Plante 'chose to deflect' by criticizing opposition for asking question in English: Pierrefonds-Roxboro mayor

The opposition at Montreal City Hall is accusing Mayor Valerie Plante of trying to avoid scrutiny of her handling of the devastating floods earlier this month by attacking a council member for asking a question in English.

The exchange happened Monday evening during a council meeting when members of the opposition questioned the mayor about the recent water main break that flooded part of downtown Montreal and earlier floods around the island during heavy rainfall.

About 40 minutes into the meeting, Pierrefonds-Roxboro borough mayor Jim Beis said the Plante administration was slow in its response to the floods in his district when Montreal was hit with a historic downpour on Aug. 9. from the remnants of Tropical Storm Debby.

"Even we called civil security and were told, without naming the people, that they were surprised that emergency measures weren't declared. To the point where six days later they had the emergency measures that were declared that would put everything in place. Even then, no one knew what was going on," Beis said, in English, in the meeting.

"What happened to all the boroughs that were suffering for all those days before that? Nothing, Madame Presidente. We had to deal with it on our own with the citizens that were suffering."

Plante responded, in French, by saying first that, "I find it peculiar that the mayor of Pierrefonds-Roxboro addresses the assembly in English only," as some council members can be heard grumbling.

"I would like to mention that here we can often speak in both languages, which is what happens on the other side, but I want to say it anyway and I want to mention it because it often happens on the other side of the chamber where we choose one language rather than another."

The mayor then went on to accuse Beis of "playing petty politics" with the city's public safety department's ability to act during a crisis.

"We are not a small municipality that doesn't have experience. A state of emergency isn't decreed by a mayor in their office," she said, "it's decreed when the public safety department considers that it needs to have accounting keys and financial means that it doesn't essentially have."

"We were coordinating the teams who know what they are doing. The firefighters emptied hundreds of basements, they were present for the boroughs … you criticized 311 to have improvements, fine. But stop playing petty politics on the services of the City of Montreal, the blue collar workers, the white collar workers, the firefighters and the police who know their job very well."

 

Beis offered a rebuttal completely in French, saying her attack on his choice of language was "not necessary."

 

Another Ensemble Montreal council member, Chantal Rossi, who represents Montréal-Nord, defended Beis' use of English, noting that Pierrefonds-Roxboro has special status as an officially bilingual borough.

Beis has previously criticized how the mayor handled the floods, saying in an interview that the city's 311 phone line was "an absolute joke" during the crisis by forcing his residents to wait for hours to reach an agent, and when they did, they had very little information. 

In an interview on Tuesday morning, Beis, who is fluent in English, French and Greek, said he was "surprised" that Plante chose to attack him for the language of his question.

"I was questioning the response by Montreal to deal with the crisis that we have been going through since August 9 and aside from not answering the question the way I thought that they could have, as an administration, she chose to deflect and somehow bring up the language question regarding something being asked in English, something that's been done here for years and decades," he told CTV News. "I don't even need to justify that."

He said it was the first time he recalls being criticized for the language choice during a council meeting. 

"It never happens and rarely happens, and if it does, we're not ashamed or embarrassed of the fact that we ask in English, knowing that we can repeat the same thing in many other languages on our side of the room."

In an email to CTV News Tuesday afternoon, Plante's spokesperson, Catherine Cadotte, wrote: "The mayor's intervention was intended to remind the mayor of Pierrefonds-Roxborro [sic] that he sits on the municipal council of the French-speaking metropolis of the Americas and that, as such, the population expects the speeches of elected representatives to be made not only in English."

With files from CTV Montreal's Jared Lackman-Mincoff