, Rotrand steered a motion against the map through the Côte-des-Neiges—Notre-DamedeGrâce borough council. CôteSt-Luc borough council will adopt a similar resolution when it meets Monday and Hampstead borough has called a special meeting for Tuesday to adopt a similar motion.
“People are very upset,” Côte-StLuc pro-mayor Ruth Kovac said in an interview. “It’s losing another anglophone or ethnic voice on the island. And why? To appease the rural regions. I thought we were represented by population and not square footage.”
Outremont, which is already on the record as opposing the merger of Mont-Royal and Outremont, is expected to adopt a fresh motion in April.
It’s unclear how far those opposed will be able to go now that the new map is official, the consultation process over. CRE media relationships spokesperson Alexandra Reny refused to speculate on possible legal recourse or explain the CRE’s last minute shift.
She insisted the plan remains the best option even if she recognized not everyone is in agreement. The commission considers the map “definitive” and final.
“We looked at the two proposals,” Reny said. “All the other elements and the comments people made. But we are aware it might not please everyone, unfortunately, and it’s like this all over Quebec. It is always a difficult exercise.”