Almost seven months ago Montrealers held their noses and re-elected Mayor Gérald Tremblay. The stench of shady deals, wafting across the island from city hall, had turned what should have been a stroll-in-the-park re-election into a fierce fight. If he had faced one decent challenger, instead of two with major flaws, Tremblay might be an ex-mayor today.
Running hard against scandals in a city housing agency, in construction, and in the celebrated water-meter contract, Tremblay vowed to be Mr. Clean in this term. Who was better placed than he, he asked, to tell right from wrong in handling the city's $4-billion budget? Montreal voters reluctantly agreed.
Mr. Clean has arranged to be off in China this week, as hard questions keep reverberating about the private security company BCIA, which seems to have been on the closest of terms with the city administration - and the Liberal government in Quebec City - as almost-daily revelations in La Presse and elsewhere make clear. BCIA was even handling security at police headquarters, without any signed contract. (An "administrative error" says Claude Trudel of the executive committee.)
We are told the BCIA business had nothing to do with this month's abrupt resignation of Yvan Delorme as police chief, and in fairness we've seen no evidence of any such link. But the intimate coziness of this company's many ties to the political class is certainly troubling.
Tremblay's journey has also kept him away from this week's report by auditor-general Jacques Bergeron. Childishly, city council majority leader Marvin Rotrand held up release of the report until 10 p.m. Monday night, ignoring opposition requests to present the report at the beginning of the council meeting.
But the delay didn't help: The report confirms that Bergeron has invited the Sûreté du Québec to look at the circumstances around two 2008 contracts, totalling $82 million, between the city and Telus Corp., for telephone services. It appears that decision-making was too tightly focused, and that the city's phone needs were badly calculated. The one civil servant at the heart of the contract was charged with fraud last year. So who was supervising?
It's all enough to make a mayor glad to be in China. But Tremblay will return eventually to face his own election promise. "I started to clean up city hall and I'm the best person to continue to clean up city hall - because I know exactly what has to be done," he told The Gazette last October. So: did he not know about the BCIA connection and the phone-contract problems? Or did he know and decide to do nothing?
The only redeeming element here is that at least these grave failures of management - to be charitable about them - are coming into the open. On the other hand, it's now natural to wonder how many more skeletons remain tucked away in city hall's numerous closets.
Tremblay has another three-and-a-half years to serve. It's going to be a long nightmare for all Montrealers unless he begins to live up to his promise and take the lead in cleaning out these Augean stables.
As we were saying about the current government of Quebec just the other day, at a certain point an administration becomes irredeemably branded as rotten. Public confidence evaporates, and without moral authority a government can do little beyond clinging to power. That will be Tremblay's fate if he can't put out the garbage and open the windows to let in some fresh air.
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