Do you remember the days when public representatives were accountable to the public?
It was a long time ago when elected officials remembered that they were chosen not by God, but by the voters.
Representing the citizens and serving their interests.
Today, elected officials only give interviews when they have “good news” to offer.
Otherwise, they go underground.
“You want to interview the minister about the controversy that happened yesterday? Oh, you know, he’s very, very busy, unfortunately, he won’t be able to accept your invitation,” his press officer tells you.
I would really like to interview some elected officials. Unfortunately, these get left out.
But I had an idea.
I’m going to interview them anyway, even if they don’t want to meet me.
I’m just going to post the questions I would ask them if they were in front of me, in the living room magazine Or at the QUB studio.
It’s up to you to imagine what answer they would give me.
So it is with great pleasure that I am beginning this series with an exclusive interview with Montreal Mayor Valerie Plante.
Cone hunting!
“Hello, Ms. Plante. Thank you for agreeing to this interview! Do you ever walk around your city? Do you find it beautiful? Yours?”
“The renovation of City Hall cost $211 million. Meanwhile, Old Montreal, where your workplace is located, is a veritable pigsty that even scares tourists. There are no trash cans, no public toilets, people have to go into restaurants to pee… don’t you think it’s indecent?”
“On the website of the City of Montreal, we read that the Mobility Squad you set up – when there are obstacles or nuisances on the road – such as cones, for example – potentially obstructing traffic, intervenes immediately to clear the way. Do you want to laugh at us? Do you find your squad effective? Name me one place, just one, where your famous Mobility Squad intervened immediately to remove cones!
“You say Montrealers should learn to live with drug addicts and the homeless, that it’s part of “social diversity”. Why don’t you open an injection centre or shelter at city hall? That would set an example, right? Why didn’t you include that in your renovation plans?”
“How would you like homeless people to sleep outside your house and shit on your stairs? Or that drug addicts shoot themselves on your balcony?
The Veil, the Tongue and the Ugliness
“As Sophie Durocher wrote in her recent column, citizens entering the town hall are greeted by a large portrait representing a young man in a hat, an old man in glasses and a woman in a veil. Only one woman, and she wears a veil and a tunic to hide her hair, arms and legs. Is this your idea of a Montrealer?”
“Did you know that most women in Arab-Muslim culture do not wear veils? Not only that, but many fled their native country because women had to wear the veil! What message do you think your drawing sends to these women?
“How can you justify the city (which removed the cross) promoting an ostentatious religious symbol?”
“If you want to portray the multicultural character of Montreal, why not cast an Asian or black woman, for example? Why a woman with a veil? Has the veil become a symbol of diversity?”
“The Montreal Public Consultation Office consulted Montrealers to find out if we should close the Camillien-Houde road to motorists. Montrealers said no. And you did it anyway. Then what’s the point of consulting Montrealers?
“As my colleague Josée Legault wrote, the city forced the homeowner to repaint his house in every color imaginable as part of an ad campaign. Do you like orange cones, frosted fences, concrete blocks, rats, torn garbage bags? Do you like ugliness?
“Do you find it normal to have a French-speaking district in Montreal? Does Beijing have a Chinatown?
“Thank you for agreeing to answer my questions, Ms. Plante! It’s good to see an elected official showing transparency.
How to kill Initiative
as written DutyLouis-Philippe Noël, a Quebec entrepreneur who developed an innovative system for detecting breast cancer with an efficiency rate of 82% (a test that would cost the user $5), has moved his home to the UAE.
What for? Because a committee of the Quebec government has been “studying” his invention for two years to see if we should use it or not.
That’s Quebec.
Bureaucracy and red tape hamper any initiative. No wonder it takes 10 years to build a bridge…
republican party rep
The Republican Party no longer exists. It is now Trump’s party. Trump has taken it over completely. People who do not think like him are ostracized. There is no internal debate anymore, everyone agrees on the leader’s position.
It’s perfectly normal for a leader to impose his viewpoint on his party. But at this point?
We are no longer facing a political event, we are facing a religious one. The Republican Party looks more and more like a cult that worships its leader – sorry, its guru.
How to harm your cause
After shooting at schools, synagogues, libraries and businesses, anti-Israel protesters vandalized the Montreal office of federal Immigration Minister Marc Miller and called him a “child killer.”
How will these actions help the Palestinians? All these crimes will do is confirm the prejudice in people’s minds that protesters who call themselves “pro-Palestinian” are violent.
As René Lévesque said of sovereigntists who advocate the use of violence: “They harm the very cause they claim to pursue.”