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If the recent storm of controversy surrounding former Montreal executive-committee chairman Frank Zampino’s alleged improprieties with city contracts was bothering Mayor Gérald Tremblay last week, not even a copy of an English-language daily with a headline announcing yet more disturbing news was enough to rattle the mayor as he made his way through a Park Extension restaurant.
Election in November
The newspaper lay face-up in plain sight on a counter top in the Village Grecque on Jean Talon Street last Friday, where Tremblay was going around shaking patrons’ hands while on a campaign tour of the district with local city councillor Mary Deros in preparation for the city-wide election next November. Deros, who’s represented Park Extension for more than a decade, is seeking re-election with Union Montreal (the Tremblay team), after switching from the opposition Vision Montreal party two years ago.
Among other things, Zampino’s conduct has come under question after it was revealed he spent some vacation time on a luxurious yacht with a wealthy contractor with whom the city ended up doing several hundred millions of dollars in business on a water meters contract. Despite the field day opposition parties at city hall are having, Deros did not completely justify Zampino’s actions in a recent interview with PXN.
‘You’d have to ask him’
“What happened with Zampino and his vacation on the yacht, that was something personal he did on board a yacht of a friend of his that he knew before he was elected originally in St. Léonard,” she said. “They’d known each other for many years. That he did it at a time that was questionable, you’d have to ask him why. Personally, I wouldn’t have, but again I’m not him.”
Deros maintains the opposition are making much of a situation they never bothered with previously. “The contract for the water meters, before it was voted in, it was studied at a commission that I was a member of,” she said. “A presentation was made. At that time I was with the opposition. The documents that were given to us, I took them for analysis at the party. Anie Samson attended the commission as an observer with no voting rights, but she listened and never asked a question.
A ‘good contract’ – Deros
“The party never came back to me with any recommendations or questions for me to answer, and when the dossier, the contract, came up for being voted at the city council, the entire party, all the members from Vision Montreal, nobody questioned the contract and they all voted in favour unanimously.” As for the contract itself, Deros insisted it was a good one, although it has gone unnoticed in the furor over Zampino.
“Two years after the contract was given, because Zampino had gone on this questionable cruise, all of a sudden everybody’s making a big issue out of it,” she said. “The contract itself is a good contract for Montreal. They’re saying it is overpriced. Over a 20 to 25-year period it doesn’t amount to much, and all that money will not be spent right away. It’s over a 20-year period that they’re installing the meters. Over that period of time it is a reasonable contract.”
Could be hard to beat
She said the water meters will help prevent leakage in Montreal’s vast underground water distribution network. If the recent past electoral history of municipal elections in Park Extension is an accurate gauge, it won’t be easy to unseat Deros, even if the opposition is probably hard at work now scrambling to find its own high-profile candidate.
“Sometimes big names won’t do it,” Deros said. “There was a big name that ran against me in 2001 ― the former chairman of the school board, and he was Greek, and he had all the political machines helping him. However, it was the local people’s voice that won over any big name. They came out en masse and voted in favour of myself.”