Translating the printemps érable

René Forget      August 23, 2012

Original French text: http://quebec.huffingtonpost.ca/rene-forget/police-montreal-_b_1824609.html

Mister Francoeur,

I have become aware of an article written by Karim Benessaieh on the web site lapresse.ca. In this article, the author reports that the city of Montreal and its police officers are at an impasse, that the city claims to no longer be able to give its contributions to your pension plan and that it is thinking of calling on an arbitrator to impose a settlement.

Apparently, the situation has sickened you but, pardon my frankness, I am incapable of being sympathetic to your cause.

Make no mistake, I know that your pension fund is one of the best managed in Canada and that its success is that of its administrators, I know that the city of Montreal hasn’t contributed to it for what? 10 years? And I also think that the city of Montreal seems to be run by a 4 year-old child that likes to push crayons far too far up its nose… but… I am not sympathetic to you.

In fact, there are two things that prevent me from standing behind your position. The first is this mild irony.

• You are a group of workers, which strangely resemble a group of students.
• You have a disagreement with a dubious government that wants to put its dirty hands in your pockets. And just like our students, your answer to the government is “before you come dig in my pockets, sort out your own”.
•  This dubious government is already talking about responding with force and forcing you to accept its law (does that remind you of bill 78, by chance?)
•  And even if you have a just and noble cause, the “silent majority” will treat you like spoiled brats.

We could be ironic all night, for example I could say:

• If the police take to the street, will the students pepper spray and truncheon them?
• Who will you send your protest routes to? To your comrades at the SQ, to UQAM?
• Will the protests be allowed less than 50 meters from police stations?
• If 20 police officers boycott the truncheon but 5 want to continue to beat the youth, can the 20 officers on boycott prevent the other 5 from going to “look for their treat?”

But what good is irony, the situation is too sad…

As for the second reason, the real reason that stops me from sympathizing with your cause is the following passage of the article:

He doesn’t mince words with regards to mayor Tremblay’s administration, which he accuses of having “squandered Montrealers’ money” by giving “from 20 to 35% of contracts to the mafia”. He recalled that the city took a break from contributions to the police pension plan from 1997-2007. Which is managed independently.

Is that so? Really? You are able to prove that mayor Tremblay gives from 20 to 35% of his contracts to the mafia? You are able to prove that he squanders Montrealers’ money? You know that there are problems with embezzlement and corruption?

And you do nothing? You? The police officers, you do nothing? You let the mafia get rich? 

Your cowardice sickens me. You are cowardly, afraid. You dishonor your profession, you are corrupt. For a long time you have done nothing more than give out tickets, than be a collection agency for corrupt governments. You have completely forgotten your mission, you have completely forgotten your judiciary independence.

It’s well known that when it’s a matter of “banging” on defenseless 19 year-old children with truncheons, of making “preventative arrests” or of political profiling your puff out your chests but when it’s a matter of doing your real work, a matter of stopping your bosses, your chests deflates.

You don’t need anyone’s permission. If you are able to prove that your employers are corrupt, stop them. Don’t be accomplices for lack of courage. You have all the necessary powers.

And remember that soon, we will (severely) judge the force you used this spring. You will be the only victims of this conflict. Some of you may receive their 4% for having “been involved in the liberals’ madness” while the liberals themselves will surely receive a golden handshake. Do you really want to protect these people? Give us confidence in justice again. Do the clean up we all need.

Become the heroes that we need.

Or resign.

***

Translated from the original French by Translating the printemps érable.

*Translating the printemps érable is a volunteer collective attempting to balance the English media’s extremely poor coverage of the student conflict in Québec by translating media that has been published in French into English. These are amateur translations; we have done our best to translate these pieces fairly and coherently, but the final texts may still leave something to be desired. If you find any important errors in any of these texts, we would be very grateful if you would share them with us at translatingtheprintempsderable@gmail.com. Please read and distribute these texts in the spirit in which they were intended; that of solidarity and the sharing of information.