Normand Marinacci, Projet borough mayor of Île-Bizard-Sainte-Geneviève, has been cleared of committing an ethical breach by the Municipal Commission. Marinacci had intervened in a question of dismissing an employee, a story with echoes in both CDN-NDG and VSPME boroughs, where both borough mayors were thrown out of Projet for allegedly interfering in matters concerning the management of the borough.
This raises a couple of interesting points. Does the city have any kind of charter or guideline laying out the relative roles and powers of the elected mayor vs. the unelected officials? It’s revealing to read this in the Journal: “Normand Marinacci n’était pas contraire au code de déontologie des élus municipaux, puisqu’il a agi à la demande du directeur général de l’arrondissement, Daniel Le Pape.” In other words, the wishes of the director general, an unelected position, are of higher importance than those of the elected mayor.
The second point is more obvious. Sue Montgomery and Giuliana Fumagalli, both women, were summarily punted from Projet for similarly (it appears) trying to intervene in how aspects of their boroughs were managed. Clearly it was not felt to be within their legitimate powers to do so. But Marinacci fought back and has been allowed to continue as a Projet mayor.
I like Valérie Plante but it’s not unheard of for a woman in a position of power to expect other women “below them” to be more biddable than men. This may be a case of that, although of course the details of each case, if laid out in full, might tell stories with important differences.
Ephraim 10:29 on 2021-09-15 Permalink
The prosecutor is an idiot…. there is no correlation between punishment and crime, only apprehension and crime. The only thing that a long sentence does, it use up resources that could be better used elsewhere, like education so they can get better jobs.
Kate 11:55 on 2021-09-15 Permalink
Not sure what you mean, Ephraim. All I thought of was that if I were a lawyer and saw this in the paper about my client, I’d be inclined to see whether there was any leverage in making an appeal based on knowing the client was being unfairly made an example of.
Ephraim 14:06 on 2021-09-15 Permalink
@Kate – Making an example with a heavy sentence does NOTHING. What really stops crime is catching people. The more you catch, the less people are willing to do the crime. Take for example illegal car parking at parking meters. Cites have changed to pay by plate. They have a car that drives by every few minutes and scans the plates. So sitting in a spot, unpaid for even a few minutes can get you a ticket. The first time they drive by, they assume you haven’t paid for your parking. The second time… you haven’t paid. And they send you a ticket… and now, no one sits in a parking spot unpaid, because the chances of getting caught are extremely high.
Instead of spending the money on keeping this man in jail as an example, we could use that same money to provide him with stability and an education and have a better outcome for him and society. Instead of spending the money on jail on the mistaken idea that his sentence will actually persuade anyone else not to do this.
Kate 10:26 on 2021-09-16 Permalink
Ephraim, surely a lot of crooks have zero interest in being educated and set on the straight and narrow. The smarter ones must feel that the rest of us are stooges, slogging through our days making a living when there are obvious shortcuts. The stupider ones – probably a large majority – are simply people who’ve figured out how to use brute force to get what they want.
There are good reasons these traits remain in the human race because the same sociopathic traits that make one man a criminal also, with fine adjustments, make another a successful business guy or politician; the brute force stuff, channeled one way, makes one person a topnotch athlete, and makes another person into muscle for the mob. We punish one and reward the other, but it’s pretty arbitrary.
Sure, an education plan might rescue the handful of people who fell into crime because of desperation or bad associates, and need a hand up out of it. And that’s good. But you can’t expect it to work on all of them.
Ephraim 20:55 on 2021-09-16 Permalink
@Kate – But the long prison sentence does nothing other than put someone in prison, which we pay for. Punishment and crime aren’t correlated, it’s apprehension. We could put them into apartments in St-Louis-de-ha-ha with monthly cheques and it would be cheaper.