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Mélanie Joly, conférencière à McGill

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2015-03-31 13:00:00

Le 25 mars dernier, Me Mélanie Joly était l’invitée de la Conférence annuelle Revue de droit de McGill ; elle a entretenu son auditoire sur le cadre juridique des villes au Canada…

Mélanie Joly, conférencière à McGill
Mélanie Joly, conférencière à McGill
La candidate à l’investiture du Parti libéral du Canada dans Ahuntsic-Cartierville y a présenté sa vision d’une politique adaptée aux défis du XXIe siècle parmi lesquels les changements climatiques, la croissance des inégalités et la révolution numérique. Elle y a exposé les interactions entre les différents paliers gouvernementaux et la façon dont selon elle, elles devraient être repensées.

Lors de l’annonce de l’événement, La Revue de droit de McGill a précisé qu’elle n'appuyait aucun parti politique ni aucun candidat, et que la Conférence annuelle était un évènement apolitique.

Voici la retranscription du discours de Me Joly :

Merci Mr. Stephenson for this introduction.
Faculty members, alumni, colleagues, friends, good evening. Good evening to all.

It’s a true pleasure to be speaking in a great Faculty, which is contributes to McGill’s worldwide reputation of excellence and which can make all Montrealers proud. As an alumni from the other great French University on the other side of the mountain, Université de Montréal, I’m honored to address tonight such a prestigious crowd.

I’ve been clearly advised not to fall into any partisanship but no one prevented me from emphasized my friendship to my neighbor and professor to this faculty, David Lemetti. Hi David.

Albert Einstein once noted that “Problems cannot be solved with the same mind set that created them.” Our contemporary welfare state was created in the 1960s, at a time when Canada was experiencing strong economic growth, on par with, if not higher than what we’ve seen in China and other developing countries in the last few decades, fueled by a rapid demographic expansion as a result of the post-WWII baby-boom as well as innovation and cheap energy. Times were also very different, as this was before humans first set foot on the Moon; before travel by plane became commonplace; before fax machines, personal computers and videoconferencing; before cable television and 24-hour news stations; before emails, the Internet and online access to the vastness of human knowledge and experiences; before cell phones, smartphones and tablets; before social media, Wikipedia and WikiLeaks. In other words, the mindset that presided over the creation of the welfare state is the product of a long gone era; that mindset itself is now mostly outdated.

Now let’s play a little thought experiment for a moment, and let us imagine that the welfare state has not been created yet, that it remains to be invented. What would it look like if it to be created using today’s mindset and technology? Could we imagine creating a health care system where patients’ files are not numerized and accessible with a few clicks to every health care professional someone needs to consult, irrespective of where they are? Would people need to go line-up for hours at some government office to get relevant information or apply for a benefit? Would the government be clueless about how to tax online purchases? Would access to information legislation work in a way that hinders rather than promote free access and use of government data?

My purpose tonight is not to give you a list of already made solutions. Instead, my aim is to launch a conversation and to get you thinking about what you and I could do to get there, using a different mindset, informed by today’s technologies and easy access to powerful means of communication, to think and create the state that we need.

Why? Because we have to do so. The plagues affecting our State (Ineffectiveness, Debt, Climate Change impacts and growing inequities) go to its core and threaten its very survival. If we do not think and act differently we are all, at terms, putting our social cohesion at stake. Churchill once said: “Desperate times call for desperate measures”. Today we should say “Complex times call for innovative measures”.

Ma présentation se divisera en trois parties. J’explorerai d’abord les différences entre notre société telle qu’elle était à la naissance de l’État-providence, dans les années 60, et telle qu’elle est maintenant. J’examinerai ensuite pourquoi, à mes yeux, les communautés locales sont appelées à prendre une importance de premier plan dans le monde d’aujourd’hui. Je conclurai enfin sur une piste de réflexion qui me tient particulièrement à cœur, à savoir l’importance des villes dans notre monde et le rôle qu’elles peuvent et doivent jouer pour la création d’un État modernisé et adapté à nos réalités et à celles qui sont à nos portes. Je glisserai par ailleurs un mot quant à ce que nous pouvons exiger des autres paliers de gouvernement afin de leur permettre de jouer pleinement ce rôle.

