A FREER, FAIRER, RICHER MONTRÉAL PLUS LIBRE, PLUS JUSTE, PLUS RICHE

FREER

Il vient un temps dans les affaires entre gouvernants et gouvernés où chaque action de l’administration publique aiguise la méfiance du peuple et où le défaut d’agir suscite sa colère.  C’est là où nous en sommes rendus à Montréal.  Tout contrat social entre les citoyens et l’État demande une certaine cession par le peuple de sa liberté et de son trésor.  Rien de plus.  Le contrat social n’exige nullement l’abdication de nos prérogatives.  Selon tout concept de justice naturelle et d’équité, l’État ne peut être autorisé à dicter nos passions personnelles et nos poésies.  En aucune circonstance, l’État ne doit être habilité à faire en sorte que les citoyens se sentent coupables pour le simple acte d’être humains et à leur faire porter le lourd joug de la nullification et de l’interposition que leur impose une autorité sans compassion.  Et aussi, le contrat social ne permet pas l’imposition au public de fardeaux financiers additionnels sous la forme de pénalités en guise de punition pour des services pour lesquels les contribuables paient déjà des taxes, mais que leur impose la bureaucratie gémissante de l’administration publique.

Sadly, Montrealers today have little choice among the leading contenders for city hall. We have an incumbent administration that has broken much of the social contract through sins of omission. Its main challenger is an unholy alliance of two of the fiercest statocratic social engineers whose public lives have been characterized by sins of commission. The former taxes first, explains never. The latter demonizes first, discusses never. Both are manifestations of a revived prohibitionism, a recurring virus when our public life turns feckless and fey. Both sides, if still wedded to their current opportunism, would leave us all in virtual straitjackets.

Les politiques actuelles font de nous tous des victimes.  Il nous faut reconquérir nos libertés.   Nous avons peut-être besoin de mobiliser une coalition de victimes, en clamant : « Assez, c’est assez ! ».   Assez de règlements et de législations étouffants.  Assez de jeunes qui se voient imposer des amendes de $500 pour avoir mis leurs pieds du mauvais côté de la bordure bétonnée du parc Émilie-Gamelin.  Assez d’inspecteurs dans le Vieux-Montréal et dans NDG qui fouillent dans nos sacs à vidange pour y trouver nos adresses afin de nous imposer des amendes de $1000 parce que nous aurions sorti nos sacs trop tôt.  Assez de commerçants sur l’avenue du Parc qui se voient imposer des amendes de centaines de dollars pour ne pas avoir coupé l’herbe sur les trottoirs municipaux.  

Assez de propriétaires du Centre-Ville qui se font coller des amendes parce que leurs restaurants ou leurs bars n’ont pas vissé des cendriers « officiels » à côté de leurs portes d’entrée.   Assez d’amendes qui criminalisent les sans-abris.  Assez de hausses des tarifs de parcomètre tandis que la ville cache des profits records.  Assez de marchands qui se voient tenus responsables du maintien de la propreté des trottoirs face à leurs commerces.  Assez de quartiers comme Ville-Marie qui instituent certaines des amendes les plus offensantes afin de punir des comportements innocents tout en s’en vantant par des publicités via des dépliants affirmant, en lettres en caractères gras, que « les coupables seront punis ».  Et coupables de quoi, au juste ?  D’être humain, en échappant un emballage de friandise ou en fumant une cigarette sans se faire imposer les tâches des employés municipaux.  Nous avons besoin d’être libres de nouveau.  Nous avons encore besoin d’une cité libre !

Les Montréalais sont déjà les citoyens urbains les plus taxés de l’Amérique du Nord.  Et il y a vingt mois, nous avons été frappés par la plus importante hausse de taxes de l’histoire.  

Our taxes are supposed to cover the basics. Garbage collection, snow removal, public security, public transit, and water and sewage. It should not be up to the citizens to pay additional costs to manage what they have already paid for. The job of elected officials is not to engage in social engineering. To impose fines forcing citizens to do what is the city’s work — street cleaning, garbage collection, maintenance of public spaces — is stark malfeasance at worst and double taxation at best. To impose fines on citizens for making personal choices about personal risk borders on social fascism. For municipal politicians to offset their responsibilities onto the backs of the public is an admission that they can’t do their jobs. 

This city’s administration has failed to address solutions to improve any of its basic core service responsibilities. Eighty percent of our water lines leak. Our world-famous potholes are now craters. The transit system is in gridlock. The Agglomeration Council and the borough system have degenerated into paralysis as we have become the most over-governed city on the continent. The Mayor and the borough mayors can’t get our blue-collar workers to pick up the garbage and clean our streets properly because they are too frightened to engage. And who can forget the abysmal failure to deal with the cemetery lockout leaving hundreds of bodies unburied. The city’s solution was to deflect public attention from its nonfeasance by demonizing us all through needless regulation. It’s time to be free again. It’s time to revoke many recently enacted by-laws. Reduce the amount of fines in others. And we need to restrict, and in some cases eliminate, the powers or positions of smoking police, meter maids, the cleanliness corps, jaywalking cops and garbage inspectors. Nobody elected anyone to impose a control state on Montreal.

