One of the largest municipal scandals in recent years is that of the Montreal Public Consultation Office (OCPM).
Posted at 6:00 a.m.
I slip you three clues to refresh your memory: a Parisian oyster meal at $ 347, a pair of headphones at $ 900 and a series of dubious trips from Mozambique to Brazil.
The extravagant expenses of the OCPM patterns were uncovered thanks to journalists from Quebecor in the fall of 2023.
These reporters worked hard in the corners. They investigated, multiplied the interviews, peeled with stacks of invoices.
Beautiful job, of great public interest.
But a second burst of embarrassing information on the OCPM could be revealed a few weeks later thanks to a little -known body of the general public: the Commission on finance and administration of the City of Montreal.
Journalists took advantage of a session to question the leaders of the OCPM at the microphone. The final highlight of this soap.
But if it is due to a group of Montreal elected officials, senior officials will no longer have to be awarded the questions of journalists during the commissions. How do they plan to do it? By decreeing that they are not citizens.
Nothing less.
Among all the ramifications of the City of Montreal, there are 11 “permanent commissions”. They were created from 1987 by the administration of Jean Doré in order to “democratize the municipal apparatus”.
These commissions, made up of elected officials from all parties, relate to public security, culture or the environment. They meet several times a year and allow municipal councilors to question the highest officials in the city.
It is there that they are toast on their projects and the use of public funds, even in the smallest columns of figures. This platform also allows citizens to ask them questions.
Journalists attend from time to time. In some cases, quite rare, they ask questions, intertwined with those of citizens.
These commissions are an important tool for municipal democracy. Because, you see, it is rare to have direct and public access, to the director of the housing service, to the boss of the water service or to the managers of the OCPM.
These people generally work away from projectors. They are protected by a buffer area, such as large bubble wrap, made up of press attachments and other spokespersons.
During a commission held in November 2023 on the setbacks of the OCPM, which I told you above, journalists were able to ask several questions to its president, Isabelle Beaulieu, and to her predecessor, Dominique Ollivier.
They were required to answer in the lively, live, rather than in an email written by a relationist.
Their revelations added several layers to the organization’s expenditure scandal. Shortly after their testimonies, the mayor Valérie Plante announced the guardianship of the OCPM and the dismissal of its president.
This exercise shocked a citizen. According to The dutyhe is a friend of Dominique Ollivier, who considered that the committee’s meeting had transformed into a “press conference”.
Following a logic that I explain badly, this man judged that the rights of Montrealers had been “brought” by the questions of journalists.
-Build-hold-hold.
Man denounced this situation. His complaint sparked a process spread over several months, and surrounded by an absolute secret. The Commission of the Presidency of the Council, which must ensure “the functioning of the democratic bodies of the City of Montreal”, looked into the file.
Hold on for the future.
The commission held five sessions on camera, between March and December 2024, in order to lay a “proposal to better supervise the speeches during the period of questions from citizens with permanent commissions”.
The conclusion of the approach is quite particular. The group unanimously proposed a “regulatory reform” to exclude journalists from the definition of “citizen”.
If their proposal is endorsed by the municipal council, it will close the valve to media representatives during future permanent commissions. They will no longer be able to ask any questions.
Except, perhaps, on the sidelines of the event, if the targeted official agrees to participate in a press scrum. “Maybe” being the keyword here.
I would have liked to know how the citizens of Montreal lose the change when journalists manage to ask a question in committee.
I was refused to explain the reasoning to me.
Impossible to have access to the reports of the meetings, since they were all behind closed doors. The president of the Commission of the Presidency of the Council, who decided the file, Véronique Tremblay, a municipal councilor of Verdun, also declined my requests for an interview.
If we read between the lines of the report that his group has laid, journalists do not have to complain. They already benefit from a direct channel to ask all their questions, according to “the standards applicable to the city’s media relations”.
But this is where the rub.
In general, the city requires receiving a list of questions in writing. Then, rather than proposing an interview with the manager of the X or Y service, relations often send an answer by email, once all the filters of the Bible of public relations have been applied.
It is already unsatisfactory as a way of doing things. But we must add sometimes endless deadlines.
A colleague from The press provided me with the following example:
On October 7, after a deadly fire in Old Montreal, she sent two written questions to the communications division. Followed several round trips, until she obtained final answers … November 15. Five weeks later.
In short, it is not a journalist’s whim to oppose the proposed reform.
If the media is prohibited from asking questions during the permanent commissions, the losers will be first and foremost Montrealers. The very ones who pay the salary of all the city officials.
Because each restriction in access to city leaders adds a layer of opacity to a mille-feuille in information control already fairly well staged, thank you.
