A fading star
Once upon a time, there was a great city called Montreal. It was the economical and cultural center of Canada, it was considered the bridge between Europe and America. It had the charm of European cities with the modernity of an American cities. The cost of live was among the lowest of western cities, while quality of live was comparable to those. It was the best of both worlds. At that time, it was the center of Universe for Canada. The World Expo was held here, as well as the Olympic Games soon after.
Unfortunately, that was the last good things happenning to Montreal…
Since then, the situation only degrades. The debt of the city is excessive, existing infrastructure is not properly maintained, let alone improvement! City administration is paralysed by the various interest groups of extreme selfishness, in addition to the cancerous city workers union who do not hesitate to give citizens a hard time if their evil wishes are not fulfilled. On the other hand, the lack of strong leaders managing the city combined with the political instability caused by separatists have given many large companies good reasons to move their headquarter to another city.
So at the end, that left us with only the dumb guys and the bad guys, the smart guys are gone and good guys are not showing up. The dump guys couldn’t come up with any good plan during the past 30 years, and those rare good plans are being turned down by the bad guys. They couldn’t pull their arms and legs together to walk in one direction, they merge and break, money are spent, but the situation only gets worse.
Whenever there is a good project in perspective, a project that is good for the collectivity, it’s always blocked by a small group of individuals defending their very own interest with absolutely no regard to the well-being of the collectivity. This is selfishness hidden being the mask of democracy. When a group of a handful of families is given the right to stop the building of a highway that will benefit the city and the whole country, that is not democracy put in good use! When a city worker takes two weeks to patch a tiny pothole with a machine and no one dare to take any disciplinary correction, that’s not democracy put in good use! When a group of experts have to debat over a year with millions and millions of dollars spent to decide whether the next hospital should be built on this street or three streets away, that is very unproductive democracy! When a city that claims to be a leader of durable development doesn’t dare to make public bid for large development projects in order to favor local suppliers, that is a clear sign of a weaken population unable to face competition! When the local talents have to look for jobs elsewhere because this city is so stuck in the past and not able to look forward, I think that is a star fading toward invisible.
Unfortunately, I live in that city… and I couldn’t do anything about that.