1. Then and Now

To begin with, let’s take a closer look at what Quebec looked like back in the 1960s when the modern welfare state was created, and compare it to the world we live in today.

In 1960, women had only been allowed to vote in provincial elections for 20 years. A first woman, Marie-Claire Kirkland, was elected to the National Assembly in 1961. Although she was appointed to the cabinet, as a married woman, she had no legal capacity and her husband thus had to sign the lease for her new apartment in Quebec City. That changed in 1964 with the adoption of Bill 16, that Ms. Kirkland spearheaded, and which granted full legal capacity to married women.

Quebec’s annual GDP growth rate in 1965 was almost 10%, a rate that China last experienced in 2010, and tenfold Quebec’s current 2%. At the same time, Canada was a more rural country in 1960, when 69% of Canadians lived in cities. As of 2011, over 80% of the population lived in urban areas.

In 1966, as a result of the baby-boom, people aged 24 and younger accounted to 51.6% of Quebec’s population. More importantly, power was young: Jean Drapeau was first elected mayor of Montreal in 1954, at age 37; Jean Lesage’s governments of 1960 and 1962, which heralded the Quiet Revolution, were heavy on young talents, all in their 30s: René Lévesque, Jacques Parizeau, Claude Morin and Michel Bélanger, to name a few; in 1970, Robert Bourassa became Premier of Quebec at 36 years old; his Minister of Communications, Jean-Paul L’Allier, was 31.

As of 2011, the proportion of individuals under 25 in Quebec was 28%, while the baby-boomers who came to power in 1980s and 90s continue to dominate Parliament and the National Assembly as well as the upper echelons of the civil service. That reality was made abundantly clear to me in 2006 when I did an internship as a journalist in Radio-Canada’s newsroom: the same people who had been in the spotlight for years were sought to comment current events. That’s one of the reasons why, with two colleagues, Paul St-Pierre Plamondon and Stéphanie Raymond-Bougie, I launched Génération d’idées, which intended to provide a forum for young people to put forward fresh ideas and debate them.

Going back to the 1960s, a younger society also meant that a more adventurous spirit prevailed. Although the French-speaking population of Quebec at the time was still very much dominated by the Catholic Church, rebellion was in the air and the old order and its institutions were being taken down stone by stone, sometimes entire walls at once, as when the Ministry of Education was created in 1964 and the primary responsibility for secondary and post-secondary education transferred from nuns and priests to the state. Today, any proposed reform or change to the welfare state is perceived with suspicion and leads to often paralyzing opposition. Imagine nationalizing the production and distribution of electricity in two years, which is exactly what the Quebec Government managed to do in 1963-1964.

While 1960 Quebec was young, it was by no means an educated society: only 13% of French-Canadians had completed high school. That said, great strides were quickly taken so that by 1976, 15% of the population had a university diploma; and in 2007, 87% of Quebeckers had completed high school while 32% held a university degree.

Our relationship to authority has also evolved markedly. Deference was the norm at the time, which applied in all spheres of life: deference to the father within the family; deference to teachers in school; deference to the Church in religious matters; deference to the state in public affairs. Of course some individuals rebelled, but overall society was a lot more pre-ordained in its functioning. Paradoxically, this probably facilitated the implementation of the fundamental changes in the structure of government and the unprecedented expansion of its functions, as individuals were more prone to defer to their political leaders to guide them toward a better future; they trusted the system a great deal more than we do.

Nowadays, an educated population doesn’t accept things at face value. It questions its leaders and expects to be consulted and to participate in decision-making processes, which can sometimes lead to protracted battles and even paralysis, as the systems that were put in place over the last 50 years have not yet been adapted to different public expectations.

L’un des traits marquants de notre époque, à laquelle je faisais allusion en introduction et qui la distingue probablement le plus fondamentalement des années 60 est l’explosion des moyens de communication de masse. Ainsi, grâce aux technologies de l’information, celle-ci s’est libéralisée d’une manière que peu de gens auraient pu entrevoir il y a 50 ans, faisant voler en éclat les barrières de la connaissance, mais aussi de sa création et diffusion. En effet, de nos jours, toute personne munie d’un téléphone intelligent peut se transformer instantanément en reporter, caméraman, photographe, comédien, voire chanteur, et diffuser ensuite à la Terre entière, sur de multiples plateformes, le produit de sa créativité ou de ses investigations. Jamais une telle chose n’avait été possible pour autant de gens et à l’échelle planétaire.

