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As the Good Book says, it’s human nature to decry the mote in another’s eye while failing to discern the beam in one’s own.

On one of the threads on the outrage over McGill department head Andrew Potter’s post-blizzard analysis (posted below) in Maclean’s, I suggested that Quebec has collective myopia when it comes to its shortcomings, especially when they’re described in English by a non-francophone in a publication with a history of Quebec-baiting.

More specifically, I posted on a Potter Facebook thread Mais tu n’est pas un vrai québécois, alors t’n’a pas le droit de critiquer.

My intention was to channel the irony of all these people crapping on Potter for saying many of the same things that they would accept from Françoise David or the FTQ.
Someone called Olivier Reichenbach asked me to describe un vrai québécois and I’ve been thinking it out since. Un vrai québécois, c’est someone whose antecedents arrived in Quebec prior to the Conquest, whose only language is French and whose shared values are dictated by a handful of commentators, entertainers and a wooly consensus that Trump is evil while immigrants are Quebec’s greatest social ill.

Un vrai québécois sees no irony in the Bloc Québécois, a federally chartered and constitutionally legitimized political party dedicated to the breakup of Canada. Un vrai québécois sees no dissonance in accepting $2 billion in federal transfer payments from Newfoundland/Labrador and Alberta while demanding that the Energy East pipeline to tidewater not be allowed to pass through Quebec.

Un vrai québécois decries the ghettoization of cultural communities, yet sees no irony in creating French-speaking ghettos in Florida or demanding services en français wherever they go because their self-imposed language laws have ensured that more than six million Quebec residents can only describe themselves as functionally unilingual.

Potter’s core hypothesis as I read it is that Quebec has broken its social contract with its citizens by its failure to provide essential services where and when they’re needed. I didn’t like the examples he put forward to support his hypothesis because they were weak, anecdotal and easily challenged. I would have described how healthcare is rationed in Quebec through the simple expedient of refusing to licence enough doctors, letting people rot in ERs and redefining what constitutes elective surgery.

I would have noted how, after five years of Jacques Duchesneau, UPAC, half a dozen major pieces of legislation and innumerable regulatory changes, the core recommendations of Judge France Charbonneau’s inquiry have not been implemented and evidence suggests corruption remains rampant (the Roxboro snowclearing contract on the 13 is the ideal example of why the SEAO’s low bidder system of designated bidders is a handy fiction.)

It’s also too bad that Potter fell into Maclean’s trap of turning this into another exercise in Quebec-baiting. If Maclean’s was a reputable publication, its editors would have assigned reporters to a national story on how all governments have broken their social contracts with their citizens and how this drives the growth of populism worldwide.

Look no further than the Trudeau Liberals. As Paul Wells writes in today’s TorStar, It’s a mystery how the Liberals are encouraging innovation and helping the middle class: Paul Wells, today’s budget will do nothing to correct the growing tax inequity on the mythical middle class.
Whereas someone earning $200,000 will get significant tax relief, Wells quotes Finance Minister Bill Morneau’s own numbers to show a family grossing $45,000 gets squat.

So where do the Trudeau Liberals get off saying they’re helping the middle class?
They’ve already broken their word to begin the electoral reform process, one of a growing number of initiatives they’re no longer in any rush to put into practice, especially not those dealing with greater access to information.
Potter’s analysis could have been the starting point for a profound dissection of why populism is guaranteed to gain support in Canada.
Instead it was attacked from all sides and its author reduced to begging for forgiveness.
The only victim of this particular Facebook lynching was the truth.

Here’s the reposted Maclean’s article, with corrections and Potter’s apology.

How a snowstorm exposed Quebec’s real problem: social malaise
The issues that led to the shutdown of a Montreal highway that left drivers stranded go beyond mere political dysfunction
Andrew Potter
March 20, 2017

A woman shovels snow from around her car following a winter storm in Montreal, Wednesday, March 15, 2017. (Graham Hughes/CP)
A woman shovels snow from around her car following a winter storm in Montreal, Wednesday, March 15, 2017. (Graham Hughes/CP)

