Westmount's Trent says ‘Leadership is not about language!’

By P.A.Sévigny, September 26th, 2012

As the mayor of one of the island’s more important cities and as the president of the island’s Association of Suburban Municipalities, Westmount’s Mayor Peter Trent made a point of telling The Suburban that the city’s French media got it all wrong when they described him as “a leader among the city’s Anglo community.”
“As usual,” said Westmount’s mayor, “they [the media] got it all wrong. I was elected to be the mayor of Westmount…I was not [nor ever] elected to be a leader or a spokesman for the city’s Anglo community.”
While he did mention that he tried to stay out of the numerous political debates that were being sparked by the recent election’s sometimes overheated rhetoric, Trent told The Suburban that Premier-elect Pauline Maurois’s comments about French language tests for anybody who wishes to run for public office in Quebec to be “completely unacceptable.” In a report published in Québec City’s Le Soleil only two weeks before the Sept. 4 election, Trent described the Marois proposal as nothing less than an “insult” to both the province’s anglophone  community as well as its so-called “allophone” communities because almost every elected official he knows can read, write and speak French.
“I know of perhaps two {elected officials] who cannot speak French very well,” said Trent. “That’s two out of over 7,000 elected officials!” Marois later revised her language test proposal to only include those new to Quebec.
Aside from accusing Marois of pulling the language issue out of her hat in order to gain some kind of a political advantage during the final days of what turned out to be a very close campaign, Trent continues to resent how most, if not all, of the city’s powerful media outlets continue to frame the city’s political discussions along linguistic lines instead of treating them as serious questions which deserve a serious debate. When asked for examples, the mayor referred to the municipal fusion (and later de-fusion) debates which effectively altered the political realities which now define the municipal government of Montreal and all of the rest of the island’s now independent cities.
“That was a serious debate,” said Trent. As he was Westmount’s mayor prior to the island’s municipal mergers, Trent was also leading the debate against the PQ government’s Bill 170 and its plan to impose its will upon the balance of the island’s independent cities and towns. “Instead of dealing with the argument on its merits, the city’s French media framed the issue along linguistic lines after which they made it look as if I was among the leaders of the city’s English community who were against the mergers.”
Now 10 years later, he told The Suburban that the city’s French media are once again describing him as an Anglo mayor who is concerned about the city’s massive ($609M) pension deficit instead of as a municipal leader who is concerned about the city’s massive debt.
Aside from describing the city’s 10-year-old “One Island, One City” issue as a complete and ongoing disaster in his new book which is due to be released in a few weeks, Trent also told The Suburban that he is more than a little concerned about the crisis in political leadership that continues to define politics at every level in both the city and elsewhere in Quebec.
“If Marois continues to rattle her saber,” said Trent, “there’s bound to be some kind of ad hoc leadership that will make its way to the top.”
Meanwhile, he believes Montreal’s future leaders will no longer be concerned with the linguistic animosities which have taken up so much of the city’s political dialogue over the final decades of the 20th century.
“I don’t think we’ll be hearing much more talk about ‘la grosse bonne femme de Chez Eaton’s who couldn’t speak French,’” said Trent. “Leadership, not language, must define the political debate in this city if Montreal is to keep its place among the great cities of North America.”n