Vive le Sud-Ouest!

Voici ma réaction (très personnelle et peut-être trop enthousiaste) à la publication du rapport du BAPE sur le projet Turcot.  Ici, je parle d’une « victoire ».  Soyons clairs : nous sommes encore loin de la coupe aux lèvres concernant la position du gouvernement sur le projet.  Charest pourrait, malgré les recommandations du BAPE (et l’opposition presque unanime du milieu politique, communautaire et citoyen montréalais), aller de l’avant avec ce projet nuisible.  Pour moi, la victoire se trouve dans le reflet - à travers le rapport du BAPE - de l’articulation collective des besoins d’une communauté entière.  Une communauté qui trouve sa voix.  Pourtant, dans le rapport du BAPE, on ne parle pas d’une seule voix – on trouve, plutôt, des multiples voix qui reflètent la richesse et la diversité de notre quartier, et qui se rencontrent, tissées ensemble, en-dessous du béton, dans une toile de solidarité…Chaque fois que les gens réussissent à faire valoir leurs voix ainsi, on peut parler d’une victoire…Espérons que bientôt on pourra parler des victoires plus définitives.

À partir d’aujourd’hui, nous pouvons dire (moi-même j’ai l’intention de le dire très fort) que ce n’est plus exclusivement le quartier Pointe St-Charles qui soit capable de se mobiliser et remettre en cause un méga-projet à saveur néo-libérale qui menace ses citoyens.

St-Henri (et Côte St-Paul) ont su se tenir debout.  Face à cela, souhaitons que l’État n’aurait pas le choix que de reculer. 

Oui, c’est possible.  (Ce n’est pas simplement une aberration Pointe St-Charlienne) les citoyens, avec les groupes communautaires, et les élus qui sont assez courageux pour les appuyer (ils existent, parfois), peuvent se mettent ensemble pour faire valoir leurs droits.

Le projet Turcot est nuisible pour la population locale, c’est trop évident.  Mais la population locale méritent-il de passer devant les impératifs de l’économie de libre marché et du transport individuel?

Voilà la question posée par ce projet.

Moi, je connais ma réponse.  Parce que c’est ma famille, mes voisins, et mon quartier qui sont en jeu.

Et je suis une, parmi des centaines (on voit certains de leurs noms dans le rapport du BAPE, c’est inspirant), des personnes qui se sont impliqué, à un moment ou un autre, dans cette lutte pour la survie d’un quartier central de Montréal.

Il n’y a pas une personne, ou un groupe de personnes, qui mérite plus d’accolades qu’un autre.

Cette victoire (que le BAPE publie un rapport si dévastateur sur le projet Turcot), on l’a gagné ensemble.  Chaque personne qui a fait le moindre geste est aussi importante que celle qui était là depuis le début.  C’est la force de notre effort collectif qui fait la différence.

Je l’ai senti le 27 mai 2008, à l’assemblée constitutive du mouvement Mobilisation Turcot au Centre Gadbois, parmi une foule de 350 personnes.

Je l’ai senti, cette soirée-là, lorsqu’un des intervenants a dit : « Je crois que ce projet sera modifié.  Pas parce que le Ministère des Transports Québec est de bonne foi.  Mais parce qu’il y a ici, ce soir, assez de monde qui tiennent à cœur leur quartier, qui sont prêts à s’impliquer, que le Ministère des Transport n’aurait pas le choix que de modifier son projet. »

Ce n’était pas de la prophétie, entendez-le bien, ce n’était qu’un constat de faits.

J'ai écrit, à la ministre des transports Julie Boulet, dans une lettre ouverte publiée dans la Presse (oui, j'en suis fier, le 4 juin 2008) : « En conclusion, j’ai peut-être une mauvaise nouvelle pour vous.  Je sais que vous être pharmacienne de profession, mais je regrette de vous informer que la pilule que vous nous prescrivez, nous ne l’avalerons pas (même avec une cuillerée de discours sucré de politicienne).  Les citoyens de nos quartiers sont éveillés.  Nous étions près de 400, le mardi 27 mai, à assister à une assemblée publique pour lancer la mobilisation contre votre projet et réclamer un nouveau projet, un projet qui respectera les besoins, la santé et la qualité de vie de la population locale.  Et je peux vous dire que je n’étais pas le seul à sentir que ce n’était qu’un début.»

Oui, c’est possible…Maintenant on retourne au boulot.  Que ce ne soit qu’un début!

Vive le Sud-Ouest!

Turcot last call

On a radiant Sunday, a few hundred people came out for a last-call effort to oppose the Turcot project.  The Environment minister Line Beauchamp will make public her recommendation this week, the project will then be sent to Charest's ministers council for a final decision.