Controversy that erupted in Quebec immediately after this piece was published caused the author to write a Facebook post, which can be found here.
We also wish to correct two errors of fact. Due to an editing error, a reference in an earlier version of this piece noted that “every restaurant” offered two bills. We have clarified this to say “some restaurants will offer you two bills.”
We have also removed a reference in an earlier version noting that “bank machines routinely dispense fifties by default.”
Major public crises tend to have one of two effects on a society. In the best cases, they serve to reveal the strength of the latent bonds of trust and social solidarity that lie dormant as we hurry about the city in our private bubbles—a reminder of the strength of our institutions and our selves, in the face of infrastructure. Such was the case in New York after 9/11, and across much of the northeast during the great blackout of 2003.
But sometimes the opposite occurs. The slightest bit of stress works its way into the underlying cracks of the body politic, a crisis turns those cracks to fractures, and the very idea of civil society starts to look like a cheapo paint job from a chiseling body shop. Exhibit A: The mass breakdown in the social order that saw 300 cars stranded overnight in the middle of a major Montreal highway during a snowstorm last week.
The fiasco is being portrayed as a political scandal, marked by administrative laziness, weak leadership, and a failure of communication. And while the episode certainly contains plenty of that, what is far more worrisome is the way it reveals the essential malaise eating away at the foundations of Quebec society.
Compared to the rest of the country, Quebec is an almost pathologically alienated and low-trust society, deficient in many of the most basic forms of social capital that other Canadians take for granted. This is at odds with the standard narrative; a big part of Quebec’s self-image—and one of the frequently-cited excuses for why the province ought to separate—is that it is a more communitarian place than the rest of Canada, more committed to the common good and the pursuit of collectivist goals.
But you don’t have to live in a place like Montreal very long to experience the tension between that self-image and the facts on the ground. The absence of solidarity manifests itself in so many different ways that it becomes part of the background hiss of the city.
To start with one glaring example, the police here don’t wear proper uniforms. Since 2014, municipal police across the province have worn pink, yellow, and red clownish camo pants as a protest against provincial pension reforms. They have also plastered their cruisers with stickers demanding “libre nego”—”free negotiations”—and in many cases the stickers actually cover up the police service logo. The EMS workers have now joined in; nothing says you’re in good hands like being driven to the hospital in an ambulance covered in stickers that read “On Strike.” While this might speak to the limited virtues of collective bargaining, the broader impact on social cohesion and trust in institutions remains corrosive.
We’re talking here about a place where some restaurants offer you two bills: one for if you’re paying cash, and another if you’re paying by a more traceable mechanism. And it’s not just restaurants and the various housing contractors or garage owners who insist on cash—it’s also the family doctor, or the ultrasound clinic.
Maybe all this isn’t a huge deal. Sure, Quebec does have the largest underground economy as a proportion of GDP in Canada, but it’s only slightly bigger than that of British Columbia. But if you look at the results from Statistics Canada’s 2013 General Social Survey, which looks at the broad measures of social capital of the sort made famous by Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone, his book about the collapse of the American community, the numbers for Quebec are disheartening.
For example, the residents of this province also report the smallest family and friend networks in the country. The proportion of people who report having zero close friends is highest in Quebec, and quadruple that of people living in top-rated Prince Edward Island. And while 28 per cent of Quebecers over the age of 75 report having no close friends, the average for the rest of the country is a mere 11 per cent. It goes on: When it comes to civic engagement, rated by levels of volunteering and membership in groups and organizations, Quebec ranks dead last. The volunteering number is particularly shocking: the national volunteer rate is 44 per cent, while Quebec’s is 32 per cent. The only other province below the national average is New Brunswick at 41 per cent.
Then there’s the classic measure of trust, where people are asked, straightforwardly: “generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted or that you cannot be too careful in dealing with people?” Only 36 per cent of Quebecers say that most people can be trusted; the national average is 54 per cent, and no other province clocked in at less than 50 per cent.
Some of this will be defended on the grounds that it is part of what makes up the province’s unique character. Sure, some restaurants will offer you two bills. Don’t be so uptight! It’s part of the place’s charm, along with the love of prog rock and the mandatory jaywalking. But the numbers show that it is close to inconceivable that this could happen anywhere else in the country. For most of these figures, Quebec isn’t just at the lower end of a relatively narrow spectrum: rather, most of the country is bunched up, with Quebec as a significant outlier. At some point, charm and uniqueness betrays itself as serious dysfunction—and the famous joie de vivre starts to look like nihilism.
And then a serious winter storm hits, and there is social breakdown at every stage. In the end, a few truckers refuse to let the towers move them off the highway, and there’s no one in charge to force them to move. The road is blocked, hundreds of cars are abandoned, and some people spend the entire night in their cars, out of gas with no one coming to help. Forget bowling alone. In this instance, Quebecers were freezing, alone.

Andrew Potter is the Director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada.

An article that I wrote for Maclean’s magazine about the recent snow storm and its implications for social solidarity in Quebec, and which was published online on Monday, March 20th makes a few assertions that I wish to retract. It also contains some rhetorical flourishes that go beyond what is warranted by either the facts or my own beliefs, for which I wish to apologize.

To begin with, I generalized from a few minor personal anecdotes about the underground economy in Montreal to portray entire industries in a bad light. I also went too far in my description of Quebec society as alienated.

My intention in writing the piece was not to insult Quebec and Quebecers. As naive as this sounds, it came out of a good-faith attempt to understand what happened with the closure of Highway 13 during the snowstorm, and to find that understanding in some statistics on social capital in the province and compared to other parts of Canada.

A political writer’s first duty is to reflect his community back to itself. Quite obviously, I failed. When people you read and respect tell you they don’t recognize their society in your description, it signals a failure of empathy and imagination, and it is time to take a step back.

I regret the errors and exaggerations in what I wrote, and I’m very sorry for having caused significant offence.

I was sorely pissed at Wednesday’s slapdash snowclearing in here in Duckburg, but that was before lurid accounts of blizzard-induced suffering and inconvenience reached their crescendo yesterday. Eight dead. People trapped in their vehicles for hours on Highway 13 while the SQ, the Ministère des Transports (MTQ), towing contractor Burstall and snowclearing contractor Roxboro crossed their arms, each refusing to move until the other cleared the way.

