by PATRICK LEJTENYI

Some would argue that since the mega fusion, city life has become more democratic, at the local level at least. The most tangible aspect of the new democracy may be the use of local referenda to challenge zoning or construction bylaw changes, a system that has been applied three times to date.

The system has, for the residents opposing the changes, a 1-1-1 record—one win, one tie, one loss. But the issues under contention have never made it to a vote; before a referendum can be held, residents must first sign a registry, amassing enough signatures to force the city to hold one. Of the three pushes for a referendum, all have ended at the registry phase.

The first registry was opened in February 2003 and concerned the expansion of the Jean-Talon Market. Organizers failed to get the required number of signatures and the construction is scheduled to go ahead, although the date has yet to be set. The second concerned proposed limits on the number of afterhours clubs allowed in the Ville Marie (downtown) borough. Although the regulation’s opponents failed to get enough signatures on the registry, they are meeting with city councillors and hope to come up with a happy compromise. The third, successful bid was a push to halt the development of a 77-unit housing project on Cedar Avenue next to the Montreal General Hospital that residents felt would kill the sense of neighbourhood, obstruct the view of the mountain and be an all-around eyesore. They got far more signatures than were necessary and the developer had to scrap his plans.

Read the fine print

Hélène Couture, the spokesperson for the Cedar Avenue coalition, Protect the Mountain, thinks the system works, although it takes a fair bit of effort on the citizens’ part. “The city didn’t make it easy for us,” she says. “They did everything they could to block us, but eventually I think they were fair to both us and the developer. I think that in this case, democracy worked.”

Before a construction project or zoning change can be implemented, the city has to put out an ad in a local paper, usually the little-read borough weekly, giving notice of their intentions, as well as notices for public consultations. The problem in the Cedar case was that the paper in which the notice appeared, the Journal Ville Marie, isn’t distributed where those affected by the project live. Written in dense legalese, the notices aren’t very reader-friendly either.

“The publication of notices are very complex. You really need time to figure them out,” says Patrick Legendre, spokesperson for Collectif Montréal la nuit, the pro-afterhours coalition. “It’s an important problem.” He does acknowledge, however, that the city was cooperative whenever he needed additional information.

Officials at both city hall and at the borough level feel that the referendum function is a beneficial new asset to the megacity (the previous city of Montreal didn’t have the measure, although the suburbs did, as required by provincial law). Even the threatened suburb demerger movement won’t take the power away from residents. “If anything, the mayor is looking at ways to entrench and enhance [local autonomy],” says the mayor’s press aide Darren Becker. “He has no intention of taking it away.”

Scandals and flaws

But the method is full of needless, undemocratic complications, say the opponents of the Jean-Talon Market’s $16-million facelift. They complain that they weren’t advised of the plan, that bizarre zoning regulations let only a certain percentage of nearby residents eligible to sign the registry, the actual location of the registry was 10 kilometres away and there was little time to sign it on the one day it was open. In a letter by the coalition opposed to the project to the director-general of elections of Quebec, they claim that their experience was “scandalous” and “far from democratic.”

“What’s important, whether you’re for or against the project, is that there should be a debate, that the public be consulted,” says Anne Thibault of the Comité logement Petite-Patrie, one of the organizers against the project. She echoed the complaint that the notice wasn’t properly posted or distributed in the affected neighbourhood, and that, were it not for the Comité, no one would have known about it.