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It was the best photo op of the summer in Montreal, and God knows Mayor Denis Coderre provides a flurry of them.

Here he was, standing on a concrete slab installed the previous day by Canada Post. The press had been summoned to witness the live destruction of the platform, "illegally" built on the fringe of a "nature park."

A few hours earlier, in an angry press conference, the mayor once again blasted the "arrogance" of the federal Crown corporation for its "savage" installation of community mailboxes. Mr. Coderre expressed over and over his opposition to the end of home mail delivery. This concrete slab in a nice park, conveniently laid just as the federal election campaign started to roll, was something he could build on, so to speak.

"What are you going to do, Mr. Coderre?" asked the reporters at City Hall. After all, Canada Post has every right to install those boxes and needs no permission.

According to journalists, it looked like the mayor suddenly had a flash.

"Just watch me!" replied the former Liberal member of Parliament, in a Trudeauesque moment.

So a couple of hours later, television crews and all available media in the city were there to broadcast the Great Removal by the mayor. Mr. Coderre was all dressed up as a blue-collar city worker, complete with safety goggles, helmet, fluorescent jacket, a pneumatic hammer between his steel-toed boots, while two city supervisors nervously watched over his shoulders.

"Okay, got enough, guys?" he asked the photographers after a bit of awkward drilling.

"A little more please," they asked of Mr. Coderre, who was only too happy to oblige.

It was a good bit of fun and, since a vast majority of citizens oppose these boxes, the mayor became the hero of the day.

But reports began to surface of citizens "inspired" by the mayoral gesture. One taxpayer decided to stage a "sit-in" in a hole made by Canada Post in front of her house. She had to be taken away by the police.

"I didn't cross the line that much," Mr. Coderre said the next day. He nonetheless asked citizens not to imitate him, that his gesture was "symbolic" and that he was in charge of the situation.

Symbolic? Well, not more symbolic than the storming of City Hall last year by Montreal's unionized firemen. They too protested against the "arrogance" of the city, which, according to them, refused to hear their claims about pending provincial pension reform.

Mr. Coderre, at the time, was furious. Windows were broken, papers were thrown all over City Hall, the meeting of council was interrupted and the mayor was forced into his office for several minutes. A total of 57 firefighters were suspended and six were later fired. The union is fighting against new pension rules that it says amount to "stealing."

Not surprisingly, the union was not impressed with Mr. Coderre's concrete drilling. "It is quite outrageous that, on the one hand, he finds it okay to commit a mischief when he disagrees with Canada Post, and on the other hand, he says it is terrible when we do it," union president Ronald Martin said.

Isn't a mayor supposed to set the example by acting according to the law? What if Canada Post complains, as the law allows? Why would Montreal police not investigate?

Jackhammer populism is on the rise. But it's a slippery kind of politics.

yves.boisvert@lapresse.ca

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