By all accounts, it was a battle of jurisdictions gone berserk. The SQ claims its patrollers called the MTQ more than 100 times starting at 6 p.m., when a tractor-trailer rig spun out and blocked all three southbound lanes at Hickmore. The SQ claims it tried without success to convince the MTQ to close the highway as traffic piled up. Roxboro, with the exclusive contract to clear the 13, couldn’t or wouldn’t send out its ploughs until Burstall had removed immobilized vehicles. Burstall couldn’t move vehicles because of two truck drivers who refused to be towed and the SQ wasn’t there to order them because its patrollers were busy elsewhere. It wasn’t until around 4:30 a.m. that Montreal firefighters took it into their own hands to begin removing stranded motorists to a fire department bus before they could begin disentangling the jam by directing vehicles off the nearest onramp.

No sooner had the record snowfall stopped that the politico-legal shitstorm began. Leaders of both opposition parties began by demanding Transport Minister Laurent Lessard’s head. Vehicles were still being towed off the 13 as ambulance chasers specializing in class-action lawsuits began signing up an estimated 500 clients with the lure of a $2,000-plus-costs payout, with the City of Montreal as a co-respondent. The SQ placed a lieutenant on administrative leave. At the chronically dysfunctional MTQ, the assistant deputy transport minister in charge of catastrophe co-ordination – a woman – was a handy scapegoat.

Philippe Couillard’s office moved quickly to get the government out from under a growing wave of recrimination. Thursday, Couillard, his hands firmly clamped around the necks of Lessard and Public Security Minister Martin Coiteux, made a short, unconditional apology and named veteran government fixer Florent Gagné to conduct an independent inquiry into what went wrong.

From an experiential standpoint, Gagné would be an inspired call, having served as both SQ director-general and as a former MTQ deputy minister. But Gagné has lived under a cloud since his testimony before the Charbonneau Commission probe into the construction industry, which accused him of turning a blind eye to collusion. Wiretap warrants unsealed since the commission’s report was presented strongly hint it was apparently decided by both the Liberals and the Péquistes that senior elected officials and their opposite numbers in the civil service would enjoy a form of diplomatic immunity.

So, you ask, what has all that to do with Wednesday’s Highway 13 fiasco?

Begin with Roxboro, one of the rare examples of a private-sector contract to clear snow from a major public highway. According to the MTQ, Roxboro’s ploughs were unable to keep up with the intensity of the snowfall by the start of Wednesday’s rush hour. Tractor-trailer rigs were rolling at normal highway speeds because they could see over the whiteouts, so motorists were having to deal with truck-caused whiteouts as well as snow buildup. In seconds, a fender-bender froze that river of traffic for the next 10 hours. Was Roxboro negligent, or did its low-bid contract set the stage for what could have been a tragedy with loss of life? Why couldn’t the SQ reach the MTQ? Why weren’t the MTQ’s patrollers able to convince their bosses to close Highway 13?

It’s mind-boggling that the MTQ’s eyes and the SQ’s cops, each alone in his or her cruiser at that time of day, wouldn’t have  supervisors capable of breaking through the layers of bureaucracy to those with the power to co-ordinate an emergency response.

I’ve always questioned the ridiculousness of having the SQ patrolling Montreal-area highways, where city cops have no jurisdiction. Isn’t everyone using the same roads? Moreover, police vehicles aren’t designed to patrol in those conditions. The OPP uses big SUVs, even in urban settings. Why doesn’t Quebec?

Communications are a big silo issue. The MTQ patrols have their frequencies. The SQ, SPVM and Montreal firefighters have others. Theoretically, they have common clear channels. But do they function? Are they monitored? Are there cellphone numbers that allow patrollers to cut through the bureaucrap? If any of these answers are no, catatastrophe co-ordination is a myth.

Then there’s truck traffic. Montreal’s highway network, designed and built half a century ago, was never designed for today’s volumes and velocities, yet there is no effort on Quebec’s part to slow down traffic, especially not truck traffic in bad weather. Throughout the U.S. and Europe, real-time speed-reduction and lane-closure signage is common. Some jurisdictions  go as far as to limit or ban truck traffic from some highways during rush hour.

I’ve saved the worst for last, and that’s our responsibility for our own safety. Why is it that people can listen to a weather forecast for a severe winter storm warning, yet leave home without adequate clothing, emergency survival kit with a bottle of water and at least half a tank of gas? I see vehicles with all-season tires. I see motorists stopped on the highway, using snow to clean their windshield.

Last month, I eyewitnessed a spectacular crash on the 40 as a westbound cube van was broadsided by a blast of wind on that stretch just east of the highway scales. Another moron in a rush, but at least he didn’t take anyone with him.

Quebec’s obstinate refusal to make its highways the slightest bit safer makes no sense from an economic or public-security perspective. I’m  betting Gagné won’t touch any of that because he has the background to know those issues are not part of his mandate. Just like personal preparedness isn’t a part of ours.

Updated Monday, March 20: The head of the SQ’s Highway Patrol is the latest head to roll in the wake of last Wednesday’s blizzard crisis on Highway 13. This follows Friday’s arrest of a long-haul trucker who faces charges because he didn’t see why his truck, which wasn’t stuck, needed to be towed. Quebec’s shoot-the-survivors response to public relations misfires satisfies public bloodlust. But suspending bureaucrats and arresting a Sikh trucker (while sparing les homeboy de Ste Clothilde de Tabarnak) won’t address the core issue – Quebec’s bunkered bureacracies competing for power, influence and budget envelopes.