FAIRER

As much as restoring freedom must lead the reform of this city, restoring fairness must parallel that effort. As Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. wrote, “Justice must be seen to be done as well as done.”

The most visible face of justice, done or undone, is the police. Whether we, or they, like it or not that is very much the reality. The daily connection of governors and governed is too often realized through contact with security authority. Much of our efforts at reform must be addressed at the way we police ourselves. Though faulty, we have many avenues of redress in civilian matters  between citizen and city hall on issues ranging from taxation to regulation. But new fairness doctrines in policing are crucial because the authority the citizen faces is so great and often so overwhelming.

La police constitue le visage public d’une administration civique.  Sa tolérance, sa compassion et son respect de la liberté du peuple peuvent être mesurées par les lignes de conduite qu’elle impose à sa police.  Notre police a besoin d’une nouvelle doctrine.  Il est temps que survienne une administration à l’Hôtel de Ville qui mettra fin à l’ingérence de la police dans nos sphères personnelles et qui maintiendra une bride ferme à la brutalité de ceux qui sont chargés d’imposer le contrôle étatique.  Le principe fondamental d’une société libre est la liberté de choisir.  Même de choisir erronément.  Même si nos choix nous font du mal à nous-mêmes.   

A reform civic administration must restrict police checkpoints enforcing the wearing of seatbelts. Particularly at the exits of highways. They cause more harm than good and often come close to inciting catastrophic accidents as drivers hit the brakes and start checking their belts while navigating a turn. 

 We have to limit anti-jaywalking actions. Certainly abolish the practice of four-cornered patrols that make an area feel like an armed camp. No citizen should have to put up with cadets sticking their hands up to their faces or chests. And worse, as I have witnessed, demanding identification from citizens so they can write up tickets. This is neither Tehran nor Havana. No citizen should be obligated to carry an identification card. But there is more that is objectionable.

À une époque de restrictions budgétaires, il est inacceptable que l’ont ait procédé à l’embauche de 110 officiers chargés d’imposer des amendes aux citoyens qui traversent les rues ailleurs que dans les zones cloutées.  Le seul but de cette mesure est de faire croire aux citoyens qu’ils sont des criminels, en plus de leur soutirer davantage d’argent en amendes payées à la municipalité.   

We have turned the law away from being an instrument for justice — a shield of the innocent and a staff of the honest — and made it into a revenue generating machine. As such we also have to eliminate the use of police in enforcing anti-smoking laws. The provincial government can pass whatever laws it wants. It can hire as many inspectors as it wants. But how much of local police resources are used to enforce personally invasive statutes is up to the civic administration. Our police should have a human, and most of all a fair, face.

 But the overriding reform needed in restoring fairness in policing is a new set of measures on how to deal with visible minorities. It is time for new practices so that each week does not bring yet another story of a black woman surrounded by police as she was moving boxes from her garage to her house because someone called and thought she was a burglar; or of the Arab taxi driver being ticketed for parking in a non-taxi zone while feeding the meter because he had to run to a toilet; or a young black student wrestled to the ground by police with a gun to his head in front of his friends because some nightclub bouncer said he had a gun. The names of Gemma Raeburn, Jamil Ibrahim and Courtney Bishop — along with dozens of others — cry out for fairness. It is our responsibility to make fairness a reality.

RICHER

The primary reason for the slow undoing of our basic liberties in this city is also the cause behind the steady impoverishment of this city. Too much government! In reducing the size and manner of our governance we will not only make this city freer and fairer, but we will make it richer as well.

Bill 9 that created the borough system was a devil’s stew. But Bill 133, which devolved powers to the boroughs, was a legislative abortion of unparalleled proportion. It created 19 little fiefdoms with 19 little feudal lords. It has been said that the only thing more dangerous in politics than little people exercising a lot of power is little people exercising little power but thinking it is a lot. That is what has happened in Montreal the past six years.

Dans le but de perpétuer leur propre patronage sinon leur propre pouvoir, les administrations des arrondissements se sont mis à l’avant-garde de la perpétuation non seulement de règlements inutiles, mais aussi de la bureaucratie qui leur est inhérente.  Leur leitmotiv semble être : « Nous réglementons, donc nous sommes ».  Pendant ce temps, c’est nous, les citoyens, qui payons le prix.  Il est inconcevable que deux millions de Montréalais sont gouvernés par plus de cent élus municipaux, tandis que dix millions de New-Yorkais et cinq millions de Torontois en ont moins de trente.   Ces 19 gouvernements dans notre ville, les dédoublements et la bureaucratisation qu’ils imposent, nous coûtent annuellement presque $200 millions.  

