HENRY AUBIN - Louise Harel's bid to become mayor of Montreal is stirring much discussion about the intelligence of her forced merger of Montreal Island, the wisdom of her new desire to slash the power of boroughs and, finally, her limited ability to speak English. But another issue, even more fundamental, is getting little attention.
That issue is this: Does it make sense for Montreal's mayor, who is responsible for Montreal's economic future, to be a proponent of Quebec sovereignty, as is Harel?
Before going any further, let me state a caveat. To raise this issue does not imply a harsh judgment on the constitutional merits of Quebec independence. The constitutional pros and cons of la question nationale are a matter for debate in provincial and federal politics, not in municipal politics, and this column will stay clear of that thorny debate. I'm considering here only the economic impact of sovereignty on Montreal.
That impact would be real. Pauline Marois herself, before becoming Parti Québécois leader, said that Quebec as a whole would face five years of "turbulence" after attaining independence.
That prediction is in fact mild - many economists say the problems would last far longer than five years.
Those problems might well be modest in certain areas of Quebec. There's nothing illogical with the mayor of, say, Quebec City being a sovereignist. Indeed, that city might well even profit from independence since it would become the capital of the new republic, with all the embassies and the ex-federal bodies that this would imply.
But the Montreal region is a whole other story. Nowhere in Quebec would the effect be more negative.
That's not an alarmist hypothesis. The two referendums and the political uncertainty surrounding them have had a demonstrably adverse effect on the region. In the five years following the 1976 election of the PQ, for example, Quebec suffered a net loss of 141,700 people, most of them Montreal-area anglophones, says well-known demographer Jacques Henripin. Many of them were investors, employers and knowledge workers.
Another exodus, caused by sovereignty, could compound the phenomenon. Says Henripin: "We could expect an marked impoverishment due to people who are more productive than most. To this, we'd have to add the impoverishment caused by the rupture with the rest of Canada, whose wealthiest provinces send us part of their wealth."
Jacques Parizeau and other Péquistes tried years ago to shut up talk of nationalism's economic impact by calling it intellectual terrorism. Yet there's no getting around it: Political uncertainty is a factor in the Montreal metropolitan region's status as having the lowest prosperity (as measured by per-capita GDP) of any of the 28 metropolitan regions in Canada and the U.S. that have populations greater than 2 million.
Some sovereignists have tried to excuse Montreal's abysmal status by noting that North America's economic centre has moved west in recent generations. But then how to explain the relatively healthy ranking of such East Coast cities as Boston (No. 4), New York (5), Philadelphia (10), and Baltimore (17)?
Defenders of Harel's candidacy might point out that Jean Doré (1986-1994) and Pierre Bourque (1994-2001) were sovereignist mayors. Their links to the PQ were years in the past, however. Both soft-pedalled their nationalism, as Projet Montréal's Richard Bergeron is doing today. Harel cannot do that. She's known as a radical sovereignist and was a PQ MNA until last fall.
How close is the mayoral candidate to the PQ now? If you look up her website, [www.louiseharel.com->www.louiseharel.com], it's the PQ's official website that immediately will pop up on the screen.
But back to Doré and Bourque. Neither of them represents a glorious precedent for sovereignist mayors. Neither did much for economic development. Both are associated with Montreal's decline.
Today, an unabashedly sovereignist politician is aiming for the mayor's chair. If she wins, she'd be in a position to pick fights with Ottawa to show how federalism doesn't work. She'd be able to help mobilize the PQ's machine in the city for the next provincial election or referendum.
I have one question for Harel: Can she reconcile Montreal's economic interests with sovereignty?
I suspect she will avoid answering. Because three decades of experience suggest no good answer exists.
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haubin Fvm thegazette.canwest.com