We have learned that there is dissension in the council.  The health and social services ministry came out against the project this week.  This is good news - the last time the MSSS took position on a mega-project in the South-West, it was to express its' opposition to the Pointe St-Charles Casino.

We know the fate of that ill-conceived project.

Will history be repeated?

POPIR militants said no to the expropriation of St-Henri residents:

Sophie Thiébaut greeted POPIR president Claudette Beaucaire

Newly elected city councilor Daniel Bélanger was there with his familiy

Slogans were chanted

Was it just the unseasonal weather, or was it a feeling that just maybe...

Maybe we can win.  Here's the alternative:

Cars, and profits, over people.

We'll have a better idea on Wednesday...

In whose interest?

The political question has three parts:

1. Who decides?
2. How do they decide?
3. In whose interest do they decide?

The problem with electoral spectacle-politics is not so much in the process of voting - it's that it only answers the first question, and in the most superficial of ways.  With elections, we determine the visage apparent of power.  To find out who really decides, and to have a full comprehension of politics, we have to answer the two other questions.

Hey!  What is this?  Some kind of academic/intellectual treatise on political science?  No, just stay with me a second, I'm getting to something of local interest...

Take Turcot, for example.  Most of the opposition is based on what is ultimately an a-political position.  Groups and citizens focus on the negative impacts of the project.  That is natural, for the negative impacts are multiple and serious.  But by focusing on only the negative impacts, and not the underlying motivations behind the project, groups inadvertently make the government's decision to proceed with the project appear irrational.  Citizens end up asking themselves, is the government just plain mean? Or incompetent?  This is demobilizing.  For what is there to do in the face of irrationality but to throw one's hands up in dismay, flee into cynicism, or the comfort of artificial realities?

Some groups, somewhat less establishment, will go so far as to address the second question.  Call into doubt the whole consultation process, the BAPE charade.  This is useful, but it doesn't address the third question, without which we cannot have a global understanding of the project.

Only the most radical groups address the third question.  Good thing they exist, though there's a problem with those groups too (that I will get to in another post).  Yet, regarding Turcot, it seems quite easy to answer the third question.

In whose interest was the Turcot project designed?

1. Increasing the capacity of the Turcot interchange facilitates the transport of merchandise, keeping with the "just-in-time" principle of the globalized economy;
2. Increasing the capacity of the Turcot facilitates - quite literally! - the mobility of the work force, particularly of the professionals who work downtown and live in the suburbs.  The "suburban economy" - with its' "lifestyle center" shopping malls and the like - is obviously an essential component of the consumer society and North American capitalism;
3. Opting for the highway-on-embankments (rather than aerial structures) solution means lower short-term construction costs and lower long-term maintenance costs for the State.  Reduced costs means easier control of the fiscal burden of companies and high-income earners.

We could go on and talk about how Turcot also represents an indirect subsidy to the automobile industry, not to mention the oil companies, but I think we already have enough evidence to answer the question.  So, in whose interest, Turcot?  Capital's, of course.  Seems so simple.  Why is no one, besides a few radical groups, saying it?  Turcot is not an example of government incompetence, it is the result of economic choices made quite consciously by the State.

Why is it so hard to get that message across?  Again, it seems so much more logical than the possibility of the government being just full of poor-planners and mean-spirited bureaucrats aimed on community destruction.  Guess I can't work that out in a few lines though.  It is obvious that there is a kind of taboo regarding the third question, the question of  interest.  Bringing it up is a way of losing mainstream "credibility".  Still, I think unless we can start making those connections, people, ordinary citizens, are going to prefer escapism and cynicism.  Otherwise, the spectre of an irrational government is simply too frightening.

Project St-Elizabeth: more SHDM shenanigans?

St-Henri Chronicles #8
June 10th, 2009

One of the (good) reasons Gérald Tremblay is going to lose the next municipal elections (the king is dead, long live the queen!) would have lost the last round of municipal elections, in a normal functioning democracy anyway, is the long list of dubious doings at the SHDM, Montreal's real-estate development agency. With Mayor Tremblay's incompetent ignorance, or his corrupt tacit approval, the SHDM:

1. Was turned into a private non-profit agency basically in secret (the city didn't even bother to inform the Quebec government) and against the advice of the city's own lawyers;
2. Was mismanaged by the director Martial Filion (husband of one the key members of Tremblay's executive cabinet, Francine Senecal) to the point that it cost the city millions of dollars;
3. Hired a branch of Dessau (the company that got the biggest private contract in Montreal history, 350 million for the installation of water meters and that hired Frank Zampino after he had to leave the Tremblay administration in disgrace when it was revealed he had gone on a Carribean cruise with the mafia-linked developper Tony Accurso) to develop its business plan for the Faubourg Contrecoeur. This branch of Dessau, le Groupe Gauthier Biancamano Bolduc, destroyed key documents relating work done without written contracts. Important documents were also destroyed relating to competing submissions that had been rejected.
4. Sold the land for the Faubourg Contrecoeur to the promoter Frank Catania for 1.6 million dollars, when the city's own evaluators had determined its worth as 31 million, and then gave him a subsidy for 16 million dollars to decontaminate;
5. Sold a piece of land in Ville St-Laurent worth about 1.5 million to Tony Accurso for 1$.
   

The list goes on, but I wanted to speak here about SHDM activities in St-Henri (for the full story, look at the excellent series of articles in La Presse http://www.cyberpresse.ca/dossiers/shdm/ ). Suffice it to say that there seems to have been a complete anything-goes atmosphere at the SHDM. And it is clear that while low-income families in St-Henri and other neighbourhoods have trouble finding decent housing, the city has been handing out free money and land to wealthy real-estate developers.

Here in St-Henri the SHDM has had a hand in two recent projects. First, they associated themselves with David Owen, a real-estate developer with a impressive history of disregard for city regulations and controversial condo projects (particularly on the Plateau. A lot of the more ugly, slap-dash numbers are his). The Borough sold Mr. Owen a piece of prime real-estate (again) on the Canal, next to Gadbois. Supposedly this was a deal to compensate him for a piece of land in Pointe St-Charles, a kind of a trade. Before the land deal even went through, and of course before he had the appropriate permits, Owen had already started construction on the 150-odd units of condos (http://lapresseaffaires.cyberpresse.ca/economie/200901/06/01-679410-des-condos-construits-sanspermis-a-montreal.php). These condos were then marketed by the SHDM as part of their “property access” program.

The second project is the housing that will be constructed on the land of the old St-Elizabeth Church (on De Courcelle and St-Jacques, in front of the Home Depot, and where my neighbour Rejean got hit by a car when he was a kid running over to the rec-center that used to be there). When I first moved to St-Henri, the church was still being used by Korean Catholics. Then they moved on, it lay empty, and the city came up with a plan to develop 200 units of social housing on the lot. That was before the SHDM got involved, with the SOLIM. The SOLIM is the real-estate investment arm of the FTQ “solidarity investment fund”. Now, the SOLIM has also been under investigation, and its' director also forced to resign, when it was found that they were giving out construction contracts without appeals for submissions to companies associated with a member of the Hells Angels, Ronald Beaulieu (http://www.vigile.net/-FTQ-sous-la-loupe-?vue=736). The SOLIM bought the St-Elizabeth lot, and together with the SHDM, decided to modify the social housing project. They transformed it, predictably, into another “affordable” condo project, leaving 80 units of so-called affordable rental housing. (These “affordable” apartments are going to rent for 500$ the 3 ½. That is affordable for some people, but not for the low-income residents of the sector. Also, predictably, the rental units are the ones directly facing the highway, which, as we know, will be moved 30 metres closer. Whether we should be building housing next to highways when we know that highways cause significant health problems is another question. My feeling is that the problem is the highway, not the housing. If we know highways pose significant health risks for residents, well, we shouldn't be building them in cities, or at least attenuating their negative impacts with improved public transportation...).

The other thing that is happening with the SHDM is that they are being sued by an association of Condominium developers (http://www.cyberpresse.ca/actualites/regional/montreal/200905/26/01-859879-recours-devant-les-tribunaux-de-lapchq-contre-la-shdm.php ). I have to say that for once I am in agreement with the Condo developers (though not for the same reasons). They allege that the SHDM “affordable” condo program constitutes unfair competition, as the State in effect subsidizes the construction, permitting the SHDM to sell the condos below market rate, and thus undercut the private developers. Frankly, I don't have any tears to cry for the real-estate developers, but I agree that the State has no business allocating valuable resources to develop private housing (which does indeed meet a need, I mean of course middle-class people have the right to be decently housed as well) that doesn't respond to the priority needs of the neighbourhood.

Finally, a word about the accessibility of these "affordable" condos. They sell from between 180,00-230,000$. The generally accepted principle of affordability for a property is that its' price shouldn't represent more than three times your annual income. That means the one-bedroom condo that sells for 180,000 at the St-Elizabeth project will be affordable for households with an annual income of at least 60,000$ a year. The average household income for the area of St-Henri where the project will be built is 28,000$.