The dreadful prospect that Louise Harel could become mayor of Montreal is the true price of Gérald Tremblay's casual attitude toward city business.
We and others have more than once faulted the mayor for failing to keep a closer eye on the city housing agency and on that record water-works contract, both of which now reek of scandal. Without those problems, Tremblay would today surely be cruising almost unopposed toward a third term as mayor.
Instead, the mayor's weakened status, five months before civic elections, has brought us to this: An almost-unilingual sovereignist, architect of the disastrous megacity when she was municipal-affairs minister, now thinks she has a chance to be elected mayor of Montreal. We can't imagine a more damagingly divisive candidate, or mayor.
Ironically, Harel's candidacy is great news for Tremblay. Among public figures, perhaps only Mom Boucher could make Tremblay look so good in comparison.
Can she be elected? We earnestly hope not. Her rhetoric yesterday about "transcending differences" and "uniting our strength" was laughable. And her expressed determination to slash the powers of the 19 boroughs she calls "quasi-villes" will crash her right into the powers extended to the boroughs before the 2004 demerger referendums.
Has she forgotten, or does she expect Montrealers to forget, that several boroughs might well have voted to escape the megacity but for those powers? Seven old municipalities, including LaSalle, Pierrefonds, and St. Laurent, cast majority votes against remaining in Montreal, but were kept in by the super-majority requirements shamefully imposed by the Liberal government of the day. Would Harel give those boroughs another chance to get out? Or would she just trample them again, as she did with the original mergers?
In any case, changing borough powers is a job for the Quebec government, not Montreal city hall. We're the first to agree that the current city structure is a mess, but we remember that it was Harel, in her ministerial arrogance, who opened this Pandora's box. She is emphatically not the one to fix it.
Yesterday's announcement also evokes some hard questions about the seriousness and sophistication of Benoit Labonté. Some of the people who supported his campaign must be smarting now.