It was like a splash of cold water in the faces of Montrealers sleeping through the city\u2019s election campaign.
They had been lulled by the mayoral choices. There was the incumbent: Mayor Gerald Tremblay, 67. Voters were unclear what the drab technocrat had accomplished over two terms and they worried about the whiff of scandal in his administration, although he seemed clean personally.
Then, there was the main challenger: Louise Harel, 63, a unilingual francophone separatist whose claim to fame as a Parti Qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois minister is forced municipal mergers that caused years of turmoil.
Many found the third choice even more unlikely: city councillor Richard Bergeron, 54, an idealistic, bookish urban planner whose tiny party focuses largely on dreams of extensive new public transit.
The polls had shown Tremblay\u2019s Union Montreal and Harel\u2019s Vision Montreal statistically tied, with Bergeron\u2019s Projet Montr\u00e9al far behind. Then, on Sept. 21, three days into official campaigning, there was the big wake-up call. The city\u2019s auditor general released a 170-page report on the largest contract in the city\u2019s history \u2014 a $356-million deal to install water meters in commercial buildings and pressure controls in the city\u2019s underground water network.
Tremblay had already suspended the contract in April after word emerged that former city executive committee chairman Frank Zampino, Tremblay\u2019s right-hand man, had twice vacationed on the luxury yacht of a controversial businessman whose firm was in on the water-meter deal.
At the same time, more information emerged that three companies owned by the same businessman were being investigated by the Canada Revenue Agency for tax fraud involving an alleged phony-invoice scam. Newspaper investigations also revealed that Montreal appeared to be grossly overpaying on the water-meter contract. In fact, it was paying three times more than Toronto had.
Through it all, Tremblay, a former provincial Liberal industry minister, managed to avoid public blame, in part because his opponents were weak. Voters seemed to be giving Tremblay the benefit of the doubt, believing he was duped.
The damning report by auditor general Jacques Bergeron changed that. Bergeron (no relation to the mayoral candidate) uncovered overspending and administrative laxity and said the contract was: \u201cToo fast, too big, too expensive.\u201d Bergeron also said meetings between city officials and companies during the bidding process raised troubling questions. He revealed that an external accounting firm and civil servants had raised alarms about irregularities in how the contract tenders were being handled; the warnings were ignored. And while Bergeron didn\u2019t lay blame, he forwarded documents and information to the S\u00fbret\u00e9 du Qu\u00e9bec, the provincial police force, which is investigating the contract.
Tremblay immediately cancelled the contract (the city may owe up to $75 million in penalties). He accepted the resignations of his two top bureaucrats, who both walked away with hefty severances. The mayor also proposed a code of ethics, something he had promised to bring in after a spate of scandals in his first mandate but which he never followed through on. Tremblay blamed the water-meter fiasco on \u201cadministrative shortcomings\u201d and \u201cprocedural oversights.\u201d
Voters weren\u2019t so sure. In a poll conducted for La Presse<\/i> in the days after the report\u2019s release, 51% of respondents said they didn\u2019t believe the mayor when he said he didn\u2019t know anything was wrong with the contract. Tremblay\u2019s approval rating also took a hit. A majority of those polled, 65%, said they were not satisfied with his administration, a seven-percentage-point increase from two weeks earlier.
Tremblay\u2019s fall from grace doesn\u2019t seem to be benefiting Harel. The two front-runners are still tied. But Bergeron\u2019s fortunes are rising: the poll placed his support at 20%, up six points from two weeks earlier.
The water-meter deal and, by extension, the election are now the talk of the town. \tIE<\/b>
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