| Municipal Reorganization In Quebec |
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The government of Quebec sought to speed up the amalgamation of the province's municipalities, intensifying a campaign it had been waging during the 1990s . The latest round of restructuring was marked by the consolidation of suburban areas and their respective cities into super administrative units called ''villes'' amalgamated cities). Following the examples set by authorities in Boston and Ontario (in particular, Ottawa and Toronto ), the government argued that mergers would improve the distribution of revenue and responsibilities between richer suburban communities and their poorer, inner city counterparts. Many suburban residents, especially those who were wealthy and English-speaking , resented the apparent attempt by large urban centres to grab more power and loudly protested the annexations of their communities. Nevertheless, the government abolished more than two hundred suburban municipal areas on January 1 , 2002 . MERGED CITIES The following entities were created from these amalgamations: Cities over 40,000 or who merged over 5 cities
Other mergers
CALLS FOR DE-AMALGAMATION After the mergers took place, local communities which had opposed amalgamation clamored for the right to reconstitute the abolished municipalities if they wished. Jean Charest , the leader of the opposition at the time, promised to introduce laws to ensure the public would be democratically consulted on questions of municipal governance in future. In the General Election of April 14 , 2003 , Jean Charest's Liberal Party soundly defeated the ruling '' Parti Québécois '' led by Bernard Landry. The Liberals benefited considerably from the anti-PQ discontent in constituencies that had experienced municipal amalgamations. Honoring its promise, the new government adopted Bill 9, which created a formal process by which old municipalities could be reconstituted (in legal terms). Contrary to what was promised by Jean Charest (full de-amalgamation), Bill 9 only restored specific powers to the demerged cities (e.g., animal control, garbage pickup, local streets maintenance, some cultural facilities). The "bigger" expenses (e.g., police, fire, main streets, expension programs) and the majority of the taxes will remain in the hands of local urban "administrations", which are controlled by the central merged city. So in fact, the demerged city only recovered some powers of secondary importance, and were required leave their other powers to the control of an Agglomeration council which will be centered in the city from which they had de-amalgamated. In Montreal's case, the de-amalgamated cities will hold only 13% of the votes on the new council. This consulting process about Bill 9 requires 10% of voters residing within an amalgamated municipality to sign a petition to demand the holding of a Referendum on de-amalgamation. To succeed, a referendum has to fulfill two conditions:
On June 20, 2004, referendums were held in 89 of the former municipalities of Quebec. The 'Yes' vote recorded majorities in several municipalities, but did not reach the required threshold of 35% of registered voters. A total of 32 former municipalities meet the conditions required to de-amalgamate, and will be re-estabished on January 1, 2006. The demerging municipalities are:
Additionally, Estérel voted to demerge from Sainte-Marguerite-Estérel, effectively revesing the merger between Estérel and Sainte-Marguerite-du-Lac-Masson . After the demerger comes into effect, the remainder of the city is likely to change its name to either Sainte-Marguerite-du-Lac-Masson or Lac-Masson. |