commentary by LOUIS RASTELLI

Now that the Liberals have won in a landslide, I wonder whether Kristian Gravenor will thank the demerger movement for causing the downfall of the PQ (The Kristian Perspective, April 16: "If the PQ gets re-elected, blame the demerger movement."). Likewise, I wonder if he's surprised that the demerger desire is not limited to Westmounters, but is spread across the province, in such places as Gatineau, Saguenay and Jonquière (where, during the merger process, citizens erected a billboard saying, "Forced mergers are making us see red," a colour this former PQ bastion has chosen in both elections since then).

The fact is, the Canadian city merger-mania of the late '90s, almost unknown elsewhere in the world (and nowhere to be seen in Europe or the U.S., where forced mergers are illegal), was mainly a product of the corporate merger-mania of the time. The basic logic of corporate and municipal mergers was the same: combine a bunch of different organizations together and eliminate all the redundancies to achieve huge savings.

The PQ was especially given to swallowing corporate dogma whole, as evidenced by their mammoth funding of the short-lived "multimedia boom" and other boondoggles. Oblivious to the risks of using corporate fads to design public policy, the PQ suddenly decided that the solution to the problem of municipal reforms was eliminating hundreds of towns and cities altogether. Conscious of the province-wide resistance to this dictatorial move, each forced merger was designed to hide major changes or problems for around two years, supposedly to "facilitate the transition" but mostly so that the PQ could put off the real merger trauma (tax hikes, service cuts, privatizations) until after the election. In the meantime, they could run for re-election while prematurely calling the mergers a success (or, at least, not a catastrophe).

Camouflaged costs

It wasn't that simple, though. Gravenor probably missed the report by La Presse in December predicting that the new Montreal megacity would see deficits of $150-million in each of its first two years, EXACTLY the same deficits mega-Toronto ran up in its first two years. He may also have missed the connection between this and the purchase by Quebec of all of Montreal's library books and Île Drapeau for around $300-million, a shell game which conveniently helped hide these deficits (for now). There are many corporations (not least of which are a massive local engineering firm whose CEO's brother was charged with designing the megacity budget) that hope that this whole demerger debate plays itself out with little consequence before the real deficits appear - at which point, they can capitalize on the privatizations resulting from the cost-cutting deficits.

In the corporate world, the AOL-Time Warners and the Vivendi-Universals have since regretted their own mergers, and the new catchphrase in business is that bigger isn't always better. Indeed, Vivendi now plans to unload Universal altogether. This collapse of the corporate merger trend is another reason why the merged cities should be re-evaluated and perhaps reorganized.

This doesn't mean that all the mergers should be undone. It oversimplifies the issue to say we should just undo mergers or let cities pop out of merged municipalities at will. That would be ridiculous. But unless you use Bush-style "with-us-or-against-us" logic, the question isn't whether the pre-merger reality is better than the new one. Rather, it's one of addressing what wasn't addressed by the private cabal who designed the merged cities, and drawing on the desires and input of the people who'll have to live with these new cities for generations. If it takes a year or more of consultations, reports, hard work and yes, more public money, then so be it. It's better to spend time and money getting it right early on than dealing for years with the problems caused by a rush job (see Toronto, whose garbage strike last summer was just one of many after-effects of their botched merger).

Input disinterest

The fact is, the mergers were carried out with political and corporate interests in mind, were designed by select businesspeople who likely loaded the new cities with trip-wires triggering future privatizations, and were created with a sum total of ZERO involvement by urban planners, scholars, or otherwise interested citizens. They just weren't properly carried out in the first place, and we should welcome the chance to re-examine the issue, if that's what Charest proposes.

I hope that social activists, not only indignant former suburbanites, get involved in a review of the merged cities. The mergers directly affect things such as urban sprawl (people are already looking to buy houses in Blainville instead of Pierrefonds, because you have to go that far to find another municipality), rural depopulation, social housing, recycling etc. Mayor Tremblay deserves some credit for translating demerger pressure into public consultations: throughout May, the Office de consultation publique de Montréal will be asking people's opinions about new urban plans for the boroughs (call 872-3568 or visit www2.ville.montreal.qc.ca/ldvdm/jsp/ocpm for details).

Whether any forced mergers ever get undone or not, it would be enough of a victory to alter the new cities to the point where they serve citizens first, instead of the PQ's business buddies. Getting a chance to have our say in the matter is the first step in that direction (and I look forward to hearing Mr. Gravenor vigorously defend the PQ's mergers at some public hearing in the future).

Louis Rastelli publishes Montreal's Fish Piss magazine, runs the Distroboto vending machine network and is a native of the former City of St-Laurent