Yesterday the 2009 municipal campaign expense reports were made public by the DGEQ. Here are the total expenses of the three main Montreal parties:
- Union Montréal: $1.5 million
- Vision Montréal: $1.4 million
- Projet Montréal: $245,000
When one compares with amount of money spent with the amount of votes received for each party’s mayoral candidate, here’s the dollar per vote breakdown:
- Union Montréal: $9.35 per vote
- Vision Montréal: $10 per vote
- Projet Montréal: $2.30 per vote
What is most noticeable is the huge difference between Projet Montréal and the two larger parties. Simply put, Projet Montréal spent way less money than the other parties and got a lot more bang for their buck. This speaks volumes of the dissatisfaction that a large chunk of the electorate felt towards the two big parties. Even with a major funding (and therefore advertising and voter contact) handicap the party was still able to see a large amount of support materialize on election day.
Also of note is that fact that Vision was largely able to keep up with Union in terms of expenditures. Gérald Tremblay had a number of key fundraising advantages going into the campaign such as incumbency, the support of the business community, and a large network of sitting councillors with their accompanying lists of contacts. In the aftermath of the election some commentators credited Tremblay’s reelection to his party’s superior get out the vote machine. These numbers would imply that Harel was on a more level playing field.
As per electoral regulations 50% of these expenses will be reimbursed by the City. This will leave a total bill of around $1.6 million.
Projet Montréal has posted their report on their website, available here.
If this were 2002 rather than 2009, Louise Harel might be spending this week looking more like the photo above (she’d be smiling). Why? Well, because in 2002, the geography of Montreal was much different than it is now. Before 2002, Montreal was a much smaller city surrounded by a number of independent municipalities on all sides as can be seen on this map:
In 2002, all across Quebec, small municipalities were merged together to create large, centralised cities. In Montreal, this meant merging all the towns on the island into the city of Montreal in an attempt to create “une île, une ville”. After the merger, this is what the city of Montreal looked like:
One would think this would be a good idea, but for various reasons, many of the former towns on the island (and, indeed, across Quebec) were not happy with the reorganisation and wanted to demerge to their former separate municipalities. In 2006, referendums were held across the province and a handful of the merged municipalities were able to demerge. After the demergers, Montreal looked as it does today:
So, how would the election have turned out had the mergers and subsequent demergers never happened. To find out, I crunched some numbers. I isolated the total number of votes for the three major parties for the areas of the city that were part of pre-2002 Montreal (what are now the boroughs of Ahuntsic-Cartierville, CDN-NDG, Mercier–Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, Le Plateau-Mont-Royal, Rivière-des-Prairies–Pointe-aux-Trembles, Rosemont–La Petite-Patrie, Le Sud-Ouest, Ville-Marie, and, Villeray–Saint-Michel–Parc-Extension) and added them up. These are the results:
Gérald Tremblay – 88 854 – 34%
Louise Harel – 101 773 – 38%
Richard Bergeron – 78 138 – 30%
Note that the percentage is taken from total number of votes for those three candidates, not total number of votes cast.
As we can see, had the election only been in the original 9 boroughs, last Sunday would have been much more interesting. In the old city, all three parties were in the 30% range and all were within 4% of their closest rival. Harel would have won by a mere 4% and Bergerone would have lost by only 8%. Tremblay’s second place would have sent him to the Opposition side of City Hall.
The most interesting part of all of this is the irony of the fact that Louise Harel is the one responsible for the mergers. Back when she sat as a PQ member in the National Assembly, she served as Minister of Municipal Affairs. As an MNA, it can be argued that the most important thing she did was to table the bill that led to the municipal reorganisations across Quebec. The whole mess caused by the mergers played a large role in the ousting of her party from power in the provincial election that followed. Had she left everything well enough alone, she might be mayor today. However, had she left everything alone, she might still be in the National Assembly.
Photo via Louise Harel’s Facebook. Maps via Wikipedia.
So Projet Montréal, the party who put transit at the top of the agenda -at least before cries of corruption drowned out any other issue- earned 10 seats on the municipal council. Their support rose from 9% in 2005 to 25% across the island. The fact that sustainable development and alternative transportation preoccupy even a quarter of Montrealers is the sign of a rapidly rising tide of ideas.
There’s just one problem: Projet Montréal didn’t win the top spot. So who is actually going to be in charge of transportation?
Not André Lavallée, who was behind Montreal’s innovative transportation plan and who brought us BIXI. He came in dead last in his riding. And not Michel Labrecque, who was a founding member of Vélo Québec and president of the Comité Régional de l’Environnement before Tremblay appointed president of the STM. He was beaten by the Projet Montréal candidate in the Plateau.
Tremblay has said that he’s not looking at forming coalitions, which means that these guys are likely to be replaced with less competent folks.
Not good.
Oh, and who’s going to update the urban plan next year, another one of Lavallée’s jobs?
The problem isn’t that Tremblay got re-elected, the problem is which of his cronies made the cut. And who did get in? Let’s see, the guy in charge of road construction. We all know how smoothly that’s going. Then there was the one under investigation for being in cahoots with local contractors… and the list goes on.
I didn’t think it was possible, but city hall may have just gotten worse.
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Finally, since I haven’t seen it anywhere else, here’s the list of elected Projet Montréal representatives and their ridings. Five Projet Montréal borough councillors were also elected.
Pierre Gagnier (Ahuntsic-Cartierville Borough Mayor)
Émilie Thuillier (Ahuntsic-Cartierville City councillor)
Peter Mcqueen (NDG City Councillor)
Luc Ferrandez (Plateau Borough Mayor)
Josée Duplessis (Plateau Councillor)
Richard Ryan Alex Norris (Plateau Councillor)
Nimâ Valérie Machouf (Plateau Councillor) – to be replaced by Richard Bergeron.
François Limoges (Rosemont-Petite-Patrie Councillor)
Avec un taux de participation qui n’atteint même pas 40 %, tu mérites ta pourriture urbaine. Ta lacune d’action me dégoute.
Certains déploreront le manque de publicité. D’autres prétendront qu’il faisait trop beau pour aller voter. La majorité avancera que tout, toutes, et tous sont responsables à l’exception de toi – le soi-disant citoyen.
Qu’est-il advenu de l’axiome national « maître chez nous » ?
Tu n’étais pas au courant du scrutin municipal ? Familiarise-toi avec un petit outil qui s’appelle Internet.
Tu n’avais pas aimé ce qui t’a été proposé ? Engage-toi ! Soutiens tes projets.
Tu ne crois pas au système politique québécois et canadien ? Deviens militant de la cause.
La société ne peut se transformer que par vote ou par révolution. Montréal, attends-tu une révolution ? Est-ce que ton bras sait porter l’épée ? Il ne sait même pas porter un crayon !
Des pires d’histoires d’escroquerie municipale circulent à toute échelle de média : régionale, nationale, fédérale, et même internationale. Montréal, c’est ton portefeuille qui se fait piquer devant toi ; dans ta face. Peut-être les élections devraient-elles avoir lieu le 1er mai, après le Jour J des impôts.
Je répète ce que j’ai écrit au début de cette série : nous, les citoyens de Montréal, nous devrions avoir honte. Nous n’assistons pas aux scrutins municipaux. Nous laissons des clowns (ainsi que des forbans et des mafias) conquérir la Mairie.
Une honte qui nous sied à ravir.
p.s. Congrats Mayor Tremblay. Enjoy your 3rd term but take heed – In the words of the great William Shakespeare : Beware the ides of Spacing Montréal. We will be watching.