This was not my idea, it’s mostly  Jim Duff’s and evolved in a conversation we had this week. He’s down with a horrid made in Japan Man Cold and maybe he’s slower than usual. Over the years he’s freely stolen and scooped many of my good ideas, sometimes with credit, so I’m thrilled that finally Jim’s had one really good idea worth beating him to the punch on.

There was a much derided omnibus bill early in the Prevost administration, so I hesitate to use that word here, but what I’m thinking is an Omnibus Referendum.

We have so many contentious issues and plans in Hudson that it might be time to hold a constructive multi-questioned omnibus referendum.I’d hate to ask our town lawyers and I’m not sure what the legal issues are about polling outside of a proposed bylaw for some of these, but those would just be directional opinion polling of all interested citizens.

Sandy/Pine Beach as re-proposed by the developer would top the agenda for me. Propose the bylaw required, skip the signing process and simply promise a referendum. The developer needs and deserves a clear statement of the general public, not Council, sentiment.

Mayfair semi-detached re-zoning would be important.

Let the Ellerbecks table their latest plans and have the town judge thumbs up or thumbs down.

Pine Lake repair. Table an estimated cost and see what the townspeople say about finally fixing it.

What about rezoning R-55 for a more marketable use like mixed townhouses, residences and condos linked to the sewers? Have town planning propose some densities and lot sizes and see how the people really feel about it.

I’d go long on several points like the Arts Center in the strategic plan, acceptable future development levels, water supply, spending priorities like recreation versus paving, zoning guidance like height limits and lot sizes in the downtown core.

There’s room for a few more, probably any more than ten issues would overwhelm the jungle drums and rumour mills in Hudson.

Hold a series of public meetings or question periods on the issues, several per meeting should be fine. For and against Facebook pages could evolve on the issues.

This would really ask the people at large what the Town of Hudson’s priorities should be. No one can hide from the results, everyone needs to be guided by the results and in the case of proposed bylaws we could be bound by the results.

We’d get a lot of bang for our buck all at once, unblock or kill some critical issues quickly, and generally force discussions into the light of day.  At the worst case, it would give those considering seeking office in the next election, as well as sitting Councillors who might run again a solid feel of the average people’s thinking.

 

Three days ago I posted a story (Snow job, March 12/17) questioning this administration’s spending policies. One of my concerns was whether the town is getting its money’s worth from its snowclearing contractor, Transport André Leroux Inc.

As we dig out from under this latest 15-inch dump and navigate Hudson’s snow-choked streets, I’m sure I’m not the only curious resident.

According to comments made during one of last year’s council meetings, Leroux was the only bidder when the town made a call to tender. Rumour has it that Hudson’s longtime snowclearing contractor Gruenwald/SRS declined to tender a bid because it was getting out of the business. I can’t confirm that because SRS hasn’t returned my calls.

Something else bothers me about this story of Leroux being the sole bidder.

One of the results of the contracting scandal that ripped through this province was the creation of a new bid tendering procedure. All calls to tender of $100,000 and over must be posted on Quebec’s SEAO (systeme électronique d’appels d’offres) website. I’m accustomed to searching the SEAO site and I can find all of Hudson’s other calls to tender there, but I can’t find the call for snowclearing bids.

There could be a reason for this. The regulations governing this process allow contracts to be scindé, or sliced up to bring each tranche below that $100,000 barrier. It could be that the town tailored the terms of the contract so that nobody but Leroux was interested.

The record of disbursements tabled at the March council meeting tends to support that theory. We learned the town’s three-year contract (with a renewal option for two more) pays Leroux $399,500 a year plus taxes in four monthly instalments of $103,348.15. Maybe it’s a coincidence, but that equals four payments of $99,875 plus PST and GST. (Taxes are not included in SEAO bids.)

There could be an explanation that has nothing to do with bringing each payment below $100,000. It’s also possible that I’m not asking SEAO the right questions. So I’ve asked the town for details of the contract and I’ll be more than happy to report whatever I learn.

My other concern is that the contract with Leroux has Hudson taxpayers paying for salt and sand even though Leroux has control over their usage. So far this winter, I’ve seen the contractor attempting to use salt and sand to correct his failure to remove snow quickly enough to prevent it from turning to ice during one of those wild temperature plunges.

March’s disbursement printout shows taxpayers have paid Leroux $87,000 for sand so far this winter. That’s over and above the $103,348.15 instalment.

In February, salt supplier Cargill’s bill had topped $155,000. As of the end of February, we added another $46,000.

As I pointed out, those of us who attended the February meeting will recall councillor Rob Goldenberg and town manager Jean-Pierre Roy both vowing to more closely monitor Leroux with regard to its use of salt.

I’m asking for the average total cost of snow removal, salt and sand over the previous three winters. Once the cost of sand and salt are added, are residents paying more for snowclearing this winter than they have over the past three winters?

