In an independent Quebec, in which the whole bundle of great subject matters which now escapes us is patriated (communications, air and rail transport, etc.), the need is even more obvious to systematically deconcentrate government administration, in order to regroup it once and for all, with a solid integrated organization and broad delegations of power, around urban centers that will be designated as regional “capitals“and thus become veritable prefectures: Hull, Sherbrooke, Trois-Riviéres-Cap-de-la-Madeleine, Rouyn-Noranda, Chicoutimi-Arvida-Jonquiére-Kénogami, Rimouski, Sept-lles … In a sense, once the national standards, budget allocation and indispensable controls have been established, this would mean that the State’s administrative apparatus would finally go and meet the population where it is needed.
DEMOCRATIC COMMUNITIES
As for local administration, without claiming to exhaust the question, we believe that the solution to the current indescribable mess is to be found in a radical “revalorization” of the municipal institution. This is the form of political organization most familiar to the whole population. It also allows for the most direct and closest link between the citizens and their delegates, on condition that it once and for all be lifted out of the anarchy into which it has been allowed to fall and the dangerously generalized indifference which has ensued.
With this in mind, the essential basis of an upgrading policy would be a group of merged and regrouped municipalities, the number of which should not exceed a hundred.5
This would be a far cry from the current situation where Quebec has no fewer than 1500 municipalities that are outdated, inefficient and too often discredited by the citizens.
Demographic size would go from a minimum of 30-40,000 inhabitants to a maximum of approximately 200-250,000 in the case of our two great metropolitan agglomerations.2 These last would be equipped with democratic “communities”, where there would be elected metropolitan officials who would carry out the overall major responsibilities, while the constituent municipalities would see themselves in charge of “district” functions which affect daily life and the rhythm of activity of districts: the schools, parks and recreation, parking, zoning, etc.
Elsewhere, where the population is less dense and is scattered over greater distances, these local functions would remain with the constituent parishes and villages, whereas the community responsibilities would go to expanded municipalities.
In other words, in the metropolitan areas, the major functions would be definitively entrusted 5 6 to a super-municipal organization elected at the level of the present “urban communities” — and the existing municipalities would be reduced to a small number of units (i.e. 9 or 10 in Montreal, 3 or 4 in Quebec) tasked with those responsibilities which most affect citizens on a daily basis.
Similarly, in other parts of Quebec, regional super-municipalities would be created,7 encompassing the major community functions for a given territory, with existing parishes and villages continuing to handle purely local services.
Nothing would prevent these new super-municipal structures from taking over most of the day-to-day responsibilities that government administration has always insisted on concentrating in Quebec City, thus perpetuating folkloric “pilgrimages”. Under the decentralized “prefectures” that we described above, it would be the municipalities that would henceforth administer day-to-day health and public works, etc., as well as the present regional schools, which a parallel regrouping would easily allow to follow the same pattern. In particular, we believe that the municipal level should have full responsibility for school buildings, with state equalization in less favoured districts, so that citizens would have a right to scrutinize the whole in a single budget. This would initially be fed by traditional revenues, including a consolidated property tax, with the portion coming from small property owners declining over a brief transition period. After this period, the Québécois government, with full control over taxation, would transfer to the municipalities other resources sufficient to meet all their new responsibilities, and to eliminate once and for all the unfair and unevenly distributed burden of property taxation on individual citizens — while maintaining, of course, that of industrial and commercial establishments.
It seems to us that such regroupings will make it possible to set up administrative units that will provide their own populations as well as the State with more valid and efficient interlocutors than today’s dusty municipalities, while remaining relatively close to the citizens.