Montreal - the Jersey of Canada?

Well, the results are in and it turns out that just because you oversaw a regime replete with corruption in an election campaign dominated by headlines like: Quebec corruption crackdown yields 10 arrests, Montrealers say they won’t let systemic corruption stop them from voting, and Montreal Mafia controls 80 per cent of road contracts, whistleblower says doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be Mayor of Ville de Montreal for a third time.

That’s certainly the lesson learned by three time champ, Montreal Mayor Gérald Tremblay, who earlier this month clinched re-election in an extremely tight three way race with Vision Montreal leader Louise Harel and Richard Bergeron’s Projet Montreal. It certainly wasn’t a grand slam (Tremblay won with only 37.5 percent of the popular vote and lost several key candidates in the process) , but nevertheless he won. Now he says he is setting out to “regain the confidence” of voters.

The confidence issue he’s talking about tarred just about everyone seriously involved with a whole grocery list of corruption allegations. According to a recent Globe and Mail article published:

Among the allegations were reports of bid-rigging for lucrative road-work contracts by a clique of construction companies; Mob connections on key infrastructure projects; trips by Mr. Tremblay’s former right-hand man on a well-connected businessman’s luxury yacht; a contract for a new municipal water meter system that went scandalously over-budget and was ultimately cancelled; and shady corporate campaign contributions.

All of this makes for quite an interesting political “community” to run an election in. Kind of reminded me of what it might be like to run for councilman in Jersey in the fictional world of the  Sopranos.

Tremblay promises to clean up corruption - just like Batman.

What’s most fascinating (and funny) to an observer like myself, is trying to contextualize it all in the Vancouver political community. Sure, we know the municipal political community (sans finance reform) is sort of like the wild west. But the idea of wise guys having sit downs with the likes of City Councillors or a certain Vancouver City Hall Press Secretary and threatening the life of Mayor Gregor Robertson is something beyond imagination.

Now with the election over, things are starting to get back to normal – sort of.  There are currently several police probes under way and a growing amount of public pressure on Quebec Premier Jean Charest to launch a full fledged public inquiry into just how big an influence the mob has on the construction industry at the municipal and provincial levels.

My question though is just how could the political community in Montreal become so corrupt that all of this could happen?

More importantly, though,  it made me thankful that we don’t have a similar issue with organized crime and municipal politics here on the West Coast (at least none that I know of).

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