Montréal, May 8, 2013 ‒ Following the release of the report of the advisory committee on the awarding and management of municipal contracts at the Ville de Montréal by Michael Applebaum, Mayor of Montréal, and Jacques Léonard, Chair of the advisory committee, the Board of Trade would like to express its support for some of the recommendations and reiterate the need for urgent action to ensure Montréal has exemplary governance.
“The Léonard Report is a roadmap for a return to integrity at the Ville de Montréal,” says Michel Leblanc, President and CEO of the Board of Trade of Metropolitan Montreal. “In addition to proposing means of ensuring the integrity of elected officials, managers and civil servants, the report offers a number of interesting avenues for improving management processes at city hall.”
“In March 2010, the Board of Trade published the report of the Task Force on Montréal’s Issues of Governance and Taxation, widely known as the Côté-Séguin Report,” Mr. Leblanc says. “We are pleased to see that a number of the recommendations from that report are contained in the document made public today, in particular with respect to reinforcing central services. This recentralization would improve management processes and reduce the risk of collusion and corruption.”
“We have been saying it for some time now: Montréal is over-governed,” Mr. Leblanc says. “We pointed this out in our A New Mayor for Montréal initiative, which got under way last week with the publication of a job posting. The Léonard Report confirms many of the responsibilities we identified in the job posting. We encourage mayoral candidates to waste no time in telling us how they intend to tackle a problem that has immobilized the city’s development.”
The Board of Trade of Metropolitan Montreal is made up of some 7,000 members. Its mission is to represent the interests of the business community of Greater Montréal and to provide individuals, merchants, and local businesses of all sizes with a variety of specialized services to help them achieve their full potential in terms of innovation, productivity, and competitiveness. The Board of Trade is Quebec's leading private economic development organization.
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Source:
Sylvie Paquette
Advisor, Media Relations
Board of Trade of Metropolitan Montreal
Tel.: 514 871-4000, ext. 4015
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Twitter: @chambremontreal
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