Michael Applebaum, First Jewish Mayor of Montreal, Resigns Under Fire

Vows To Fight Corruption Charges

Reuters

Michael Applebaum, the first Jewish mayor of Montreal, resigned on Tuesday, a day after he was charged with fraud and corruption in the latest major Canadian municipal scandal.

“I am going to put my energies into my defense and into my family,” said Applebaum, who had promised to clean up Canada’s second-largest city when he was named to the post in November.

Declaring his innocence, he added in a statement to reporters: “This is why I am resigning as mayor of Montreal - it is the responsible thing to do.”

His departure will do little to help the reputation of Quebec, where a two-year public inquiry led by Judge France Charbonneau is unearthing almost daily allegations of contract rigging, kickbacks and fraud going back many years.

Harout Chitilian, speaker of Montreal’s city council, said corruption did not occur overnight.

“It’s a systemic issue, and we realize from the Charbonneau inquiry that, over the past two decades, perhaps even the past three decades, the system was infiltrated by dark forces,” he told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.

Applebaum, a former real estate agent, was appointed after predecessor Gérald Tremblay stepped down amid allegations he had ignored corruption and illegal spending by his political party. Tremblay also denies wrongdoing.

Montreal, a city of 1.7 million, must find another interim mayor ahead of a municipal election due on November 3.

Further west, in the province of Ontario, Toronto Mayor Rob Ford is resisting calls to quit as leader of Canada’s largest city after two media outlets said they viewed a video that appeared to show him smoking crack cocaine.

Ford says he does not use crack cocaine, and Reuters has not been able to verify the existence of the video.
Applebaum faces 14 charges linked to two real estate deals from 2006 to 2011, when he was mayor in Montreal’s Côte-des-Neiges-Notre-Dame-de-Grâce borough.

He is charged with fraud, breach of trust, conspiracy, municipal corruption and secret payments involving tens of thousands of dollars. Police have not said who they suspect handed over the money.

“I have never taken a penny from anybody … the accusations against me are unfounded,” Applebaum said.

Michael Nadeau, executive manager of the Institute for Governance of Public and Private Organizations, said the city could struggle to find a qualified interim mayor.

“This is quite a challenge right now, to attract experienced and competent candidates,” he told CBC.

The mayor of Laval, a Montreal suburb, resigned in 2012, but denied allegations of corruption. Gilles Vaillancourt was arrested last month and charged with gangsterism, fraud and corruption. Laval has since been placed under trusteeship.

Mazel Tov, Montreal!

By Renee Ghert-Zand

YOUTUBE

Michael Applebaum

With his election, Michael Applebaum has become not only the first non-native French speaker in a century to hold the post. He is also the first-ever Jewish mayor of the second-largest French speaking country in the world.

“It’s definitely a proud day,” Leo Kolber, a businessman, philanthropist, former Canadian senator and lifelong Montrealer, said about Applebaum’s swearing-in ceremony on Nov. 19.

Applebaum, 49, was chosen by a two-vote margin by city councilors after he ran as an independent calling for transparency in government, following the resignation of former mayor Gérald Tremblay. Tremblay resigned earlier this month as a result of revelations made by the Charbonneau Commission exposing widespread corruption among Montreal officials, contractors and members of organized crime.

As Montreal mayor, Applebaum must step down as borough mayor of Cote des Neiges/Notre Dame de Grace, one if the city’s most heavily populated boroughs, and one with a high concentration of Jewish residents. His interim post will last only until municipal elections scheduled for November 3, 2013. Applebaum has stated that he will not seek re-election.

“I see very clearly what people are saying on the street,” Applebaum told The Montreal Gazette. “I am very much a goal-oriented person and I think we have an opportunity,” Applebaum said. “I personally have an opportunity to really make a difference.”

Critically, in a province in which language-based cultural identity permeates politics, Applebaum is bilingual, although he admits that his French is a bit rusty and that he speaks with an accent. “People may criticize me for my French. I will make errors, but I’m very proud to be able to speak and work in the French language. I’m going to do the best I can,” he said.

“What is interesting to me about this story is that Mr. Applebaum is being widely hailed as making history as the first non-francophone mayor of Montreal to hold the position in a hundred years. He also happens to be a Jew,” Rebecca Margolis,author of an award-winning book on Yiddish culture in Montreal remarked. “In Quebec’s current political climate, language trumps religion as the ultimate marker of identity.”

“The fact that Michael Applebaum is Jewish and anglophone…demonstrates the huge gap between the lovely, warm, mutually-respectful day-to-day realities of life in Montreal, and the xenophobic, divisive, demagogic religious, cultural, and linguistic bigotry of the separatist Parti Québécois,, McGill University history professor Gil Troy said in addressing the same issue in stronger terms.

Along the same lines, Kolber expressed doubts as to whether Applebaum would have won a regular election (rather than a vote among city councilors), given “the make-up of the city.”

But what matters right now, says Kolber, who has personally met the new mayor, is that “he’s a nice man and he works hard.” With Applebaum having his work cut out for him, Kolber is adopting a wait-and-see attitude. “Let’s see what happens,” he said.

For Beverly Akerman, a freelance writer and author who has lived her entire life in Montreal, transparency trumps religion. “What we need is someone who can raise the shades on the dark rooms of municipal politics, let in some light, the ultimate disinfectant,” she said. “I prefer an honest, competent mayor of any faith over a mayor whose only distinction is Judaism, any day. I’m sure most Montrealers feel the same.

Troy agrees. “As with all such milestones, I look forward to the day when we can simply welcome a Mayor Applebaum for what Montreal most needs in a mayor, an honest, efficient, effective leader, rather than focusing on where he prays, who his people are, or which of the two ‘official languages’ he speaks,” he said.