City councils are supposed to be places of calm deliberation where bylaws and business are debated openly and voted upon and decided in public. Unfortunately, in Montreal everything is done in secret and council itself acts largely as a rubber stamp for decisions that have already been finalized by the all powerful executive committee.
To make debate and questioning even more difficult the mounds of paper describing the agenda items are delivered to the councillors too soon before the meetings to allow for anything more than the cursory study of a few selected items. Even then, debate is further discouraged because questions that do get asked usually do not get responded to before they have already been voted on and the agenda items concerned already adopted.
This total secrecy facilitates the air of incompetence that has permeated the current and previous administration because of course, when things are done in secret there is a very low performance threshold. Outside observers have very little information on which to judge and, for all we know, some of the committee members may be doing nothing at all.
Apart from the mayor, the executive committee has 11 members - most of them with very small portfolios and responsibilities - and most of them are consequently and understandably unknown to the public. The one thing for sure is that they collect very large salaries and have the use of taxpayer-provided city limousines while we have no way of knowing what they actually do in return.
Various thinkers throughout the ages have sought to explain the nature and functioning of sound political management. Perhaps the greatest and most effective political manager in modern times was Winston Churchill, who provided very clear leadership from the top and managed with a cabinet of six members to direct and win the war effort from 1939 to 1945.
Perhaps part of the Montreal problem is that there is little or no direction at the top. In Montreal, we have a mayor who has chosen to take no role in the day-to-day running of the city and who is so apparently disinterested that he has no specific responsibility or "dossier" on the executive committee. Instead, he interferes from time to time with usually dismal results (remember the FINA swim meet fiasco?).
By comparison, Churchill, as a model of hands-on leadership in World War II, took not only the role of prime minister but also of minister of war. He had a definite job to do and as such he was able to maintain the confidence of both Parliament and the people and to never falter as a convincing leader. Tremblay has no visible role to play and so his ship flounders for lack of a captain on deck.
Clearly, direction is lacking at the top because, even though the city has a huge budget and employs a huge workforce, the roads are broken, the pipes are leaking and a whiff of delay and do-nothing hangs in the air. Why is this, and why is our city council not directing matters with more clarity, imagination and forcefulness?
Happily, fixing the Montreal executive committee (and by extension its council) and making its members work while improving the administration of the city would be relatively easy if only there was political will. First and foremost, the executive committee should, with the exception of a few delicate items such as budget preparation, start holding all of its meetings in public rather than in secrecy as is now the case. This would force its members to get serious and to start addressing the real issues rather than chasing headlines and pursuing party political considerations.
Currently, the administration spends far too much time in announcing grandiose schemes that will never happen (unless some other level of government coughs up the cash) and in issuing large numbers of expensive contracts for legal and consulting work. Items of these sorts would have more difficulty in surfacing or in passing subsequent debate in council if they were first to be aired in public.
Not only should the executive committee meet in public but there should be a system of public council commissions or sub-committees where all items destined for council would get a public airing prior to council debate and voting. Commissions of this sort would be chaired by the appropriate executive committee members and would allow other councillors and members of the public and media to pose questions and make suggestions. A system of this sort would allow sensible amendments and for changes to be made to proposals before they became too far advanced in the system and before the administration-ego associated with council meetings got in the way.
Six permanent commissions of council do already exist and these meet regularly but they have no apparent function other than to generate extra income for their members and they do not address city council agenda items. These could be usefully abolished to make way for new working commissions. In this way there would be no secrecy and unnecessary executive committee posts (probably half of them) would be rapidly eliminated because it would become impossible to justify them in the light of genuine public and press scrutiny. Surviving members would have to justify their positions on a day-to-day basis and things might actually start to move and to get done in our city.
The propositions above are neither original nor revolutionary but simply reflect best practice in many other more ably managed cities.
Comments: jeremy.searle@sympatico.ca
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