Modern technology and modes of communication, and especially social media, have not only had a profound effect on the sharing of information, but also on the way we interact with others and we organize ourselves as societies. Take the Arab Spring: it was obviously not the first revolution, but it was organized and spread with very little means, through cell phones and social media. Same for my 2013 bid to become mayor of Montreal: it is through the power of social media that I managed to rival the more senior candidates with a fraction of their budgets.

Finally, businesses have become truly global. Trade is being liberalized. Online purchases are changing the way we shop, delocalizing and dematerializing consumption. The 21st century is that of the corporation: with cash reserves worth $179 billion dollars, if Apple were a country, it would qualify for the G20! More importantly, Apple, like many other large corporations, is present in many jurisdictions around the world, taking full advantage of tax rules that were created at a time when the fastest route between New York City and London was by way of steamship and took an entire week to complete.

I’m sure that we could all come up with yet more examples as to how things have changed in 50 years. But the point of this brief overview was to demonstrate how much the world we live in now differs from the world that saw the creation of the welfare state, which should underscore the need for all of us to think about how it could and should evolve and adapt to today and tomorrow.

2. All Politics Is Local

As Americans say, “all politics is local.” And that has never been as true as it is today. Consider this paradox: while we have been busy concentrating power, money and responsibilities for the provision of essential services in the hands of central governments, whether at the provincial or federal levels, our values have shifted in the opposite direction. Little by little, the links that bound us collectively have been eroded, making way for increased individualism and isolation. Indeed, never has the state provided such much to so many, yet never have people been so lonely.

Despite this new individualism and isolation, the prevailing school curriculum over the last 30 to 40 years has placed great emphasis on teamwork and collaboration. As such, and despite their lack of active political involvement in the traditional sense, young people are deeply committed to community building, which they pursue through other means, including but not only social media: in 2010, fully half of individuals aged between 15 and 24 volunteered, as did 40% of those aged between 25 and 34; this dropped to one third for people 35 and over.

Young people are also less likely to self-identify with a single group. Their identities are multiple and complex, which they embrace. I, for example, see myself as a young woman, a feminist, a Montrealer, with a passion for the arts, cities and l’engagement citoyen. I don’t feel the need to choose between those different identities. On the contrary, I feel free to live them all, sometimes together, sometimes separately, through the different groups and organizations I decide to join. I thus share values with many different groups, yet there’s no single group whose values entirely overlap with mines. The sense of belonging to each one of those groups does not stem from the fact that all members of each group are alike, but instead that we share certain interests and goals that we choose to pursue collectively. As such, belonging to a group doesn’t mean losing one’s personality and ideals, one’s critical sense or values. Individualism and communitarianism can coexist.

But what does that mean in practice? The model of the nation-state as it developed in the 20th century is showing its limits. Young people in western democracies don’t identify with their country the way their parents did. We’ve seen the practical consequences of that movement right here in Quebec: the Parti Québécois and support for the separation of Quebec are least popular among people under 25, which is a complete reversal of the historical trend since the Quiet Revolution. Indeed, the notion of belonging to a single nation-state, of having one all-encompassing nationality or ethnicity is fundamentally contrary to the way we have been teaching and educating children for the last four decades; it is hard to reconcile with the multicultural society in which we live in; it makes a mockery of all the métissage that we witness all around us.

En fait, il est désormais difficile de concevoir que l’État, bureaucratisé, omniprésent et endetté, puisse aujourd’hui avoir la capacité de faire l’arbitrage d’identités multiples. Contrairement à ce que l’on a longtemps pensé, le citoyen n’a plus la croyance profonde que son sort peut s’améliorer simplement parce qu’il fait partie d’un tout bien plus grand que lui-même, son pays. Le fait de participer aux efforts d’un pays ou à sa création n’est pas nécessairement le gage d’une émancipation personnelle réussie, ni même d’une émancipation collective.

