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With less than six months left before Montrealers head to the polls to elect a new mayor and city council, Vision Montreal leader Benoît Labonté is promising to turn ethics into the most important issue with which to challenge Mayor Gérald Tremblay's Union Montreal administration.
'Paramount for Montrealers'
Labonté, who was in Park Extension for a tour of the William-Hingston community centre last week accompanied by Borough Mayor Anie Samson and St-Michel councillor Soraya Martinez, said in an interview with NPEN that ethics will "certainly be one of the most important issues during the election," if not the most important, "because ethics, integrity, transparency are paramount values for Montrealers.
"What is at stake now is not only the water meter contracts," the city hall opposition leader added, referring to a controversy involving former Montreal executive-committee chairman Frank Zampino, which is now only beginning to dog the Tremblay administration. Questions are being raised publicly about a possible personal friendship Zampino had with a service supplier who won a $355 million contract with the city to provide water meters, which Tremblay subsequently suspended.
Says bond needs repairing
"What is at stake now is not only the water meter contracts," Labonté said, pointing to a succession of questionable dealings in the administration in recent years, including shady real-estate transactions at the Société d'habitation et de développement de Montréal (SHDM), which led to the dismissal of a senior manager. "It's the way this administration is managing or not managing Montreal correctly. What is at stake also is the bond of confidence between citizens and their institutions — in this case the mayor of Montreal. The bond has been severely broken and needs to be repaired."
Although Zampino's involvement in the water meter affair, and the fact that he also went to work for a major public works contractor following his retirement from politics last year, were not a conflict of interest according to to the province's municipal affairs regulations, Labonté maintains there are still grounds to take action. The opposition has tabled two resolutions, which come up for debate on April 27 in city council.
Commissioner and code for ethics
They ask for the creation of a neutral City of Montreal ethics commissioner, and a code of ethics that would apply to elected officials and civil servants. "I hope that the mayor and his team will vote in favour," said Labonté. "When you manage over $5 billion every year, I think it's normal that elected officials and civil servants act under a very strong code of ethics, which doesn't exist right now. We're proposing one."
Labonté, who is also mayor of the Borough of Ville Marie, is a former Union Montrealer, who quit his position on Tremblay's executive committee. He insists the issue behind his decision was "the lack of leadership, vision and will of the mayor to make the city progress and evolve correctly."
Questioned SHDM management
He says he was also in total disagreement with a specific project the Tremblay team was and continues to work on: the so-called Quartier des Spectacles. "When the mayor wanted to give the management of this project to the SHDM … I was totally uneasy about this. I didn't like it then, I still don't like the way the SHDM managed. So I was in total disagreement and I left."