In response to Pope Pius IX's promulgation of the dogma of papal infallibility , John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton wrote to scholar and ecclesiastic Mandell Creighton, dated April 1887, that "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely"
All of us should be worried about the Corruption Industry.
Our taxes are higher because of it.
We get less services from our different levels on government because of it.
We could even be killed because of it!
It seems to grow on itself, getting worse and worse.
In the Montreal area I first saw real evidence of it while the 1976 Olympic Stadium was under construction. There were so many cranes on the site that had never been used for anything, just sitting there idle while the owners collected the rent on them. My first wakup call to political corruption in Québec was as a 31 year old dumb ass nonpolitical person.The Stadium to be built for the 1976 Olympics here in Montréal was supposed to cost 300 odd million but ended up costing over a billion. I, as a cigarette smoker at the time, ended up paying for it for at least 32 years.Here's some background.http://archives.cbc.ca/politics/prime_ministers/topics/1469-9781/http://olympics.ballparks.com/1976Montreal/index.htmhttp://www.questia.com/googleScholar.qst;jsessionid=L6VfTJk2GM63hL6c4HcnFSy3x33511XlvMRgzvQ9qv2wqxnhvzPy!480740073!1743859799?docId=96389798
Another incident was the construction of Highway 13, the road that was supposed to connect Montreal to the new Mirabel International Airport opened in 1975 just before the Olympics. It never quite made it to the airport gates. Only 15 kilometres short of its destination, construction stopped. It later had to be completely rebuilt far before it's normal end of life beause of shoddy and sloppy construction practices and sub par materials .
A couple of years ago we had an overpass collapse onto a major highway, killing two people. On September 30, 2006, part of an overpass collapsed in Laval, a suburb of Montreal, on Boulevard de la Concorde running over Autoroute 19. crushing two vehicles while killing five people and seriously injuring six others who went over the edge while on the overpass. Also determined to have been caused by poor construction practices and materials . This situation was deemed so serious that the Provincial Roads departement had all bridges and overpasses of similar consruction inspected, leading to the conclusion that twenty-eight Quebec bridges will be demolished and as many will undergo extensive repairs, said the Quebec's transport ministry, after it finished an extensive review of road structures across the province.
About 135 structures were inspected in recent months after being identified for potential safety risks last summer, following the 2006 Concorde overpass collapse in Laval that killed five people.
The transport ministry will destroy 28 bridges and overpasses, conduct extensive repairs on 25 more structures, and reinforce four bridges from the list of 135 drawn up last summer.
Four other bridges have already been closed because of structural weaknesses.
Officials said 25 of the 28 bridges on the demolition list will eventually be rebuilt. http://www.cbc.ca/canada/montreal/story/2008/04/09/qc-bridgeprognosis.html
I'll get to all the collusion at Montreal City Hall in the next post.
