Projet billed consultant to taxpayers
Spending on research and support not being reported as provincial law requires
A beer garden to create jobs for homeless people in Plateau Mont-royal. A “pop-up” pool in eastern downtown. Upgrades to the bicycle network in Outremont. A new pedestrian street entrance to Mount Royal.
If the citizens of some of the city's 19 boroughs want to know what projects are being planned for their neighbourhoods, they'll get more information from examining the invoices of consultants hired privately by their local Projet Montréal councillors than from looking at council resolutions or public contracts.
Projet Montréal councillors in five boroughs commissioned consultants in the past two years to produce reports, studies and one business plan for nearly a dozen municipal projects in the five boroughs. One of the consultants is a financial contributor to the party.
What's more, the studies, sketches, recommendations and other material produced by the consultants belong to their private client who signed their cheques — Projet Montréal party — and not to the city or the boroughs where the projects are planned.
Nevertheless, Montreal taxpayers footed the bill for the studies.
Projet Montréal submitted over $110,000 in project consulting fees to the city as research and support expenses that were fully reimbursed in 2019. The consultants were hired by councillors in Mercier—hochelaga-maisonneuve, Outremont, Plateau Mont-royal, Rosemont—la Petite-patrie and Ville-marie.
Under Quebec law, municipalities of 20,000 residents or more must set aside a portion of their operating budgets to reimburse elected officials for research and support expenses that assist them in their role.
In 2019, Montreal reimbursed over $1 million to the two main parties on council, with Mayor Valérie Plante's Projet Montréal receiving $749,041 and opposition Ensemble Montreal receiving $380,434.
While the province in 2017 began requiring municipalities to table an annual list in city council of all authorized research and support reimbursements by March 31 of each year, the city of Montreal has never tabled such a list in council. The city used to voluntarily publish the list of research and support reimbursements on its website and on its open-data portal — but it hasn't done so since 2017.
The Montreal Gazette obtained the expense claims and accompanying invoices and receipts for Projet Montréal and Ensemble Montreal through an access-to-information request with the city.
Projet Montréal says it gets prior approval from the city finance department before giving a consulting contract.
“We follow the municipal affairs department rules to the letter,” said Raphaëlle Rinfret-pilon, who was appointed general director of the party four months ago.
However, Lionel Perez, interim leader of Ensemble Montreal, said it's unusual and troubling that Projet Montréal councillors have hired their own experts to do work normally performed by the civil service.
Councillors decide policy direction, but it's the role of the civil service, with its urban planners, architects and engineers, to vet and implement projects that are desired by the elected officials, he said when told of the consulting contracts.
“We know that the public service has to act independently, regardless of who's in power,” Perez said.
“And by starting to mix party funds with actual (municipal) projects, you're putting that into question and that's very troubling and very worrisome.”
Projet Montréal holds a majority in the boroughs where its councillors hired consultants, so they could have easily mandated the civil service to evaluate the feasibility of their ideas instead, he added.
Perez said it's the first time in his 10 years on council that he's seen elected officials claim consultants' fees for planning municipal projects as research and support expenses.
It would be unthinkable for civil servants to accept the studies and reports of the councillors' consultants without their own independent analysis, he said. The civil servants don't know what instructions the councillor gave their private consultant and whether anything was left out of the report because it didn't serve the councillor's political agenda, he said.
“For me, it's political meddling in how the civil service should function,” Perez said.
“Why not just give the mandate directly to the civil service and not make Montrealers pay twice for the same kind of analysis and report? It's really incomprehensible as to why Projet Montréal would operate this way, and it's definitely not in the best interests of Montreal taxpayers.”
If the civil service doesn't have the internal expertise to conduct a study, he added, it awards a contract to a professional in accordance with public procurement rules. But councillors and parties hiring privately aren't bound by provincial and municipal contract tendering rules, Perez noted.
Projet Montréal's general director acknowledged the councillors' consulting reports are sometimes given to civil servants. For example, a consultant's report might be used to “improve the call for tenders” for the project, Rinfret-pilon said.
Still, she said the city is scrupulous in applying provincial regulations to decide what expenses are eligible for reimbursement. It has rejected some requests, she added.
For example, Rinfret-pilon said the city refuses to reimburse expenses that duplicate something offered by the municipality.
So why don't Projet Montréal councillors mandate the civil service to carry out studies instead of hiring consultants?
“That's a good question,” Rinfret-pilon said, adding that she would reflect on it.
Projet Montréal's invoices show its councillors commissioned seven companies, most of them non-profits, and two individuals to do consulting work on 11 local projects in the five boroughs since the end of 2018.
