by Peter F. Trent, Special to the Gazette
Those who would wish to make a coherent pattern out of the jumble of government proposals cluttering up the municipal scene these days will be sorely challenged. There are at least five different and conflicting policies being proposed. Regional Development Minister Guy Chevrette pushes regionalization. Montreal region Minister Serge Ménard believes in metropolization. Municipal Affairs Minister Rémy Trudel wants decentralization. Montreal Mayor Pierre Bourque plumps for equalization (payments, that is). All four sing the praises of amalgamation.
Regionalization puts the emphasis on Quebec's 16 regions. Mr. Chevrette wants to give them more and more powers in effect, turning them into 16 provinces within a kind of de facto sovereign state. Naturally, this policy will also create a whole new series of structures: 100 "local development centres" and "local employment centres" reporting to the 16 administrative regions.
Swimming upstream against the regionalization trend is Mr. Ménard, who is trying to strengthen the Montreal metropolis. The two concepts regionalization and metropolization cannot coexist, as the former treats the 16 regions as being all equal, and the latter regards the Greater Montreal region as unique, indivisible and the true economic guts of Quebec.
Quebec, already suffering from a surfeit of structures, will impose Mr. Ménard's new commission which will be superimposed on existing structures, some of which will compete with Mr. Chevrette's brand-new collection of structures. These two ministers together will have achieved the bureaucratic equivalent of two parallel universes: Franz Kafka meets Lewis Carroll.
Last week, Mr. Trudel announced his decentralization plan or rather, his plan to discuss the devolution of new responsibilities to municipalities. A lot of this is a smokescreen. It will keep the cities at each other's throats, arguing over who will have to pick up more of the bills that go along with decentralization. While this is going on, Mr. Trudel is sticking cities with $500-million worth of downloaded costs.
Meanwhile, Mayor Bourque, seeing in this decentralization a great opportunity for a new "fiscal pact" (read equalization payments), has come out in support of Mr. Trudel's plans. This time, rather than Quebec sending payments to the central city, it'll be the suburbs.
Mr. Bourque and Mr. Chevrette have also come out publicly for Montreal Island amalgamations. Mr. Trudel refuses to discount the possibility. And Mr. Ménard thinks Island fire departments should be amalgamated after which, there's not too much left of independent cities. It's amalgamation by the back door.
Adding a bit of fuel to the amalgamation fire is the group making the rounds with their nostrum for our country's ills: the "unity" resolution that supporters insist federalist municipalities must adopt. These resolutions are clearly partitionist, but that has not stopped a number of cities, under concerted pressure, from adopting them. Cities must weigh the real threat of amalgamation against the remote possibility that passing such resolutions will make one jot of difference in any future constitutional wrangling.
Indeed, Quebec would love to see anglophone cities merged with Montreal. A city that says it will stay with Canada come what may, and then gets wiped off the municipal map for its pains, is hardly going to help the federalist cause. If Ontario Premier Mike Harris can forcibly fuse six Toronto cities into one, merging a city like Westmount with Montreal could, strictly legally, be a piece of cake.
But Quebec City would have to run a blockade of Westmount's mayor, who would raise an international stink.
None of these measures regionalization, metropolization, decentralization, equalization, or amalgamation will counter urban sprawl, which is the problem (other than the threat of separation) that besets the Montreal region. Regionalization harks back to a bucolic past, ignoring the worldwide reality that it's large urban agglomerations that count, even more than nation-states certainly more than provinces that would become nation-states.
Metropolization makes sense, but not the PQ's version, which lumbers our region with a structure without decision-making powers. Likewise, decentralization, without real power, just means more bureaucracy. Equalization payments to Montreal, paid by other cities, reward Montreal boondoggles of the past. And amalgamations will encourage urban sprawl, as citizens would abandon a mega-city in favour of small, well-run cities off-island.
It would seem that all this jiggering around in the Quebec municipal world has a lot more to do with politics than any real attempt to bring our municipalities into the modern world. And it involves the creation of even more structures. Government-imposed local structures are always unnatural, unwanted and unremovable.
- Peter F. Trent is mayor of Westmount and president of the Conference
of Montreal Suburban Mayors. The views of members of The Gazette Board
Of Contibutors do not necessarily reflect those of The Gazette.
Speach to the WMA by Stephen Jarislowsky on Westmount
Peter F. Trent on Amalagation
© 1996 David T. Nnicholson
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