The fault of the civic administration under this charter was in the ever-growing abuses arising from the system of standing committees of aldermen conflicting with one another, delaying the course of business. Towards its close corruption and inefficiency were rampant under the monopoly of a few who became stigmatized in the mouths of the citizens as the “23.” In 1909 a royal commission was appointed to examine into the malversations under the late administration. On December 12, 1909, Mr. Justice Cannon presented his report, in which he named twenty-three of the aldermen as guilty of malpractices. Twenty-two of these were not returned in the subsequent elections. The following general conclusion may be taken as a summary of his recommendations and findings:
1. The administration of the affairs of the city of Montreal by its Council has, since 1892, been saturated with corruption arising especially from the patronage plague.
2. The majority of the aldermen have administered the committees and the council in such a manner as to favor the private interests of their relatives and friends, to whom contracts and positions were distributed to the detriment of the general interests of the city and of the taxpayers.
3. As a result of this administration, the annual revenue of $5,000,000 has been spent as follows: 25 per cent in bribes and malversation of all kinds; as for the balance, the greater part has been employed in works of which the permanence has very often been ephemeral.
6. As for the division and the representation of the city by wards, all agree in condemning this system, which gave rise to patronage and to its abuses. I recommend to the citizens of Montreal, after a serious study of this question, to adopt another system creating a council composed of aldermen representing the entire city and working in unity for its growth and prosperity.
7. The council of today is composed of groups and coteries struggling one with another with such bitterness that they necessarily lose sight of the high interests of the community.
Meanwhile many of the prominent citizens, about 1908, began to prepare for a charter reform. In 1909 the “Citizens’ Association” was formed for governmental reform. Its president was an ex-mayor, Mr. Hormisdas Laporte, and the honorary treasurer was Mr. James Morgan, a prominent merchant and a good citizen, who personally contributed to the funds of the campaign, begun then and carried on for some years, very substantial sums of money and its other adherents, men of solid and approved citizenship. The object of the charter reformers was to remedy the prevalent abuses by a reduction of the number of aldermen to one representative to each ward, making thirty-one in the council, and by a curtailment of their powers, reducing them to a purely legislative body, with no executive power in financial matters. This latter function was to be held by a body of four commissioners or “controllers” and the mayor elected from the city at large. It was hoped that by this adaptation of the “commission” form of government, then obtaining great prominence in muncipal literature in the United States, where the method was being practiced, that the waste of civic energy, time and money would be best secured by a small executive board elected by the people at large and uninfluenced by ward politics. The charter for the Board of Control, (9 Edw. Chap. 82) of 1909, at the request of Farquhar Robertson, Charles Chaput, Victor Morin, S.D. Vallières and others, was accordingly secured from the provincial government after a plebiscite had been previously taken in favour of this great radical change of government, the most important since the original municipal charter in 1831. The new form had already been foreseen by Mayor Wilson Smith in his valedictory address in 1896. He said: