It’s good to be back and writing again. This return couldn’t have come at a better time because the Quebec municipal elections are now over. It was kind of bizarre to witness because it was a trainwreck in so many ways yet so many people couldn’t care less about the carnage. I’ve got a few thoughts about the ordeal.

Less coverage than (insert hated cell phone company here): It’s not really surprising that if anybody really wanted up-to-date information about the returns from the elections that they would be hard pressed to do so. With a voter turn-out of around 40%, it’s not really in the benefit of most news organizations to try and deliver the results as quickly as possible. Besides, the only result most people really wanted to know was who was going to win the Montreal mayoral race and aside from it being close during the first hour after the polls were closed, it was pretty evident early on that Gerald Tremblay had won. In fact, CBC was dying to declare Tremblay the winner before 10 PM but they were hesitant because he was only in the lead by a few percentage points which did not fluctuate at all during the evening. At least CBC was providing coverage…but just not on television.

CFCF’s laughably bad late night post-election coverage: Watching CTV Montreal News nearly evening, I’ve learned a couple of things; we all may or may not die from H1N1 and that if we don’t let the CRTC allow for cable companies to pay for over-the-air networks (and probably raise our cable/satellite bills), all local TV will die. Considering CTV’s lack of coverage during the evening and the third-rate presentation during their 11:30 newscast, I say, good. I could imagine a community station in northern Ontario having trouble working a mixing board or display on-screen graphics, but this is Montreal’s biggest anglophone television station. It was like watching an example of how to not show off a newscast. They botched the Montreal suburban mayoral results that they had to do them a second time. You had to feel for the newscasters because they were doing the best they could but the people behind the scenes either were too busy celebrating or fell asleep because it was horrible. There were too many occasions where the anchors’ mics were accidently left on or turned on at the wrong moments. I was surprised I didn’t hear either Paul Karwatsky or Tarah Schwartz go off on a profanity-laced tirade about how abysmal the broadcast was when they didn’t know that their mics were live.

Corruption in city hall was more important than people though: This is because despite harping on how corrupt Tremblay’s government is, Louise Harel failed to make people understand why they should vote for her and her team. She and her supporters could blame Benoit Labonté but the greater issue is that in the minds of many, she stood primarily for one issue (no more corruption) which many did not have faith in her in solving. Tremblay, for the most part, tried to avoid the corruption scandal and tried to highlight many of the things that he has done for the city (will someone explain to me why the Bixi is such an important thing that people voted for him solely for his introduction of the project). Harel did little to say what projects she would think up if she was the mayor. This is one reason why Richard Bergeron had support from a quarter of the electorate (mostly people my age). Bergeron stood on making Montreal a better city by improving the lives of its citizens. I’m sure Harel did not have a platform of making life for everyday Montrealers worse but it would have been nice to know that instead of the repeated cries of ending corruption. Corruption was an issue; a big issue but not the only issue.

Living in suburbia has never been so exciting: True, most of the suburban elections did not even happen as many of the mayors were re-elected by acclimation due to apathy. In some towns though the elections were pretty damn interesting. Ste. Anne de Bellevue changed mayors and I can’t understand why. Living in Ste. Anne’s for a couple of years, I never really noticed city government at all. I would think that is a good thing because I find with a government of a town of only five thousand people, the more you hear, the less you approve of the city council. I’ve never met Bill Tierney during the years I lived there but I couldn’t really complain about the guy. Many people I know say that they though he was a good guy. He seemed to know quite a bit about his community. Which is all the more surprising to hear about his defeat. There could have been a couple of things that caused his defeat such as the parking meter fiasco. Or maybe it was the winds of change in the air.

Beaconsfield was kind of funny to watch though. Incumbent Bob Benedetti was soundly defeated on Sunday which wasn’t all that big of a shock. His arrogance cost the city $300 000 in legal costs over a construction project which a citizen objected to and took the city to court. The Surpreme Court ordered the project halted and Benedetti and the council were scolded for their behaviour. I hold no will towards Benedetti because other than his news reports on CFCF when he worked there, I don’t really know the guy. I’m not familiar enough with the situation to say whether or not his motives in the construction controversy were sound so his defeat is met with my indifference. It was his reaction when he was counting up incoming results that was kind of funny, in a sad way. Multiple TV cameras were there as he was adding result numbers on a whiteboard with a calculator and he this confused look on his face as to trying to understand that the numbers on the calculator and whiteboard had shown that he lost.

Dorval Island: Why in the blue hell does Dorval Island have a mayor and six city councillors? Officially, there are zero residents of the island and the electorate is made up of property owners (totalling fifty). Maybe I should buy some land there and run for election in four years. Sounds like an easy job.

For better analysis of the election, Fagstein probably provides better coverage of the entire mess on his site here and here and here and here. The Montreal City Weblog has some good pre and post-election coverage through the various postings.

Quebec News

Talking with my folks about the H1N1 vaccine. They can’t understand the coupon system that the government wants to implement. The way they see it, if the government is doing this to prevent people from waiting in line in the wee hours of the morning to get their shot, what’s going to stop people from waiting in line in the wee hours of the morning to get their coupon. And at that point, why not just give the shot instead of the coupon.

Canadian News

Speaking of raising cable and satellite fees, a Canadian version of the Nickelodeon channel launched Monday ten years too late. It’s not like there isn’t enough children’s programming available with YTV, Family Channel and Teletoon being staples on the channel grid for years. As well, most of the programming from Nickelodeon already is being broadcast on various Canadian networks anyways making the addition that much more unnecessary. I’ll abstain from commenting about how irrelevant Nickelodeon has become over the years but then again, the TV show that really made the network into a big hit was a Canadian television show.