You must have already heart of the Outremont booze scandal. No? Well, let me refresh you: on September 27th, Le Devoir and La Presse revealed that “l’alcool coule à flots” — the alcohol has flowed freely — in Outremont since the arrival of Stéphane Harbour as borough mayor in 2002. In a private bar on Outremont town hall’s second floor, the mayor and a few close associates have helped themselves to plenty of liquor bought on taxpayer time. $7,500 worth of it, in fact — and that’s just between January and June of this year. $1,005 of that was for scotch alone.
Naturally enough, Outremonters took offense, the borough’s general manager resigned, Gérald Tremblay swore up and down that nothing of the sort was happening at City Hall and more information leaked out from Outremont, revealing that it spent $9,580 a private Christmas party last year, compared to $0 spent on Christmas parties in the Plateau Mont-Royal.
A pretty silly scandal, you might think, but wait — there’s more to it. As the Toronto Star (!) reports this morning, the Outremont liquor scandal has become a manifestation of some of the deeper divisions in Montreal municipal politics. “The well-worn political maxim holds that the smaller the stakes, the nastier the fight,” writes Sean Gorden in the Star. Now that he has been roundly pilloried by the media, his constituents and even his own mayor, Stéphane Harbour — who is part of Montreal’s governing party, Union Montreal — has lashed out against Tremblay, joining the ranks of Union candidates who have recently fled the party.
“While the furor is nominally about imprudent spending, it is really a microcosmic proxy battle of the broader fight between rival factions on Montreal’s city council,” notes Marshall. Led by ousted Ville-Marie mayor Benoît Labonté, this gang of outcasts is quickly coalescing into a formidable challenge for Tremblay, who now faces a revolt within his own party. This comes after he announced, last month, that he will indeed seek reelection in 2009.
The last election was a “sour fart” with low turnout and a focus on hopelessly trivial issues like potholes. Gérald Tremblay and Pierre Bourque’s English debate was hilariously pathetic, devolving into an incomprehensible shouting match after only a few minutes. (Of course, I was probably one of few dozen people to have seen it.) The next election might offer more hope: with a serious slate of challengers, Tremblay might be forced to think big instead of coasting on a wave of voter apathy.