Canadian municipal elections 2009

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Notes on Quebec:

Montreal: Louise Harel is the new face of 'Vision Montreal', Pierre Bourque's old outfit. The incumbent is Gérald Tremblay. There's been a number of scandals in Montreal, most involving shady dealings between the city council and various mafia-led organizations, the most famous one being a contract dealing with water counters and stuff. Tremblay always looks like an idiot since he claims he had 'no knowledge of it'. People seem to be tired of his corruption, and Harel is more appealing that Bourque. Other candidates include the environmentalist Richard Bergeron of Projet Montreal who got 9% in 2005 and Louise O'Sullivan, a 2006 CPC candidate from Westmount. What's funny is that the race is now almost a PLQ (Tremblay, and also Bissonnet in Saint-Léonard) vs. PQ (Harel and Ménard in Hochelaga). I think Tremblay will lose.

Quebec City: Boring race. The incumbent Mayor Régis Labeaume is actually sane (a rarity in Quebec City) and competent (another rarity) and he's wildly popular and he did very well with the recent 250eme festivities and so forth. He wins in a landslide.

Laval: I would be shocked if Gilles Vaillancourt didn't run and win again. Although he does seem to have more serious opposition in 2009 than in 2005, where his main opponent was like a 19-year old college girl who ran for the sake of it. Though the opposition is split and seems to hate each other lol.

Gatineau: There's this opposition guy, Zampino, he looks like a Sicilian mafioso. And that's all I know since I can't physically force myself to listen to the local news.

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Oh, and I hope Jean Tremblay in Saguenay wins again.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdErqHlPw3A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVu2hru9dqU&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxJ0z_tDf2Y&feature=related

The guy's a real buffoon.

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There's an NDPer running for Vision Montreal. Is it safe to assume that they're now the left wing party?

Municipal parties aren't real parties in that they obviously don't take positions on social issues and don't take much positions on economic issues. I see Union Montreal as the kind-of municipal PLQ (if only due to Tremblay and Bissonnet) and today's Vision Montreal as the kind-of municipal PQ (if only due to Harel and Menard). I think it's safe to assume that Vision Montreal won't win areas like Saint-Leonard and Montreal-Nord even if they voted against demerging.

On a side note, Harel doesn't speak English. I'm sure the West Island municipalities will just love urban community meetings rofl.

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She speaks English, but not very well. She said she wasn't comfortable with an English debate. I find this humourous considering she may well be the next mayor of Montreal.

I think all of the hardcore Anglo municipalities demerged, though, rendering that point of lesser important. Montreal City circa 2003, that would have been a huge issue and it would have doomed here.

And I have clue why the hell I said 250eme instead of 400eme. What the hell, Hashemite?

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Still lots of Anglo pockets in Montreal, though.

Immigrant allophone areas are much more important than Anglo areas in the current city.

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Probably true in terms of demographics, although I think the Anglophones tend to have a high turnout, in many ways probably higher than Francophones whereas turnout amongst Allophones is typically lower.

Still, my point is that Anglophones aren't a major demographic or voter base in the current municipality.

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That is quite obvious. And part of my point.

Just a little note re the poll and the last few posts, the question the poll asked was "language spoken at home", so lots of people of Italian, Greek etc. ancestry who grew up in Montreal will come up as "Anglo", with only the actual immigrants coming up as "other".

Yeah, a lot of Italians/Greeks/Portuguese often tend to speak more often in English than French.

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Well, every politician in Montreal takes money from the mafia anyways.

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I kind of saw this coming when Benoit Labonté, Louise Harel and VM's former power-hungry asshole said that both VM and UM were corrupt shells, therefore allowing Bergeron to creep up through the middle as the least-worst candidate or as a protest vote. I hope Bergeron wins, and it will also be a very fun race. Anyways, Tremblay is screwed.

Other races in the province:

Laval: 22-year incumbent Gilles Vaillancourt faces two major opponents: Robert Bordeleau (Running for the ghetto-named 'Party to serve the citizen') and Lydia Aboulian. Both are little known, hate each other but still put up a lot of signs. But all lawn signs are for Vaillancourt and his cronies. Vaillancourt will be re-elected.

Longueuil: Former BQ MP Caroline St-Hilaire faces incumbent entrenched Mayor Jacques Goyette and his municipal party machine.

Quebec: Régis Labeaume is wildly popular and his only major opponent is a retarded ultra-conservative radio host, Jeff Fillion. Quebec City is known for its retarded conservative radio hosts who often tend to be backwards racists. Eg, Andre Arthur.

Sherbrooke: Apparently an open race with 3 major candidates.

Saguenay: Everybody's favourite Mayor, the Bible-thumping Jean Lala Tremblay faces a populist, Michel Potvin. Lala Tremblay will win,

Gatineau: The mayoral race has 3 major players: the incumbent Marc Bureau, Aurèle Desjardins and Tony Cannavino who looks like a crook. I suspect Earl will want to look at Hull–Val-Tétreau District where incumbent councillor Denise Laferrière takes on NDPer
Pierre Ducasse. I will also look at Lucerne District, where one of the candidates is Barbara Charlebois, who led an English-only campaign and got threats from separatists nuts. She leads some sort of English people's defense club of some sort.

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It is worth noting that while Richard Bergeron seems to have sane views on things that actually have to do with Montreal politics and is the only candidate who is neither hopelessly corrupt nor an old-style linguistic nationalist, he has also claimed (a) that smoking is good for your health, and (b) that he is at least somewhat sympathetic to the view that 9/11 was a US government conspiracy.

Well, I prefer a slightly kooky non-corrupt guy over a corrupt loser/corrupt linguonationalist.

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Polls close at 8pm, RDI will have a special election night on the telly starting at 18h or so, though I assume the first two hours will be the typical useless blabber and re-stating for the 6,000th time what happened in the past two weeks or so. Of course, nobody will watch it since there's a music awards gala tonight at the same time.

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Also, another fun story is that the two opposition candidates in Laval use the same slogan: "Pour le changement".

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That's la France Profonde for you.

(Next thing MaxQue will tell us that he's a Muslim and/or Inuit, not a Quebecois, and I'll look stupid)

Val-d'Or doesn't seem like the sort of place that would have a lot of Muslims.

The census says there are a grand 15 Arabs in Val-d'Or. And 10 Muslims in 2001.

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Links for interwebs coverage:

http://www.radio-canada.ca/regions/municipales2009/
http://www.cbc.ca/montreal/features/civicvote2009/index.html (Laval + Montreal only)
http://www.resultats-municipales2009.gouv.qc.ca/

Anyways, I'll watch it on the telly and will probably come in here to express my glee, anger, surprise or disappointment.

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Labeaume 82% and re-elected.

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Jean Lala Tremblay and Gilles Vaillancourt win.

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Tremblay 41
Harel 31
Bergeron 24

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Sigh... plurality elections...

Yeah, the stupid crook would have lost a runoff or an IRV vote. I'm really pissed off at FPTP again.