Another piece on CDN-NDG
La Presse’s Mario Girard has a piece on the internal rumbling in CDN-NDG borough management but doesn’t succeed in casting any more light on the mess there. We know the mayor, Sue Montgomery, has had trouble working with the fonctionnaires, but whether the situation is that she wanted reasonable changes and the sitting fonctionnaires thought they knew better, or whether she made outrageous demands which the fonctionnaires refused to meet, is anyone’s guess. Probably the situation could be described both ways depending whose side you take.
Girard’s conclusion, that this situation is not good for the borough, is probably true. It really is time to break that borough into two pieces and start over.
walkerp 15:06 on 2020-09-15 Permalink
This is like the number one political mystery of Montreal that I want to know more about. I notice that Sue Montgomery now seems to be taking shots at Valerie Plante every time she gets in the media on another issue, so maybe it is just straight out warfare at this point.
walkerp 15:21 on 2020-09-15 Permalink
I didn’t fully understand the article. What is going to happen this autumn that will reveal the truth, as Sue Montgomery says? Is that the decision of the supreme court in December? Or are there two things?
My guess (and it is not a confident one) is that Stephane Plante is shady as hell and was up to some serious shenanigans along with several other fonctionnaires. Sue Montgomery is guilty of lack of experience and strategy and just came in thinking she could bulldoze the whole thing wide open. The other counsellors either oppose her on ideological lines (Rowtrand mainly) or have to tow the PM party line and are using her isolation for their own gains.
All this is based on the weak foundation that Plante and the other fonctionnaires were there under Applebaum who was clearly corrupt as hell. I don’t know what went on in that borough before that but I suspect even more corruption.
But this theory only works if we assume that Plante is either really stupid (clearly not the case) or somehow complicit in some level of corruption or pressured by the union in some way. It’s preposterous that “she didn’t read the report” as Montgomery alleges. Why is she holding the line on this toxic environment argument?
Sue Montgomery may be difficult to work for but there has been zero evidence of any of that. Usually that comes out and you hear the stories of actual abusive boss behaviour. There has been none of that.
Argh! What’s the real story here?! I
Ian 08:13 on 2020-09-16 Permalink
It’s pretty obvious Plante is in the pocket of local developers – he tried to railroad Montgomery into a condo deal on the old theatre, remember? She called him on it and that’s when things got really ugly.
As in many things related to municipal politics, the only question worth asking is cui bono?