CAQ's Paola Hawa looks to make inroads in Jacques-Cartier

By Ian Howarth, August 30th, 2012

Paola Hawa, a lawyer and sitting Ste. Anne de Bellevue city councillor, is trying to upset Jacques Cartier incumbent Geoff Kelley, who has held the seat for the Liberals since 1994. Aside from the momentum the CAQ is garnering in some areas of the province — particularly in the Quebec City area — Hawa faces an uphill battle to unseat Kelley. In the 2008 Quebec provincial election Kelley took just over 80 percent of the votes (20,433). Finishing a distant second was, ironically, another current Ste. Anne de Bellevue city councillor Ryan Young, who garnered just over seven percent (1,897) of the votes cast.
Hawa held her version of a Town Hall meeting last week at the Briarwood Presbyterian Church in Beaconsfield. A modest group of about 20 citizens came to hear what the CAQ had to offer the West Island riding of Jacques Cartier. Hawa outlined some of the key points in the CAQ platform that were West Island specific. A CAQ government would bring back more autonomy to de-merged municipalities, Hawa said, helping to lower or eliminate the double tax demerged towns pay to the agglomeration committee for water. “The structure in Montreal is not working,” she said. “We have to pay for a portion of the budget that goes to city officials and workers’ pensions. Contracts need to be re-opened and re-negotiated.” The reduction of bureaucracy is central to the CAQ platform.
The CAQ’s plan to abolish school boards and re-structure them into regional service centres giving more autonomy to the schools was a contentious issue for some — and took up a healthy portion of the conversation — of those attending Hawa’s Town Hall meeting. Hawa claimed that the CAQ school board restructuring plan would save several hundred million of the $600 million budget allotted to Quebec school boards. “Those millions could go directly to the schools,” she explained. “If you want to know the truth (about education), you go to the front line, the schools.” The bottom line of the CAQ education plan means a reduction in the overall education bureaucracy, including the elimination of school commissioners. “That institution takes money away from our children,” Hawa said.
Lester B. Pearson School Board chair Suanne Stein Day is on record as saying most school administrators are putting in 60-hour weeks and are not interested in more autonomy — autonomy that would presumably mean more administrative duties under the CAQ reform plan. “Mr. Legault thinks you can run the public school system like the private one,” Stein Day told The Suburban in a recent interview. “Our schools don’t work that way. Anglo boards are run efficiently. Our overhead is less than six percent of our total budget. Our commissioners put in 30-hour weeks and get paid $8,000 per year.”