Six of the seven companies have also received municipal contracts from Montreal, a point that also raises hackles for the opposition.
A municipal department is prohibited from awarding more than one direct contract without tenders to the same vendor within 90 days. So allowing councillors to award parallel private contracts to the same vendors risks undermining that public procurement rule, Perez said.
Projet Montréal councillors in Plateau Mont-royal spent $55,000 on consultants for five local projects. They included the social enterprise beer garden, the redevelopment of an employment hub in eastern Plateau, increased safety around schools, an architect's rendering for the greening and closing of Terrasse Mercure to car traffic, which the borough carried out later in 2019, and reclassification of churches.
The beer garden project is on ice because of COVID-19, a Plateau borough employee wrote in an email last week. The business plan produced by the elected officials' consulting firm “isn't public,” borough spokesperson Catherine Piazzon wrote. She invited the Montreal Gazette to file an access-to-information request to obtain it.
Projet Montréal spent $20,000 on the beer garden business plan, which was produced by a non-profit company, the party's invoices show.
Three Projet Montréal elected officials in Ville-marie borough, including Plante, the ex officio borough mayor, hired two consultants. They gave a $5,000 mandate in December to an architect to design an extension of University St., above Pine Ave., next to the former Royal Victoria Hospital, to create a walkway to Mount Royal. The other was a $14,650 feasibility study to install a “pop-up” pool — a temporary outdoor pool — in Ste-marie district.
The mandate for the University St. extension also called for renderings for a stretch of Notre-dame St. E. The consultant, Grégory Taillon, also carried out the $250 mandate concerning Terrasse Mercure for the Plateau councillors.
Taillon is a contributor to Projet Montréal, having given the maximum $100 donation to the party in 2016, 2018 and 2019.
Reached this week, Taillon denied his hiring by the councillors was connected to his contributions. He referred questions to the party.
Rinfret-pilon, who said the councillors usually select their consultants, denied there's cronyism.
“When it (a study) is approved by the party, we don't look to see if the person is or isn't a donor,” she said. “It's not at all part of the process.”
However, she said she would think about whether the party should set up a tendering process even if it isn't a requirement “because we'd remove this potential supposition of cronyism.”
In Outremont, the four Projet Montréal members of the five-person borough council hired a consulting firm in 2018 to study improvements to the cycling network. The invoice submitted for reimbursement in 2019 was for $14,763.
The consulting firm, Copenhagenize Design Company, had received a $22,593 contract from the city's planning department, the Service de la mise en valeur du territoire, the previous year to study improvements to the cycling infrastructure in and around the new Outremont campus of Université de Montréal.
Michael Wexler, Canadian director of the company, said the two contracts were different. The councillors wanted a “vision plan” for cycling in the borough in the coming years, he said, while the city contract looked at elevating and protecting the new campus bike path and how the cycling networks in the six surrounding boroughs and suburb will feed into it.
“So the idea was to connect in to some of the earlier recommendations between those six boroughs (and suburb) and for the new campus, but really focus on Outremont specifically,” he said of the Projet Montréal contract.
Outremont borough mayor and Projet Montréal member Philipe Tomlinson did not return calls.
In Rosemont—la Petite-patrie and Mercier—hochelaga-maisonneuve, Projet Montréal councillors hired consultants for, respectively, park planning (two studies totalling $22,000) and a heritage inventory ($2,817).
A provincial regulation lists 16 types of expenses that qualify as councillor research and support, including office supplies, internet subscriptions, a mobile phone, advertising, room rental and meeting expenses. It also includes expenses “for the services of a person or partnership hired for research or support purposes.”
Most of Projet Montréal's research and support reimbursements in 2019 covered party staff salaries, rent on the party headquarters and the consultants. Ensemble Montreal's reimbursements were mostly for advertisements for councillors in community newspapers, councillors' tickets to charity events and some staff salaries.
Ensemble Montreal hired one consultant to research housing policies in different cities to position itself on the Plante administration's new social housing policy.
Ensemble Montreal's consulting fee, Perez said, was an ordinary use of the research and support funds. But he considers the reimbursements granted for Projet Montréal's consultants “a very liberal interpretation of the rules, to say the least.”
For its part, Projet Montréal contends its studies contribute to society.
“Projet Montréal councillors like to do research because it advances their ideas and their projects,” Rinfret-pilon said.
“It's a choice Ensemble Montreal makes not to put money into studies.”
Why not just give the mandate directly to the civil service and not make Montrealers pay twice … ?