PROCEDIMIENTO PARA LAS PRUEBAS DE FRENADO EN VEHÍCULOS EQUIPADOS

According to Jobin (1996), at the turn of the 1960s there w as a growing aw areness that m ost of the assum ptions of individual autonom y and of liberalism upon which the Codification of 1866 lent could no t be verified, especially w ith regard to residential renting. As Jobin explains, the Commissioners in charge of the Codification who h ad been given the task of identifying the Law in force in Lower Canada and of codifying it following the French Code beUeved in the citizen's perceptiveness, and in the freedom to choose. They also believed, as Jobin adds, in a system of the free m arket in which regulation would not impede competition. According to Harm (1996), the model of civil society in vogue in the 19th Century is tied to liberal individualism. It is also conceived in opposition to the State. It relies upon the W estern conception of the individual as autonomous.^^

At the tu rn of the 1960s, the conception of civil society, of the role of the State and of the dwelling w as reconsidered. H abitation came to be considered as a fundam ental need. A nd it was increasingly acknowledged that, in certain circumstances, this need could not be satisfied w ithout the help of the State, hi fact, the 1960-70s in the Province of Quebec were characterised by a trend of political, institutional and social reforms commonly referred to as the Quiet Revolution. These were initiated by the government of Jean Lesage (1960-66) a t the end of the Duplessis regime (1945-60). The 1960-70s w as a period of 'catching u p ' and 'm odernisation' for Quebec society (Pelletier, 1992) which gave w ay to the accession to pow er of a new bureaucratic m iddle class and to the rejection of traditional values in favour of 'statism ' and secularisation (Dickinson and Young, 1995). It was also m arked by the accession of the Parti Québécois to pow er in 1976, the rise of nationalism (Linteau et a l , 1989) and the politicisation of social and cultural issues (Handler, 1988). The Quiet

This conception of the person is particularly prominent in the Neo-classical econom y, after the 'Marginalist revolution' (Berthoud, 1987; Boland 1985; La gueux, 1989).

Revolution led to the reappraisal of the British m inority's hold and to the prom otion of access to the control spheres of the Francophone majority. Moreover, the 1970s were the years of the 'linguistic struggle' betw een the supporters of 'Québec français' and those of freedom of choice (Levine, 1990; Linteau et a l , 1989; Rocher, 1992). Here, I wish to insist that it w as a period th at led to the establishment of the Welfare State and to its extension to the housing sector. This trend of reform occurs less as a rupture, however, than the common interpretation of the Q uiet Revolution w ould lead us to think.^® The reform of legislation on residential stability is to be situated in tine w ith a set of reforms introduced by the federal and the Quebec provincial governments since the Second W orld War. In fact, the first intervention in the field of habitation consisted in the adoption of rent control measures by the federal governm ent in 1939. By virtue of the Loi sur les mesures de g u e r r e ,the Wartime Prices and Trade Board“ was thus created to prevent any excessive increases in the price of food, fuel and other basic staples, in order to insure sufficient provisioning and an equitable distribution (Trudel, 1978). Trudel reports that a few weeks later the government introduced the Board's regulations,^^ which w ould be extended on 11th September 1940 to rents and housing prices.^ According to Trudel again, the Board was conferred the pow er to determine the maxima rents“ and to proceed to the nomination of a rent adm inistrator.^ Nonetheless, because of the opposition of a majority of city councillors and of pressure of groups such as the Montreal Owners League and the Montreal Board of Trade, we had to w ait until August 1945 for these rent control measures to be im posed in Montreal (Choko, Collin and Germain, 1986; Choko, 1987). Effectively, this intervention constituted, for Jobin (1996), a rent freeze. For

I follow D ickinson and Young (1995) as w ell as Pelletier (1992), w ho emphasise h ow the Quiet Revolution is to be understood as the continuity of the social transformations noticeable since the end of the Second World War.

S.R.C., 1970, c. W-2, adopted in 1914, B.C. 1914,2nd session, c.2. Statutory order P.C. 2516,3rd September 1939.

Statutory order P.C. 3998,5th December 1939. Statutory order P.C. 4 6 1 6 ,11th September 1940. “ Statutory order P.C. 8528,1st N ovem ber 1941.

See Trudel (1978) for an overview of the modifications and substitutions of the regulations.

Thom asset (1987), it also provided the 'seeds' of the right to maintain occupancy.

