The Plante Administration is set to fulfill a key campaign promise: Montreal's senior police officers will no longer receive performance-based bonuses.
However, in return, the top brass on the force will be paid nearly $5 million more in salary increases, some of which are retroactive, over the next four years.
La Presse reports that most of the 1.5% per year wage increases, through to 2021, have already been included in the municipal budget. Planned annual increases to benefits and bonuses will be what ends up costing the city — to the tune of $1.25 million every year.
Many of Projet Montréal's changes will save the city cash, however. The unilateral abolition to performance-based bonuses, first introduced under Denis Coderre, will save Montreal nearly half a million dollars every year.
While she was opposition leader, Valérie Plante railed against those bonuses — which Projet nicknamed "bonis-Denis" — and ones tied to quotas for traffic tickets.
Ticket quotas were abolished shortly after the party took power last fall, and now performance-based bonuses will now be eliminated, as well.