Ford makes ex- Montreal mayor look good

For the many Torontonians who cringe at the thought of facing another year of upheaval at city hall, Montreal’s municipal travails offer a few sobering insights.

The first is that regardless of what happens to Mayor Rob Ford between now and then, there can be no lasting return to business as usual until next fall’s municipal election.

Another is that the light at the end of the current tunnel, when it is finally in sight, may turn out to have looked brighter in the distance than it actually is.

By coincidence, it was a year to the day this week that Gérald Tremblay resigned as Montreal mayor. For months his administration had been besieged by media allegations of corruption.

When that coverage was validated by devastating testimony in front of a public judicial inquiry, the Quebec government suggested Tremblay step down and he agreed that he should.

To this day the former mayor does not stand accused of breaking any laws but he had clearly lost the confidence of Montrealers. In the court of public opinion Tremblay was found guilty of blindness to the corruption that was endemic on his mayoral watch.

Six months later Michael Applebaum, the city councillor who was chosen by his peers to serve as interim mayor, was arrested at his home as part of a wide- ranging corruptionrelated police inquiry.

Over that stormy period, garbage got picked up. Snow was cleared or melted. Bus fares went up. Parking fines were distributed with the customary zeal. In short the daily life of Montreal went on.

By comparison to the year before when downtown streets had been the nightly stage of massive student demonstrations for weeks on end, 2013 was actually a quieter year for most Montrealers.

For months Quebec’s largest city prepared for what the media and the province’s political class unanimously billed as a watershed municipal election. But in the end the vote that took place last Sunday failed to live up to that advance billing.

With new allegations of corruption surfacing in the media almost daily, it seems many Montrealers simply tuned out the municipal shenanigans.

Almost 60 per cent of them shunned the polling stations. By comparison to the previous municipal vote, the 2013 turnout barely went up a few digits.

Tremblay’s former municipal party was disbanded but many of his former seatmates chose to run again and more than a few were re- elected, including a handful who had held front line positions in his administration.

Some of the successful incumbents ran as independent candidates; others — including a star candidate who was reported a few days before the vote to have socialized with organized crime figures — found a new political home under the winning banner of mayorelect Denis Coderre.

It may seem strange that the quest for a new broom brought Montrealers to Coderre — a politician who was long associated with old- style politics over his decades in the federal arena.

But in the end Coderre did not so much win the election as a divided opposition lost it.

The absence of a single compelling alternative to Coderre led to a decisively mixed result. Only 32 per cent voted for the new mayor. His three main rivals split the bulk of the remaining 68 per cent between them.

For many voters the best that can be said about the outcome of the Montreal municipal election is that the new mayor was not issued a blank cheque; Coderre’s party failed to win control of the council he is to preside over.

There is every reason to believe he and fellow council members will be able to live up to the expectations of most Montrealers. Those expectations are so low that it should not be a stretch for the new mayor to rise to the occasion.

But strong leadership is hard to exercise in the absence of moral authority and the latter remains in short supply in post- municipal election Montreal. Toronto might do better next fall. But as he clings to power Ford is making Tremblay look good and it is possible to imagine that Toronto could actually do worse.