In what seems like an annual event, Montreal suburbs were once again blindsided with a sharp

increase in their agglomeration taxes. After the usual outbursts of indignation, the increases were absorbed into the budgets of the de-merged suburbs. Suburban councils were left to stew and wonder what surprises lay in store for next year’s budget. It has been said that beyond showing up at Agglo Council meetings and voting in the negative, there is nothing the suburban mayors can do. WRONG!!

Over five years ago, the suburban mayors announced they had reached an agreement with Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante that would see them integrated them into the budget process starting in 2020. What happened? At the time, the suburban mayors voiced their skepticism which time has proven to be well-founded. No matter her good intentions, if Valerie Plante ever had them, reality and political expediency have clearly intervened. 

Five years ago I wrote in The Gazette that it would be virtually inevitable that Plante would use the power the law gives her to arbitrarily transfer a share of Montreal’s budget woes on to the suburbs. Montreal’s financial problems become our financial burden. As Mayor Thomas has indicated, having a seat at the Agglo Council in no way assures that he or any of the suburban mayors has any influence. He has said the ASM mayors speak and no one listens. They vote and no one pays attention. Of course, that’s simply the way things work in the real world. To have influence, you need a measure of real power which means the having the potential to consolidate a majority bloc. By Quebec law, the suburban mayors represent less than 20% of the Agglo Council, while Valérie Plante appoints well over 80% of that body’s voting power. Until this anomaly is corrected, Agglo budget planning will remain unaccountable to any but Montreal voters who will, naturally, be very pleased with any financial break they are given at the expense of all the other people who live in the suburbs.

Thankfully, there is an antidote to the poison pill foisted on us 18 years ago as the price of our so-called ‘independence’. We can demand – our mayor along with the other suburban mayors can demand – that the law be changed to finally allow truly representative democracy for all who live within the Montreal Agglo. As it stands, the Agglo Council is controlled by the Montreal mayor. There are a total of 30 members on the council, which she chairs. She appoints all 15 Montreal councillors to the body. The remaining positions are held by the mayors of the 14 suburbs plus one additional councillor from Dollard-des-Ormeaux appointed by that city’s mayor. Each councillor does not, however, get an equal say. Their votes are weighted by population. So, for example, if the Senneville mayor gets one vote, the mayor of PointeClaire gets about 32 and a councillor from Montreal gets more than 100. All in all, the mayor of Montreal controls almost 90% of the votes on the Agglo Council. What she decides, carries. And she is herself accountable only to City of Montreal voters.

For our local democracy to flourish, it is essential that the demerged cities not be permanent losers, as

Mayor Thomas has indicated we are, otherwise we are being played for suckers who pay into a system that heavily favours everybody else. The only way to ensure we are not permanent losers is to set it up so interests have the possibility of realigning, issue to issue. Then those losing now know they may be winners the next time around, if they can organize a coalition.

There is a simple solution. Rather than giving the mayor of Montreal the power to fill all of Montreal’s seats on the Agglo council, the law should be changed to name each borough mayor to the agglo council just as the suburban mayors are appointed by virtue of their election. Structured in this way, Montreal’s representation would reflect the weighted interests of all its 19 boroughs. Many borough mayors would still share the partisan interests of the mayor of Montreal, but some would not. On some issues, certain borough mayors might find common ground with their suburban counterparts. So today’s losers could well be tomorrow’s winners. There’d be no more perpetual losers, no more suckers, and we’d all win at least some of the time.

So we can continue to rail against the injustice of an anti-democratic agglo or we might actually try to do something about it. We should push the Quebec government to democratize the agglo council by making it a council of island mayors.