RICKY BLUE

Screwed? Yes. Hey, have some Montreal lemonade…

Montreal executive committee member Robert Libman has been talking about nothing but the de-merger referendum for the last two months. Proverbial wisdom rolls off his tongue.

"You're damned if you do and damned if you don't," he said.

He supports the mega-city. I wanted to know why. A couple of years ago he was leading the fight to keep our little towns.

"We knew that the Parti Québécois government wanted to stick it to the non-francophone suburbs. They wanted to wipe out what they saw as the last bastion of non-francophone power. They would force the suburbs to merge with Montreal and then watch as Montreal sucked them dry. Well, we fought it. We marched in the streets. We even challenged it in the courts."

"You were magnificent," I nodded.

"But we didn't put all our eggs in one basket! When the courts ruled that municipalities were creatures of the provincial government so the forced merger was legitimate, we had a contingency plan. We united and took power away from Pierre Bourque. They wanted to wipe out the municipalities. We wiped them out! Thanks to the suburbs we took control of Montreal City Hall. That is what they had not foreseen. The suburbs could vote as a block and rule the city, while the East End remained divided. And by controlling the city we brought in the culture of the smaller communities. We might even get the government to recognize the autonomy of those communities. Isn't it better to be in there and have a decisive unified voice than to be shut out?"

"So the mega-city is: The Revenge of the 'Burbs!" I offered.

"Yes. And the city council of Montreal is very important to Quebec. Montreal has half the gross domestic product of the province. And we are changing the culture of that council. Forty per cent of it is now non-francophone. Seven out of 11 members of the executive committee are now non-francophone. Caucus meetings are conducted in sixty per cent English."

Fiendishly clever, I thought. While the French press blindly accuses the de-merger forces of being a recidivist group of anglophones, the ex-leader of the Equality Party himself is quietly taking over Montreal City Hall - and fifty per cent of the province - from inside. This stroke of Machiavellian misdirection won my profound respect.

"Look, if we had the chance to go back to what we had before it would be very difficult for me to defend the merger. But we don't. Any town that de-merges now will be at the mercy of the agglomeration council, the clearest example of taxation without representation you'll see anywhere in the free world. So I choose the lesser of the two evils."

"But is it not unfair that a booming, business-friendly suburb like Kirkland be punished for its success?" I asked. "It is flourishing precisely because it is everything the City of Montreal is not."

"We have to bring that pro-business, can-do, West Island culture to the City Hall of Montreal. Maybe that will help restore our city to its former glory."

"Right on. So, do you have any regrets?"

"It has not been easy," he admitted. "Former friends and colleagues criticize me personally. I am looking forward to June 21. All I can say is: Were we screwed? Yes. But let's move on. Perhaps we can turn this lemon into lemonade!"