Quote of the week:

"I think that Ralph Nader is proving that the only master that he serves is his enormous ego." - Scott Maddox, chairman of the Democratic Party in Florida, after the consumer-protection crusader announced his candidacy for the presidency, from the BBC Online Monday.

Bald lip foretells change

Shaving one's pornstar stache to symbolize a new golden era isn't unprecedented in Montreal city politics. Mayor Jean Doré stripped his lip in an effort to recapture the mayoralty a few years back, and similarly Marvin "Superstache" Rotrand's decision to taking the blade to his long-familiar facial caterpillar coincides with his upcoming negotiations with the province to change the way Montreal works.

"The city's electoral system is not ours to choose, it's the government of Quebec's - as it should be," says Rotrand, president of the Council Committee on Bill 9. "We've expressed a preference for a system that expresses certain principles, such as, each borough should have five elected officials. Currently, some places like Dorval only have one."

Another issue to be slugged out with the provincial overlords is the fate of the borough mayor system. Current borough mayors are just borough presidents given a fancy new title. "That's raised lots of eyebrows, as they were never elected to those posts," says Rotrand.

Many high-profile councillors are currently mulling over whether to run for borough mayor in November 2005, but are hesitating until it's announced whether the new electoral system will include co-listers, a system that allows a failed mayoral candidate to remain in council by replacing an elected colleague. Without co-listers, many high-profile borough mayor candidates could find themselves swiftly saying bye-bye to their political careers.

Complicating Rotrand's task is the unknown results of the anticipated demerger referenda. "We presume nobody will demerge, but it could happen that some will."

» Kristian Gravenor

Cough up for retirees

Retired doesn't mean dead, says a group that sticks up for former city employees, even if pensioners are getting starvation wages. Jean Des Trois Maisons, president of the Association of Retired Employees of the City of Montreal, says almost 2,000 former city workers or their surviving spouses are receiving meager amounts of money because their pensions haven't been indexed in over 20 years, the outcome of labour negotiations from 1983. The 744 surviving former workers and 1,005 widows are therefore collecting seriously undervalued pension payments that are nowhere near 2004 survival levels. Des Trois Maisons urged the mayor and the opposition leader to get this situation fixed at a city council meeting earlier this week.

"These are people who don't go out in the street and protest, who don't throw tomatoes at the mayor," he says, "so they've been forgotten by the city. The system has been underfinanced over the years, so every time we go to the city to correct the problem, they keep giving us the same old excuses: we don't have the money now, there's this, there's that."

Des Trois Maisons uses the example of some widows who are "collecting $1,313, not a week, not a month, but a year!" to illustrate the severity of the problem. He's urging the city's politicians to do what it takes to sort the problem out. "I don't want to blame anyone for the problem," he says. "I just want them to work together for a solution."

» Patrick Lejtenyi

Feds talk Compassion

The medical marijuana movement may be getting more respect, but there's still a long way to go before Boris St-Maurice, the local supremo of the federal Marijuana Party, is satisfied. Last week, the veteran pro-pot activist attended a meeting with the Health Canada Stakeholder Advisory Committee on the Medical Marijuana Access Regulations ("It's a mouthful," he says. "It's also affectionately known as MMAR."). The meetings bring together health professionals, federal bureaucrats, law enforcement types, smokers and now Compassion clubs. "It's about time," St-Maurice says. "We've been hassling them for a year."

St-Maurice says he had an "interesting, lively debate" with the various members and acknowledges that the invitation represents a "form of legitimacy" for Compassion clubs among the mainstream talking heads currently debating the topic.

"There were different perspectives and effective dialogue, but we're still miles away from where we think we should be," he says. "But I am glad patients were invited, because the patient should be in charge of deciding his treatment."

In other pot news, StatsCan revealed this week that marijuana offenses accounted for about three-quarters of all drug-related crimes, and that a surge in possession charges has pushed up drug crime rates over the past decade.

In the meantime, however, St-Maurice has caught federal election fever. He is currently recruiting candidates.

» Patrick Lejtenyi

REAR-VIEW MIRROR

15 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK
Feb. 24-Mar. 8, 1989

On the cover: Bruce Cockburn, whose hit single "If I Had a Rocket Launcher," about Guatemalan refugees, is getting a lot of attention. "I didn't write [it] from the peasant's perspective. I wrote it from my own," he says of the angry song.

• McGill scientists are developing fuel-air explosive weapons. Peter Caines, an electrical engineering prof and member of McGill Employees for Nuclear Disarmament, says, "The point is that the feedback loop between pure and applied research is very tight - this is a feature of modern society. In peaceful applications this is regarded as a good thing, but it works just as strongly in the areas that involve war and destruction."

• In a review of Malarek, Steve Kokker praises Canadian cinema for being "earnest and heartfelt," if not "subtle."

• Reviewing The Satanic Verses, Adam Quastel writes, "The message is that religious doctrine might be determined in some way by political events - the sort of thing that ires an ayatollah."

Angel >> The Union of Concerned Scientists This independent organization of more than 60 high-profile scientists - including 20 Nobel Prize laureates - denounced the Bush administration last week for allegedly distorting scientific fact to back up its own policies. On topics covering nuclear weaponry, biomedical research, environment and health, the group charges, the White House has ignored recommendation, disbanded dissenting panels, stacked advisory committees with unqualified political appointees and refused to seek independent scientific expertise. More specifically, the scientists say the administration has censored or misrepresented findings on climate change, manipulated scientific findings on mercury emissions from power plants and discouraged condom use. White House defenders say the charges are "politically motivated."
Insect >> Greedy borough councillors It must be tough running Alfonso Gagliano's 'hood. As evidence, the borough councillors looking after the nuts-and-bolts operations in St-Léonard (pop. 71,000) recently voted to give themselves a great big 75 per cent raise, from the borough standard $26,000 per year to $45,000, which is what city councillors make. The councillors say that just because they work at the borough level, they don't work any less hard than their downtown colleagues; critics say that a borough councillor's job is at best part-time, and that the salaries reflect that. Although the move isn't illegal, it is obnoxious, and will probably give borough councillors in other, equally hard-working boroughs some expensive ideas.