TAXATION BY MISREPRESENTATION
by Peter Trent, Westmount Examiner
October 2, 1997
The Gazette said there were 3,000. Le Devoir and Le Journal de Montréal said there were over 5,000 who showed up at the Verdun Auditorium last Sunday for the rally to say NO! to Quebec's craven downloading of $500 million. What's going on here? Typical English understatement? Why would the anglo media downplay the turnout and the sovereignist papers report things accurately? Gazette reporters seem to have adopted the habit of minimizing the initiatives of local mayors. At least the Gazette gave its editorial backing to the rally on two occasions.
How about asking numbers of the organizers of the rally: the Conference of Montreal Suburban Mayors? We estimated the attendance to be about 5,000. We, at least, took the trouble to count the seats. I was especially proud when I learned that more than 250 Westmounters took the trouble to come. By chartered bus. By car. You have no idea how important it is for me to feel I have the solid support of citizens behind me.
It was an overwhelming turnout, given the exceptionally beautiful weather for a Sunday at the end of September. With the sun pouring down like honey - as Leonard Cohen put it - it warmed my heart to see 5,000 people who decided to forget the cottage, the golf links, or the tennis court to come out to support their mayors in sending a message to Quebec that we've had it up to here with their constant downloading: $700 million a year since 1992. Plus this $500 million. Plus $600 million in increased school taxes. $1.8 billion per year that Quebec has asked the property taxpayer to shell out since 1992. And what have they done? Why, they've cut their own $40 billion budget by a measly $250 million, or 0.6%. Quebec is balancing its budget on the backs of the municipalities.
During my speech at this rally, I quoted an American jurist, John Marshall, who said in 1819: "the power to tax involves the power to destroy". I'm not too sure I made my point well, but what I was trying to say is that this cowardly downloading is a method of converting potential provincial taxes into actual municipal taxes. A kind of fiscal alchemy. And that any increase in municipal taxes on the Island of Montreal will work to destroy it, as more and more people flee the Island to lower-taxed suburbs off-Island.
This buck-passing is what I called "taxation by misrepresentation". Some people asked me what good this rally will do. I said that, if the suburban cities on the Island did not protest, we could look forward to more of the same next year. We had no choice but send a message from all the Conference's 800,000 citizens that we will not stand for such an irresponsible, improvised, inequitable way of balancing Quebec's budget.
I also feel that, right across Quebec, after three months' of dithering about this $500 million bill, even the YES supporters are starting to realize that these guys can't even run a province, let alone run a country!
- August 12 Suburbs shouldn't split Only a few months ago, Peter Trent, the conference chairman and mayor of Westmount, was trying to narrow the gap between the island and the rest of Quebec by, among other things, setting up exchange visits between the people of
Westmount and Rimouski. That is a much more constructive approach than any door-slamming exit from the UMQ. So long
as Quebec remains in Canada, federalists have no interest in creating divisions in the municipal sphere.
Windows on Westmount Ville Marie
NO! 
NON!
Gov.
Gov.
Trent
Stories
NO! 
NON!
Back to Westmount Home Page
Please phone (514)934-0023 for a human
or e-mail us your thoughts. 