The post-w ar period led to a relaxation of rent control by the federal government. From 1947, the government authorised aimual rent increases of 10 to 25%. It also authorised the eviction of tenants w ho refused those rises. In 1951, it undertook the complete lifting of rent control measures (Choko, 1987; Jobin, 1996). Nevertheless, the Quebec provincial governm ent observed the rent control measures initiated by the federal government und er the pressures of the Action catholique (Choko et a l , 1986). Indeed, the housing situation remained critical in Montreal because of the low construction level in the residential sector between the two w ars and the lack of maintenance of the existing housing stock (Linteau, 1992). In this respect, in 1951 the Quebec government adopted the A ct respecting the regulation on rental^ that became in the same year the A ct to promote conciliation between tenants and property owners. This Act came into force on the very day the federal measures came to an end, on 30th April 1951. This Act was aimed at preventing excessive rent rises th at might follow the lifting of federal control. It proscribed any rent rise during the first m onths of its application and imposed the renewal of leases at term. The Act also instituted a Commission des loyers to favour conciliation betw een tenants and property owners, decide upon eviction m atters, lease extension and rent fixing (L'Écuyer, 1975; Jobin, 1996). This Act of tem porary nature, due to expire on 1st May 1953, was extended from year to year until 1977.^

As I have said earlier, the Quiet Revolution in the field of housing did not occur as a rupture. W hat w as new in the 1960-70s, however, w as the growing awareness of the moving crisis. This awareness w as a tributary of the development of a therapeutic discourse on the moving crisis which saw the

S.Q. 1950-51, c. 20.

The Comm ission des loyers became a permanent body in 1977. It w as replaced, however, in

1979 by the Régie du logem ent through the adoption of the A c t establishing the Régie du

prevention of the move as the best — if not the only — means to prevent crisis.®^ It is true that the 1973-74 reform p u t the right to stability w ithin the legal domain. But such a reform could only occur once m oving itself h ad moved into the realm of crisis. I do not speak here about crisis conceived in Engelian terms, b u t in psychological ones. As Jobin, a jurist, explains,

m entioning the right of a tenant to his dwelling is naturally to call on the idea of stability. As such, it is easy to understand the motives which underlie the contem porary legislation aimed at ensuring a greater stabüity to the renting of a dwelling. Suffice to think, for one moment, of the unfortunate condition of a tenant who, in a m arket th at favours the owner-landlord because of strong dem and, is devoid of any legal protection... (Jobin, 1982, 353)

The reform conveyed, then, the preoccupation of the State w ith tenants placed w ithin an uneven balance of pow er (Jobin, 1982), as weU as the preoccupation of a benevolent, protective, not to say paternalistic State concerned w ith the disturbing effects of a move. Because, coming back to Jobin, the tenant

is exposed to all the human inconvenience of the move such as the worries and the efforts to find another adequate dwelling, the rupture w ith his or her ow n environment; the tenant is also exposed to the economic inconvenient of the move such as the transportation costs of his or her personal belongings, the settlement and the decoration costs. It goes w ithout saying that his or her new dwelling can be more expensive (Jobin, 1982, 353; italics added)

Beyond the loss of freedom w ith which moving had untü then greatly been associated, moving began to appear as a threat from a hum anistic point of view; stability being now akin to the preservation of well-being. As evidence, in the same period, during the 1970s, under the impulse of the same therapeutic discourse, health care services for elderly people in the Province of Quebec were reorganised in favour of a stay-put policy and the provision of health

See Chapter 2.

care services at home,“ a policy based upon the assertion of the curative virtues of home. This policy exphcitly intends to 'save' elderly people from having to move. Going further, architects' efforts undertaken since the 1920s^^ to develop 'flexible houses' or 'evolving houses', houses that favour steadiness, were pursued.^” Flexible or evolving houses were aimed at preventing their inhabitants from feeling the need to move (Merlin, 1988). Or, as Duff and Cadotte (1992) p u t it, they were aimed at postponing the move. In the same vein, we now speak in C anada about adapting the dwelling according to the changes of household needs in the course of life, as people get older, in order to favour steadiness (Wexler and Mishara, 1985; Wexler 1988; Renaud, 1989; Teasdale and Wexler, 1993; CMHC, 1995).^^ In this respect, it can be argued that these design guidelines embody the value of stability, not to say the assum ption of stable family Hfe. They become a w ay to dom esticate ideals and social norms defined in the pubhc realm (Buchh, 1999). As such, the prevention of moving recalls the 19th Century hygienist project which saw the nation's moral improvement through the improvement of housing conditions (Forty, 1986; Linteau et ah, 1989; Choko et ah, 1987). I w ül contend that the greater importance devoted to the incorporation of stability values in the very design of the house testifies to a broader movement tow ards the privatisation of housing issues. Indeed, whereas the 1960-70s were characterised by the rise of the Welfare State and its 'normative inflation' (Thomasset and Laperrière, 1988), the 1980s led to ideas of privatisation and deregulation (Linteau et ah, 1989) and to the reappraisal of the role of the State in Quebec society (Pelletier, 1992), especially in the area of housing, and the benefit of the prom otion of ownership.^^ This w ithdraw al of the State is p a rt of a broader