Meanwhile we’re stuck with two more years of Leroux. Today’s performance didn’t instil confidence. At 8:30 their little sidewalk-clearing plow got stuck outside Sauve’s and the operator was obliged to call his boss to send the only truck doing the main streets to pull him out. He told us his machine was too small for the job when the snow is this deep. A tracked Bombardier sidewalk plough like they have in Montreal could whip through town and do the job in no time, he added. Clearly, this contract doesn’t include requirements for the right equipment.

At one point this morning, the Hudson fire department’s pumper and ladder truck attempted to make their way through crawling Main Road traffic to get to a call. From the way they were blasting their horns, they were having a tough time breaking through. Shouldn’t safe passage of emergency vehicles at all times be the minimum we demand of a snowclearing contractor?

This can’t wait for next winter or the municipal election, folks. This needs to be dealt with now.

 Correction: Since posting this I have learned the town’s public works department, not the town’s snowclearing contractor as has been the case in previous contracts. This leads to the following question: what services are covered in the current contract? 

There will be a lot of discussion between now and November and I look forward to some hopefully positive changes and discussions between now and then. We need to look at ourselves before we decide what kind of leaders we need.

In spite of what you hear on places like this, and at great personal risk of repetitive attacks  for my position, I rate the satisfaction level of Hudson with the Prevost government to be at least in the high 80’s to low 90’s. Before the viper pens launch hordes of verbal drone attacks, that’s not my opinion but what I can only call the “Perceived Satisfaction Rate”.

The totality of the consistently vocal opposition is less than 200 people in a town of 5100, those who are really angry number less than 100. These scattered opposition groups are not cohesively organized to a common voice, and because most are narrow focused they do not have a complete vision of the problems, current situation and possible solutions.

If the dreamers and idealists really want change in Hudson after November, they will have to find balance and a cohesive platform from the subset of the possible reduced to a further subset of what might work in Hudson and that appeals to a large majority of Hudson’s taxpayer voters.

The proper running of a town, day to day, is not the Mayor or Council’s task. Their task is to consult, guide and oversee rather than do.

The Prevost government inherited the net results of not just a criminal insider, but of decades of inadequate oversight by a succession of councils. That crook took us for  $1.1 million over a decade, but lack of oversight and guidance by successive Councils cost us many millions more in dollars and the ensuing gridlock to find the depth of the swamp and drain it.

Inexperienced Mayor and Council, a bad choice of hangover DG from the last Council, and thin skins within our town employees and  on Council quickly devolved into some form of legal hell piled on top of the legal hell we were in already. The tar usually boiled for Council caught fire and there wasn’t enough water in town to do anything but mostly contain the flames to monthly Council meetings.

I’m proud of the Prevost Council for enduring and soldiering on, accomplishing much along the way and surviving intact save one that I’ll never opine on the whys of. Bringing our accounting to audited standards from the criminal double booked accounting we had was no easy feat. They’ve aimed too high on a strategic plan and not focused enough on JUST FIX IT, but hell that they aimed high is endearing to me. Failure is the price of progress.

The biggest problem that any government faces in Hudson is that we have about 90% Ostriches scattered everywhere and only a few noisy Grackles. I wrote in a column years ago that if you’re an ostrich with your head in the sand, it’s only a matter of time before someone kicks you in the ass. Ostriches in the sand don’t say anything, the Grackles make almost all the noise.

“Don’t change my Hudson, it’s perfect” is the repetitive call of Hudson’s Ostriches.

“We hate everything about your Council and want you gone” is the call of Hudson’s Grackles who have no options but to wait noisily.

When queried about satisfaction, Ostriches pull their head up momentarily and say “everything’s fine” and go back to the warm comfort of darkness. Watch out for Ostriches, when awakened suddenly to really awful news they can get nasty, lash out and kill. This year’s tax bills didn’t wake enough of them, our worsening crumbling infrastructure didn’t wake enough of them, our massive expansion in legal fees didn’t wake enough of them, our growth in bureaucracy didn’t wake enough of them so it’s easy to presume they’re content.

So, as we look forward to November we must seek the toughest and best damned loud mouthed Ostrich herder we can find to awaken the Hudson Ostriches, bring them up to date on how bad the situation is and what needs to be done and get started rebuilding our community vision and involvement.

What I do know is that Grackles can’t herd Ostriches and Ostriches can’t herd Ostriches.

I think we need a a very rare bird call a “Thick Skinned No Bull Eagle”, either the bald or the hairy kind and gender is not important. Eagles fly above the noise and have developed a vision and confidence based in intelligence. Eagles are respected by the Ostriches and feared by the Grackles at the same time. We’ve tried hummingbirds and chickens and failed, so please no more hummingbirds or chickens.

All I want for Christmas is seven Thick Skinned No Bull Eagles to JUST FIX IT.

If the disbursements for the first two months of 2017 are any indication, Hudson’s spendthrift ways will continue up to November’s municipal election.

And residents who voice their concerns may as well save their breath.

To nobody’s surprise, the big payouts to the town’s legalists Dunton Rainville continued into the New Year. The town cut a cheque for $30,296.73 to cover Drain-the-ville’s representation on 11 files. No indication of whether these are continuations of the golden oldies of the last three years or whether these are new fights that will continue to milk the repaving budget.

I also see the town lost its grudge match against defeated mayoral aspirant Jacques Bourgeois in Small Claims Court, being ordered to pay Bourgeois’s Raris Communications $15,000 and costs. (Echoes of Trump’s ‘see you in court.’) Now, that’s small-town cheap.

