 PETER BLACK Wealthy Quebec ski villages face forced merger
Mont Tremblant, the story goes, gets its name from the Algonquins whose traditional turf includes the Ottawa River basin of the Laurentian Highlands. The Algonquins called the 968-metre bump Manitou Ewitchi Saga, which loosely translates as "the god Manitou will make this mountain tremble if man messes with nature."
One suspects this Manitou is a fairly tolerant deity, given the tampering with the mountain that's taken place in recent years. The Vancouver-based resort giant Interwest has transformed the sleepy ski hill into a fabulous all-season attraction targeted at a class of clientele several income brackets above the hardy, T-bar-buffeted folk of yore.
The scale of development at Tremblant, raining jobs and untold other spin-offs on the previously-depressed region, has been such that the local villages have been engaged in a nasty spat over the spoils. This foothills feud has provided a convenient excuse for the Bouchard government to step in and force a little amalgamation down the throats of the townspeople reaping the better part of the resort boom in their backyards.
Earlier this month Municipal Affairs Minister Louise Harel introduced a bill to force the merger of the village of Mont Tremblant, the town of Ste. Jovite, the parish of Ste. Jovite, and the hamlet of Lac Tremblant Nord. Both the parish and the town of Ste. Jovite are in favour of the merger while Mont Tremblant and Lac Tremblant Nord are opposed, decisively so.
Now, as everybody knows, referendums are a touchy subject in Quebec, because no one can agree on the significance of a vote or what constitutes a clear majority. But in Mont Tremblant and Lac Tremblant Nord residents left little doubt about what they want.
Both voted to reject a merger with the Ste. Jovites by near unanimous margins. (Lac Tremblant Nord, we should point us, has fewer than 20 permanent residents, the dozen or so other citizens being seasonal cottagers.)
Harel's rejection of the resounding Mont Tremblant referendum was significant enough to attract the attention of Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Stephane Dion. He added it to his arsenal of barbs to throw at Harel's colleague Joseph Facal, Dion's Quebec counterpart and former student, in one of his now-predictable open letters. Dion's point is that a referendum, by both Quebec and federal law, is only a consultation and in no way binding on the government that holds it.
The Bouchard government's decision to impose a marriage on the mountain villages has raised several questions.
The first is why the government chose this example to unsheath the legislative sword, when there are literally hundreds of other loose agglomerations in the province which a steely-eyed bureaucrat would deem worthy candidates for a merger for efficiency's sake.
Some of those agglomerations might be the urban crazy quilts called the Island of Montreal, the Quebec City region, or the Jonquière-Chicoutimi tandem. Harel's policy on municipal mergers, now working its way through the legislative gauntlet, is supposed to lay out a plan to deal with these and a host of other candidates for rationalization.
The other question is how much is Interwest pulling the strings of the politicians to ensure that bothersome impediments to development are ironed out.
Documents already brown-bagged to various media show that Interwest has urged the Bouchard government to establish an economic and tourism development zone in the territory surrounding Tremblant. The correspondence was sent to the local Assembly member, who happens to be Treasury Board President Jacques Leonard.
Harel herself has taken the line that she is pushing the Mont Tremblant area merger to make sure the benefits of the Interwest development, as well as the burdens, are shared equitably among the neighbours. This is only appropriate since the PQ government has millions of dollars invested in the Tremblant resort (as do the feds).
In reply, Mont Tremblant, ruled by the eternal Mayor André Sigouin, has proposed a revenue-sharing plan that addresses the disparity problem while allowing his town to remain distinct. It evens calls for expanding the area of revenue sharing to include other municipalities. The town is also prepared to test the forged merger in the courts if an agreement cannot be brokered.
Whether this proposal is good enough for the Bouchard government and its business partner Interwest remains to be seen. In the meantime, while Manitou may not be shaking the firmament, the little town of Mont Tremblant is.
Copyright © 1999 Peter Black/Log Cabin Chronicles/11.99 |
