Montreal needs tougher ethics code: city opposition leader

Montreal must toughen its code of ethics for elected civic officials, the leader of the city's opposition said Tuesday.

Vision Montreal leader Benoit Labonté was responding to a series of recommendations made by a working group studying municipal ethics.

The province created the group in reaction to Montreal's water-metre contract scandal. The working group said Tuesday that municipalities should adopt a code of ethics that applies to city employees and companies doing business with the city.

Quebec Municipal Affairs Minister Laurent Lessard said he has created a committee to see how the recommendations can be applied.

But Labonté said Montreal should act immediately.

"There is nothing in the law that prevents Montreal to create a job of ethics commissioner, and there is nothing in the law that prevents elected officials in Montreal to play by the book and not to put themselves in to any kind of situation that could put them in a conflict of interest. We don't need a law; it is a question of morality, period," Labonté said.

The head of the province's working group on ethics, Florent Gagné, said about 10 per cent of Quebec's municipalities currently have a code of ethics for their politicians.

Gagné, a former provincial police director, said that in addition to each municipality adopting a code of ethics, they should set out a period of time during which a former city councillor cannot work for a company they dealt with while in office.

"We are saying in the report that a contractor who does not respect the code of the municipality may be during a period of two years without any contract with that municipality," Gagné said.

The Tremblay administration said officials would meet next month to study the recommendations.