Take road salt. In February, supplier Cargill’s bill had topped $155,000. As of the end of February, the town had blown another $46,000.

The record of disbursements tabled at the March council meeting also revealed that the town paid snow clearing contractor Transport André Leroux $87,000 for sand. This was over and above the cost of the base contract, which pays Leroux $399,500 plus taxes in four instalments of $103,348.15.

Worse, the documents show the price was based on a three-year contract with these incompetents with an option to renew for another two years.

More simply, the town leaves it to Leroux to decide how much salt and sand to use and when to use it.

Residents who attended the February meeting will recall councillor Rob Goldenberg and town manager Jean-Pierre Roy vowing to more closely monitor Leroux with regard to its use of salt.

Here’s my two-part question to Goldenberg and Roy:

Given this winter’s atrociously poor snow clearing, what is this administration proposing to do to correct the situation for the next two winters?

What was the average total cost of snow removal, salt and sand over the previous three winters? If my suspicions are correct, this administration has managed to stick Hudson residents with two more winters of botched snow removal at greater cost than if they had renewed with Gruenwald.

Long after November’s municipal election, this administration’s legacy of bad decisions will live on. In that respect, they’re no different that the bunch they replaced. What a surprise.

Big shout of thanks to Peter Ratcliffe for keeping the pot boiling during my absence. He gives this blog site a sense of decorum and balance, something I tend to forget. Thanks as well to Rod Birrell for sharing the high points(?) and documentation from last week’s March council meeting.

Upon our return from a whirlwind two weeks in Japan (I’ll be posting on our incredible trip later this week) the town’s response to my latest access to information request was in my inbox.
Back in mid-February I had asked for the most recent employment statistics and the new collective agreement. In return I received this all-in-one document:

organigramme

To summarize, Hudson employs 121 people, including part-time permanent, temporary/seasonal and occasional. This includes posts which have yet to be filled, such as that of treasurer. Fifteen are management positions. Another 38 are full-time positions, bringing the town’s full-time staff to 53. Hudson’s neighbours all have larger municipal payrolls but it’s difficult to compare. Regardless of size, every municipality has to have a bare-bones staff which includes a town manager, treasurer, clerk, urban planning and inspection department, public works department and a secretariat to move all that paper.

Those proposing to slash Hudson’s budget (revised downward to $12,456,000 for 2017) may be tempted to single out two high-cost services.

Communication, Parks and Recreation, Culture and Tourism, with a 2017 budget of $1.545 million and a staff of 51, makes no economic sense to me. We take the excellent Pilates courses offered at the Community Centre and find ourselves wondering why it takes four people to run the office when we sign in. During last month’s Shiver Fest, Phil Prince struggled to get everything done for the various events because he had no help. Why all the chiefs, why so few Indians? Jean Chevalier had more help on two-thirds the budget.

Then there’s the matter of the draft loan bylaw for a $555,000 renovation of the Community Centre. We’re told Canada 150 will pick up some of the bill. Some? Half? The question that comes to my mind is why the Community Centre needs two upgrades in five years. To give CPRCT’s empire-building bureaucracy more offices? To improve the shitty accoustics and execreble sound system in the main hall so citizens can hear the disinformational mumbling emanating from the folks up front? This administration needs to make a better case for adding a quarter million or more to the long-term debt load.

Moreover, the CPRCT budget does not include funding to Hudson’s arts, culture and tourism organizations. Here’s a partial list of who got funding and how much they received:

Hudson Parade Committee (2017 St. Patrick’s Day Parade and Festivities): $11,500
Hudson Music Festival: $15,000
Hudson Auto Show: $3,000
Hudson Village Theatre: $15,000
Greenwood Centre for Living History (2017 StoryFest) $5,000
Hudson Historical Society: $5,000
Arts Hudson: $200

That’s close to $55,000 that should be added to the CPRCT budget.

No other municipality in the MRC spends as much per capita on these services.

Public security, with a budget of $2.5 million and a total roster of some 40, has just two full-time employees – the public security director and a captain. The 33-person fire department roster includes an assistant director, co-ordinator, three other captains, four lieutenants and 24 firefighters, all part-time.

This is consistent with the costs and staffing levels in other Vaudreuil-Soulanges municipalities offering 24/7 first responder services.

“Yes, (first response) costs money, but it saves lives in a town with an aging population,” a senior officer with another MRC fire department told me. Quebec subsidizes first responder services because ER statistics consistently show a 20-30% difference in heart attack and stroke survival rates in municipalities with first responders compared to those who depend on 9-1-1 ambulance service.

Firefighting services also benefit from having first responders, especially when the two are integrated, as in Hudson. “The tools and the training go hand in hand.”

The biggest issue facing volunteer fire departments throughout Quebec is having enough manpower to satisfy the minimum requirements of the notorious “schema” – the fire risk management plans required of every MRC in the province. “Because they have to work elsewhere to earn a living, fewer firefighters are available during the day.”

The answer, adds this officer, is to integrate services so that medically equipped pumpers are dispatched to all calls. In smaller towns such as Hudson, integration means fewer responders and vehicles are needed. “If responders get a fire call, they can head straight to that call, rather than having to return to the firehall to trade vehicles.”

By creating a shared response protocol among neighbouring municipalities, Vaudreuil-Soulanges MRC’s schema has proven to be effective in ensuring a minimum of 10 firefighters within 15 minutes, a minimum volume of water and the availability of specialized equipment, such as aerial ladders. But it’s nowhere near enough to ensure the manpower or equipment needed in the event of a major disaster or fire in a high-risk structure such as Westwood Senior or Manoir Cavagnal.

Full disclosure: I survived a heart attack in 2012 because Hudson has a well-staffed, competent medical centre and first responders. I wouldn’t be alive today if I had depended on 9-1-1 ambulance response times.

The proposed rezoning on Mayfair received enough (91 versus 83 required) signatures to force a referendum to pass the bylaw, or the bylaw is basically dead. Unless the town doesn’t listen and decides to fund a referendum to test the will of those who signed the register against the desire to build. I see both sides and agree in part with both views.

It’s not my style or taste, frankly I like eclectic diverse villages and am generally an anti-enclave.  I own 18,000 square feet of grass, hedges and trees in the village and frankly it’s a lot of work and cost, so I was never fond of the 30,000 square foot minimum set at that time it was zoned for Alstonvale and Hudson’s Valleys.

Nor am I fond of perpetual binding community development agreements with strict limits to what can be built including surfaces and exterior. That said, both developments are great assets to Hudson and I’m glad they have filled up and added to our population and taxation rolls. Hudson never really welcomed and included that area in our collective thinking to match the value that has been added to our town.

All that said, those current owners who built and bought those beautiful brick and stone homes with uni-stone driveways  have a clear right to protect their investment by resisting change as they see fit. Essentially the current community are able to hoist the developer on his own petard and prevent the changes that could make selling and building that short vacant section of Mayfair easier in today’s marketplace. I do wonder how much the proposed changes could have actually shifted the marketplace or value of the existing homes.

I think on this round one that we’ve missed a good  opportunity for some smaller high end homes with lower operating costs. I’ve lived in a fine old Montreal downtown row house and semi-detached street two blocks from the old Montreal forum. Well built multi-story brick homes with slate roofs, lane for garage and services access. A great place to live, populated by average people through captains of industry  as I might have expected the semi-detached homes on Mayfair would be great places to live.

I’ll anxiously await the decision of the town as well as any revisions they developer might try to make to resurrect this project. Frankly I’d rather see homes than vacant lots, a completed community rather than an unfinished one.

I’ll state clearly that I’m against the cost and divisive process of a referendum. I believe that it’s really all in the hands of the developer now, perhaps he can revise and persuade through something  that will be different enough to be acceptable to the affected community.

I really do hope they try again and eventually succeed, the marketplace and market pricing  for large brick mansions is shrinking as quickly as our town spending is rising and we don’t really need more huge homes.

Like Johnny Carson as Karnak, I’m holding the sealed envelope to my turban and looking into the future. I see:

I can’t shake the feeling that Hudson Council will simply table a rezoning of Sandy Beach exactly as per the developers Pine Beach proposal. This may even happen Monday night at March council.

Hudson should, in my opinion, but likely won’t charge the developer either a per connection or blanket contribution for the infrastructure of Hudson’s Brick Shithouse Sewage Treatment Plant. The explanation will be that we have the capacity and need the development, so the developer will benefit at the expense of Annex A ratepayers who won’t be consulted about the  future use of excess capacity that we have funded. If and when future developments, or Birch Hill for example require sewage treatment, the cost will be much higher. Nicanco, if they don’t pay a reasonable cost for sewage treatment infrastructure, will have a gift that drops right to their bottom line and limits the opportunity to better allocate those resources. Simply put, I believe that we should end the Pine Beach development with exactly the same excess capacity we had before it was developed and that until the whole town has sewage developers must replace what they will consume.

Same thing on water. Hudson doesn’t yet have a costed future plan for water capacity, so we’re not yet in a position to actually name a price for the water required by the 316 doors to be approved. Well or Lake? If we don’t know yet, how can we name a price that matches what we need to spend. If we agree to a deal for shared costs on water, we’ll simply have no idea if it’s a good one or not. Elsewhere on this blog the unlistened to have debated and logically concluded that we should should consider a lake supply around Thompson Park treated in a new plant just across Main Road and connected to our existing network. Solve both future capacity and West End water issues as well as offer water for sale to parts of Vaudreuil Dorion and St. Lazare.

The Pine Beach plan could be significantly improved for the protection of Sandy Beach while still allowing an exceptional development. For example wider buffers have been well proposed by competent citizens, but we’ll probably find that the community will have no leadership or will to stall the development by requesting such changes. We could hold to the original zoning numbers, but won’t.

Don’t get me wrong, I am a very pro-development person. We can’t buy Sandy Beach at market value, it will be developed. I have suggested many times over the years, to successive councils, that Hudson needs to develop Sandy Beach, Ellerbeck’s and R-55 as high priorities.

In spite of what the idealists and dreamers say or think, we have long passed the fiscal turning point  where we could survive without significant numbers of new taxable properties to help pay for the irrational excesses of decades of growth in bureaucracy and spending that has resulted in a tripling of our expenses over the past 15 years with stagnant population.

