Election Notebook

Neighbourhood Watch:
Ville-Marie blows up

by PATRICK LEJTENYI

• Big, big, BIG news this week, especially concerning the downtown borough of Ville-Marie. The longtime borough mayor, opposition leader and until Sunday number two man at Vision Montreal, Benoît Labonté, was fired by his boss, Louise Harel. After months of howling outrage over perceived sleaze inside Mayor Gérald Tremblay’s administration, particularly over the swollen water meter contracts, Labonté was found to have had some rather questionable dealings with Tony Accurso, the developer at the heart of the scandal. Labonté denied it, but media investigations turned up phone conversations and reported an allegation that he received $100,000 in cash donations from Accurso. Harel ordered him to explain himself and appear on TV early Sunday morning to refute the charges. When Labonté hemmed and hawed, she canned him. Just in time for Monday’s televised debate (more on that later).

This obviously couldn’t come at a worse time for Harel. Ethics have, above everything else, been at the centre of this election, and with the tables very suddenly turned, voters were given the impression that a Harel administration wouldn’t be any cleaner than the current one.

• As a result of Labonté’s departure just two weeks before Montrealers hit the polls, new ballots will be drawn up without a Vision Montreal candidate for city councillor in the Ste-Marie district. The old ballots, some 15,000 of them, have to be destroyed.

• The biggest change to Ville-Marie over the past year has to be the unveiling of the Quartier des spectacles. But the four-year, $120-million extreme makeover isn’t the only mega-project in the works. A few weeks ago, a group of journos and bloggers accompanied Projet Montréal leader Richard Bergeron on a Friday lunch-hour boat tour around the Old Port. The point was to show off PM’s Big Idea regarding the revitalization of the waterfront. With a sideswipe at the Notre-Dame E. project, which Bergeron says would cut off the river from residents, he proposed a “Quartier des berges,” a residential/commercial waterfront that would be open to the public with a boardwalk, restaurants, shops, office space and even a concert hall. He’d also like to see a parking lot on Ile Ste-Hélène turned into something more imaginative, spectacular and iconic, like the Sydney Opera House or Hamburg’s Elbe Philharmonic Hall.

• And it wouldn’t be fair to skip Louise Harel’s vision for the borough, should she win. On Vision Montreal’s website, she lists her five projects. One is to submit a bid for the 2020 Expo, hoping to capture some of that magic that defined the city 53 years prior; start prepping for Montreal’s 375th anniversary (woo-hoo!) in 2017; covering the Ville-Marie expressway between the Palais des Congrès and the Jacques-Cartier bridge—a project that’s been talked about since Moses wore short pants; a light rail connection between downtown and the airport—which everyone and their uncle has been calling for too; and revamping all three of Montreal’s beaches, including the one opposite the casino. They’re all admirable, we suppose. But hardly Earth shattering. (By the by, as of Tuesday afternoon, Vision Montreal’s website still describes wistfully an Harel-Labonté administration.)

Fireworks at last!

• Okay, on to Monday’s debate. The all-French debate, hosted by Radio-Canada’s Patrick Roy, was, in fact, kind of entertaining, as far as these things go. And can anyone tell us just when exactly the mayor got so pissed off? He was fiery and dismissive at one point and argumentative the next, his voice frequently rising without losing his composure or making an ass of himself—a real tour de force performance. Even when Harel was badgering him about the leak that ultimately sank Labonté—did someone in his office plant the story?, Harel demanded. Not to the best of my knowledge, came the eventual reply—Tremblay was combative and didn’t back down. His balls, hitherto unremarkable, served him well.

Sandwiched between the two sat a sometimes glum Richard Bergeron. He stumbled a couple of times, but that almost added to his bookish appeal. After a heated, finger-pointy exchange between Tremblay and Harel, he practically sighed and said this is what you get with two experienced politicians—a useful jab, given the esteem in which career politicians are held. Still, we’d give this one to Tremblay. Sleaze isn’t just his problem anymore.