This policy of health cares services at home w as established by the M inistère des Affaires Sociales of the Province of Quebec in 1979 (Ministère de la Santé et des Services Sociaux, 1994; Roy, 1994). However, w e find a thesis on French Canadians' attitude tow ards health cares at hom e produced at the U niversité de Montréal as soon as 1965 (Vendette, 1965). For instance, see the w orks of Habraken (1961) on support structures.

'Flexible houses' are houses that can be transformed and re-arranged according to the transformations of the household composition or to changes in the household needs over time. In Britain, w e also speak about life-time hom es . The standards of the life-time home are based on the potential for adaptation for the future (Age Concern, 1999; Kellaher, 2001).

See Chapter 2 for a discussion of the Quebec government efforts to promote ow nership at the beginning of the 1980s.

move by the Western States tow ards market approaches to housing problems (Wolfe, 1998) as was the case in Britain, for instance, w ith the rise of Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government (Ball, 1983). If we come back to the Province of Quebec, we note that another reform of the legislation on residential renting was introduced in 1979, which gave w ay to the adoption of the A ct establishing the Régie du logement/^ This reform completed th at of 1973- 74 and strengthened the gains in the m atter of residential stability (Jobin, 1996) by reiterating the right to m aintain occupancy (Archambault, 1980-81). However, Thomasset (1987) shows that the right to m aintain occupancy is reasserted in 1979 at the expense of the recognition of the universal right to a dwelling although the theme had been at the heart of the debates leading to the adoption of the A ct establishing the Régie du logement. Thom asset holds th at by refusing to recognise the universal right to a dwelling, b u t in reaffirming the principle of the right to m aintain occupancy, the Quebec government transferred to the landlord the social responsibility that it refused to assume from then on: that relating to the satisfaction of every citizen's need for stable housing. In fact, the 1979 reform gave w ay to w hat could be described as the privatisation of the problem of residential stability and of the 'moving question'. This is at least im portant when we consider that w h at is at issue behind the short duration leases is the 'control over tim ing' (Munn, 1992). I will argue that leases remain short, however, because lease conditions can only be modified at the expiration. As stipulated in Quebec's Law, if the duration is 12 m onths or less, the rent can not be adjusted during the duration of the lease and a clause that w ould make such provision w ould have no effect. If the duration of the lease is of more than 12 months, the rent cannot vary during the first 12 months. Neither can it vary more than once in each following 12

Loi in stitu ta n t la Régie du logement et modifiant le Code civil et d'autres d isp o sitio n législatives, L.Q. 1979, c. 48. The Régie acquired full jurisdiction regarding the dwelling lease, non-extension of the contract, determination, revision and adjustment o f rents, modifications of lease conditions, division, change of destination as w ell as any clause relating to dwelling conservation, the demolition, the alienation and the conversion into joint ow nership (Archambault, 1980-81). It became the sole administrative entity in charge of the application of the Law (Thibault-Robert 1974-75). In practice, how ever, as Thom asset (1987b) show s, the

Régie du logement confines itself to the functions of rent control and rent recovery.

m onths period (Archambault 1993, 655). In other w ords, leases remain short because this allows for the possibility for increasing the rent at term and for doing it frequently, every year.^^ W hen we consider the short duration of leases in conjunction w ith the lack of incentive for tenants to remain in place for a long time as we have seen earlier, we realise that paradoxically the stability policy 'institutionalises' instability. It is not a 'lack' of stability in any moral terms which is institutionalised, b u t the possibility of moving. Thus, the determ inant of the yearly basis of the Montreal displacem ents and of their frequency probably lies in the legal conditions of renting.