We have filled this swamp with debt and spending, we must have development soon. But if we rush we’ll do it badly and divide a community.

Development usually pits the wants of our citizens against the needs of a developer for profit. Both sides are wrong at first. A delicate balance must be struck between the idealists and the capitalists, and into the chasm separating the two is only Town Council or possibly a referendum.

We will see a new Council elected in November, and that Council will have to live with and resolve all of the good and the bad results from this Council. Hell, in some world it may even be the same Council, but I’m just not getting those vibes.

The responsible thing on Sandy Beach would to hold public consultations and have a committee including a balanced group of citizens to negotiate with the developer quickly towards a better compromise.  Instead, I think we’ll see weakness, a quick acquiescence and acceptance without demands for better and a simple decree that we need to do this without adequate reasons that we really need to do it.

I really want to be wrong about this. This is not simply a political or fiscal issue. It sits at the root of our community soul. I believe that this issue contains everything Hudson needs to either heal itself, or to finish destroying itself. In these beautiful wetlands we can find ourselves again as a cohesive community or finally finish losing ourselves.

You want proud, so do I.

I am the eternal optimist: I hope to one day soon walk from Jack Layton Park to Sandy Beach, proudly in close proximity to an exceptional new showcase development embraced by the majority of our community and welcoming those who have chosen Hudson’s best new development as a new place to live or a way to stay.

In life we find exceptional not by simple acceptance of average, by being demanding of excellence.

So, watch closely for what our leaders are demanding from the developer. If we demand nothing but simply accept what they’ve offered, we’ll get exactly the mediocrity proposed.

I believe we must, as a community, at least try to do better.

Vivry Creek that is. Without sufficient water supply or sewer capacity, this project is literally up the creek. We need to address those issues and negotiate a fair and balanced cost to add the capacity needed to sewer and water so that a new development doesn’t cost existing taxpayers more money.

Nicanco’s Pine Beach proposal is, in my opinion, a great opportunity for Hudson and an necessary part of our future. It’s been in the works since 2001, much has changed and so needs to be adapted to today’s reality.

When it was first conceived and zoned, there was no sewer system in Hudson and we thought we had lots of water capacity. The original project approved was based on a shared septic plan. Without a connection to our treatment facility, I’d argue against this current planned expansion of the original zoning. I think it would be a bad choice to accept 200+ units on shared septic in such land at water’s edge.

The capital structures of sewer and water are very different in Hudson, so by necessity we need to treat them separately. Today I’ll opine on the sewers and what they should cost the project and not the taxpayers.

The debt for the sewer network and our Brick Shithouse Treatment plant are currently funded by only those who can be connected to the sewer network, approximately 900 ratepayers listed in something called Annex A. It is my opinion that those Annex A taxpayers need to have a say in approving the connection of a proposed 316 new units to the network and treatment.

We were told we had 20-25% overcapacity in the design of the treatment plant, and this Pine Beach development would be approximately a 35% increase in connections when fully built.So clearly, approving Pine Beach will, at some point in the planned seven year completion, require a significant and expensive expansion of our sewage treatment facility.

I don’t have the exact numbers, but I believe the Brick Shithouse Treatment plant cost approximately $8,000,000 to build and commission, divide by 900 connections and you get approximately $8,900.00 capital cost per home served. I believe expansion will be less costly than a new build, so I’ll call that 60% to add capacity and round it to $5,250 per connection.

In my opinion, we need to ensure that Hudson’s Sewage Treatment Network gets funded for an average of $5,250 per unit so we can expand it and maintain some overcapacity. These are hypothetical numbers and smarter people than me need to review and adjust them. I would propose to divide that average per connection cost into a habitable per square foot permitted to build cost, so if the average unit on Pine beach would be 1,600 square feet of habitable living space, the cost to fund sewage treatment would be $ 3.28/ Square foot. 

I chose to propose a per square foot cost on the builder when the building is approved for several reasons:

1. To ensure that we’re funded early and progressively, without asking for a pile of money from the developer  up front.
2. We get paid up front from the builder when a permit is issued to build, based on actual plans. If they didn’t have sewage treatment they’d have to pay to install septic and couldn’t build as many units.
3. To impact larger homes with larger costs and allow smaller condos with fewer bathrooms and occupants to have a smaller impact.
4. The funds so generated can be clearly segregated and allocated to a fund for Sewage Treatment expansion.

I’m betting that these units will sell for in the range of $300/square foot and a town willing to extend their existing sewage treatment plant for approximately 1% of a unit’s cost is not going to kill a sale.

Please note that it will remain the responsibility of the developer to provide collection, piping and pumping to get the sewage from Pine Beach to the pumping station by the community center. I’d like to see a twinned system, so that if a pump or pipe on the way to our system fails we have enough capacity to avoid overflows into the Ottawa River.

This is just one idea, but it’s simple and clear. We need to stop the post development financial bleeding we’ve had in the past where we’ve had to pave roads that developers should have paved and absorbed other costs.

Keep it simple, recognize that development might be necessary, but development should not cost existing users to spend more so we can add a development.  I believe that we need to name the price for sewage treatment capacity up front as a condition of approving the project requiring connection. Not just on this project, but any future projects that wish to connect to our existing sewage treatment capacity.