Ending the borough system would not only provide more direct and accessible one-layer government, but the savings could be immediately returned to the people through lower taxes. Even Mayor Tremblay has, I believe, recognized the folly of the boroughs and worked successfully on last year’s Bill 22 that gives the Mayor of Montreal direct control of the borough of Ville Marie. One less level of government to pay for. Those who argue for “local democracy” as the raison d’etre for the boroughs are not only ill-advised as to mode rn governance, but should realize that the logical extension of their thinking would have Stalinist-like block representatives controlling us all. In this case small is not beautiful. It is a prescription for bankruptcy. 

Many of the needless rules and regulations that so burden us are enacted and enforced by the boroughs. Their elimination will also mean the elimination of the bureaucracies that perpetuate them. The functionaries and inspectors. Eliminating boroughs would make it easier for Montreal’s Mayor to clean up the system. Tens of millions of additional savings could be passed on to Montrealers. As it stands now the Mayor’s most powerful executive imperative is to veto funding to pay for the enforcement establishment of needless oversight in the boroughs. The Mayor cannot actually overturn borough by-laws. 

We need efficient government, not a self-indulgent one.  Montrealers are desperate for the tax savings that could be generated. The tax hikes over the past four years have meant that small businesses, that account for eighty percent of new jobs, are paying the equivalent of three months of their rent in taxes. They cannot survive. Relief has to be quick and direct. It is the most catastrophic situation since the last years of Mayor Jean Dore. 

In public finance, we have witnessed the squandering of too much of public funds on pork barrel vote grabbing schemes. Those inevitably lead to statements from elected officials that they have to fine and tax more just to keep up. Well, we did not need some $13 million spent on skateboarding rinks in the west and east ends; $10 million more on bike paths that destroyed commuter arteries and city streets; a Quartier de spectacles that meets no needs whatever and now a potential $7 million on new recycling containers. These and other projects and initiatives should be shut down and the funds distributed back to the people in lowered taxes as well. A city that cannot get the core basics of municipal services right – public transit, roads, snow and garbage removal, water and sewage provision and treatment and public security - , should not have a budgetary line totaling some $450 million on “arts, loisiers and urbanisme”. 

Our false piety on environmental issues must also be brought to a halt. We all agree that the internal combustion engine does damage to the environment. But that is not something municipal administrations can affect. It will take federal government initiatives to make hybrid cars more affordable. Municipal governments nationally control areas of jurisdiction that affect only 2% of greenhouse gas emissions. Instead of speaking these truths, Montreal has witnessed an anti-car mania among elected officials. They use a convenient lie to pander for votes from environmentalists who they think vote with greater frequency. But their measures perpetuate lies. Anti-car measures will further assault an already battered center city. And they will contribute nothing to the environment. As the Frontier Center for Public Policy has demonstrated, no amount of parking increases or other levies have reduced car use in major North American cities by more than 2%. A Mercer International study demonstrated Montreal was cleaner than most cities including Toronto .  It is time for an administration at Montreal’s city hall with the courage to end the pandering. With some eighteen percent of storefronts vacant in the city center, and many bars and restaurants suffering a 25-33% drop in revenues since the smoking ban, it is time to let downtown breathe and build again.

Finally, we need to get our development policies kick-started. We all agree that development must be responsible. But there is clearly a limit to horizontal growth. Land is limited. Green spaces should be appropriately protected. But what we can do – and what has been done by environmentally conscious cities like Toronto and Vancouver – is encouraging air right development in the city’s core. Heritage buildings can be preserved and respected and in many cases incorporated into new buildings. As much as we cut unnecessary social engineering programs and reduce government size, we will have to create new sources of tax revenues if we are to keep  pace with passing savings from the former on to citizens. The best solution is air rights.

The problems outlined above are not limited to any party. There has been a general mindset that is adverse to limited governance. Mayor Tremblay seems to have realized many of the errors. Louise Harel would, I fear, perpetuate a prohibitionist, controlling, tax-and fine agenda.

Les Montréalais méritent une administration municipale qui aura le courage de faire face aux dures vérités et qui en parlera avec clarté et candeur.  Qui parlera de cette vérité que nous vivons dans une époque d’austérité.  Que l’Hôtel de Ville ne peut pas, et ne doit pas, agréer aux désirs de tout le monde à la fois.  Que nous devons remettre les choses à l’endroit et ensuite voir ce qui peut être fait de plus pour améliorer les choses.  Que nous ne devons pas dépenser plus de $100 millions par année pour des frais de consultants externes, tandis que la ville emploie déjà plus de 10 000 bureaucrates cols blancs.  Qu’il nous faut diminuer les dépenses afin de réduire les taxes.  Que le maire de Montréal doit être résolu à s’asseoir avec les leaders des cols bleus en leur assénant une nouvelle entente.

The truth that we must concentrate on cleaning up our debt and ending the debt-incurring tradition of bread and circus projects. That in a city with almost a third of our households below the poverty line, social housing and mass transit and food banks and libraries will have priority over “legacy” projects and “loisirs”, “consultations” and “urbanisme”. That we will create new sources of tax revenue by encouraging appropriate development instead of fining and penalizing the public for so many personal, human acts. That our social contract can be restored to produce a freer, fairer and richer Montreal for all our citizens.