Il existe donc une démarcation entre la perception de ce qui peut améliorer le sort de l’individu d’aujourd’hui et la conception que l’émancipation d’une personne passe par celle de son peuple, y compris la création d’un État fort. Pour plusieurs, l’appartenance à une nation n’est plus un fondement identitaire. Le fait d’être femme, jeune et urbaine, par exemple, a autant sinon plus d’importance dans la construction d’une identité que la nationalité. En d’autres mots, au 21e siècle, le fait d’appartenir à une nation n’est plus une fin en soit.

As a result, tomorrow’s political organization will have to place individual emancipation at the heart of its action. This will mean less identification to one’s country, while fostering a sense of belonging to one’s local community. I truly believe that a system where collective action focuses on the individuals, the latter realize their potential more fully, which in turn makes those individuals more disposed and likely to engage with their immediate community, thus reaping the benefits of their actions. If each individual within that community acts the same, the effects of their individual actions are exponential and create a virtuous circle of action and reward.

Contrary to the 20th century’s focus on the self-determination of nations, which has led to so many tragic conflicts and unresolved situations, this new projet de société would be centred on the self-determination of each individual through his or her different and often overlapping communities. Individuals would therefore be truly involved, but on a different scale, with a greater sense of control over their own destiny and a corresponding reduction in cynicism.

At the political level, the local community is the city, which importance as a government continues to grow. Everywhere around the world, cities, not states, are emerging as global players and are competing directly against one another to attract businesses and talents. It is cities that are ranked for liveability, cost of living, beauty, top travel destinations, etc. And so for the last portion of my presentation, I will explore a few ideas to improve the lot of Canadian cities, increase our sense of belonging as well as their attractiveness.

3. The Cities of Tomorrow

Subsidiarity is an organizing principle that matters ought to be handled by the smallest, lowest or least centralized competent authority. According to this principle, political decisions should be taken at a local level if possible, rather than by a central authority.

Cities are a prime example of what subsidiarity means in practice: they cater to the most basic needs of their citizens, be it clean water, sewage systems, public safety, streets (not so obvious in Montreal at this time of the year!). Moreover, given the chance, they can also act as laboratories for innovation within a country, trying and testing the best solutions to deliver services to their citizens in harmony with environmental and human concerns. And because they are much closer to their citizens, cities have the capacity to be a lot more responsive than other levels of government and, in the best of cases, adapt and evolve more quickly.

As noted by John Micklethwait, editor-in-chief of The Economist from 2006 to 2015, in his farewell editorial of January 31st, “some of the remedies for inequality involve the state doing more, not less.” Yet our governments have become bloated and inefficient; they try to do too much and they end up doing it badly. As Micklethwait writes, “Leviathan has sprawled, invading our privacy, dictating the curve of a banana and producing tax codes of biblical length. With each tax break for the already rich and with each subsidy to this business or that pressure group, another lobby is formed, and democracy suffers.” What’s the answer? According to Micklethwait, “The answer is to scale down government, but to direct it more narrowly and intensely.”

And that’s where cities come into play. Because they are much closer to their constituents, they should be on the frontline of delivering the services that are truly needed in a more intensive yet efficient way.

But in Canada, cities are shackled with so many constraints that they are too often limited in what they can do and experience. This is particularly so in Montreal, where even a decision as local and localized in its effects as the hours of operation of businesses on the city’s commercial streets is regulated by the province and can only be changed with the approval of a government based 300km away from where those businesses operate; where the city’s taxation base is limited to mostly property taxes; and where the city has very little say over major infrastructure projects that have radical and profound effects on its population and its economy, whether the Turcot interchange, the Champlain bridge, highway 19 or the expansion of metro lines, to name just a few.

I am hopeful that the situation will change somewhat as a result of the current discussions between the municipal and provincial governments over the recognition of Montreal as Quebec’s metropolis and the powers that should come with such recognition.

That being said, decentralization is not enough. To be truly responsive to our society’s needs, we need to make sure that our governments, especially local ones, embrace the use of new technologies that can drastically change their way of functioning. Let me state this clearly: decentralization will ease the technology shift our democracy requires to better respond to people’s needs. Local governments can more easily use the information generated by their citizens and collaborate with them to adapt their own public service offering. It is easier to operate that shift at a local level than at a higher government level.
Les villes sont des créatures des provinces, pour reprendre l’expression consacrée par la jurisprudence de la Cour suprême du Canada. Au moment même où notre Constitution a été rédigée en 1867, la très grande majorité de la population canadienne vivait en milieu rural. Aujourd’hui, nous le savons, notre époque est et demeurera pour encore longtemps urbaine. Voilà pourquoi, malgré les enseignements de la Cour suprême, il importe que le gouvernement fédéral joue un rôle de premier plan dans la reconnaissance de la capacité du pouvoir municipal de moderniser rapidement la manière de rendre les services publics à la population.

In that context, I listen very closely to the call for action by the mayors of Canadian cities asking for Ottawa to act and empower their cities better. I truly believe that the federal government can play a fundamental role in assisting the birth of more well-equipped and developed institutions at a local level. In order for our new political era to begin, the federal power can set ground rules that can allow local governments to better develop and take more place in our democratic system. The federal government can set guiding principles that can also benefit cities that show better innovation and effectiveness.

La vision fédérale canadienne moderne devrait s’assurer de:

- Reconnaître les villes comme partenaires à part entières au sein du système fédéral canadien;
- Investir massivement et directement avec les villes dans leurs projets d’infrastructures pour s’assurer qu’elles se dotent de transports collectifs innovateurs. À terme, la colonne vertébrale de leur développement urbain afin de remplacer le modèle nord-américain basé sur l’utilisation de la voiture;
- Reconnaître l’importance des relations entre grandes villes canadiennes et américaines, en développant des liens rapides par rails entre les grandes villes.. En effet, même en ces temps de communications virtuelles, le déplacement efficace des individus d’un bout à l’autre du pays est un facteur clé dans le succès de toute municipalité;
- Transformer notre système fiscal sur la base des principes de l’éco-fiscalité, de façon à favoriser une production de biens et services d’une manière qui soit respectueuse de l’environnement tout en augmentant la compétitivité et l’attrait des villes du pays pour les gens et les entreprises d’ici et d’ailleurs;
- S’assurer que les villes ont toutes les outils et budgets nécessaires pour mieux accueillir et intégrer les nouveaux arrivants afin qu’ils puissent contribuer pleinement à leurs nouvelles communautés;
- Permettre aux villes qui le désirent de gérer elle-même les budgets fédéraux alloués au développement économique local. En effet, ce sont elles qui sont le mieux placer pour savoir ce dont leurs citoyens et entrepreneurs ont besoin.

All of this will require political will, but nothing is beyond what we can achieve if we truly believe in building better communities and convince those who govern us to go along with it. There are also many more ideas, many more ways of ensuring that our governments at all levels are more responsive to our needs, that they help rather than hinder the development of communities that we can call ours. Most importantly, each one of us has a role to play in that respect, and that’s what I urge you to do: get involved, get active.

Conclusion

Now if we pursue our little thought experiment started earlier referring to the creation of a new and modern State, we are now facing a true opportunity. In giving back some powers to local governments we can even imagine recreating the same type of context that was prevailing in the 1960’s, where everything was to be created. We could even depart from an overly paralyzed centralized government to build a new State which is based on local institutions reflecting better today’s value system and behaviors.

To do so, we must allow ourselves to rethink how we’ve organized ourselves politically and what are the new guiding principles we want to adopt for today’s society to be best suited to our needs.

Ainsi, nous devons faire preuve d’un important lâcher prise quant à l’approche conventionnelle qui tend toujours à complexifier notre système qui l’est déjà beaucoup trop. Il nous faut à nouveau être créatif et ouvert aux changements, même drastiques, afin que notre politique assure une meilleure cohésion sociale.

We have come full circle: from the 1960s to what our cities could be or should be. Together, let’s think of other ways to build the state of tomorrow. Let’s conceive it with today’s technology, today’s ideas, today’s enthusiasm. Let’s make it greener, more responsive to its citizens, not afraid of being challenged, questioned, and then reinvented yet again. Let’s open up the windows, bring in some fresh air, and let information flow both ways.

As human beings, we have the power to build the environment in which we want to live in. As citizens, it’s now time for us to invest ourselves in one of the most important political shift of our new century: building new institutions that will ensure our collective cohesion and wellbeing. Let’s invest in our cities.

Thank you.
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