Quebec Municipal Elections - Nov. 7, 2021

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Municipal organization of Quebec

Like elsewhere in Canada, local governments in Quebec are creatures of the provincial government and lack legislative autonomy. Quebec’s local government structure is complicated and arcane.

In general, there is a two-tier or single-tier system similar to Ontario and other countries. Quebec’s 17 administrative regions serve no real political purpose and lack any kind of deliberative body since 2015.

The supra-local (upper tier) level of government, whose main objective is to pool and coordinate common services at a wider level, are mostly formed by the 87 Regional county municipalities (Municipalités régionales de comté, MRC). The MRC were created in 1979 to replace the historic counties of the 1850s. They are made up of several local municipalities and unorganized territories.

Each MRC has a council made up of the municipalities’ mayors (and, in some cases, some municipal councillors), chaired by a prefect who is, in 18 cases, directly elected. MRCs have mandatory powers over land use, waste management, fire protection planning, preparation of evaluation rolls and local/regional development. They may also have optional powers, delegated by the local municipalities.

43 municipalities which are not part of an MRC are part of an ‘equivalent territory’ (territoire équivalent). These 14 equivalent territories are essentially single-tier municipalities or agglomerations with the powers of an MRC, and, in the cases of agglomerations, some municipal powers like policing, fire safety and public transit. The equivalent territories are the agglomerations of Montreal, Quebec City, Longueuil, La Tuque and Îles-de-la-Madeleine; and the cities of Gatineau, Laval, Lévis, Mirabel, Rouyn-Noranda, Saguenay, Shawinigan, Sherbrooke and Trois-Rivières. Given that all but one of Quebec’s ten largest cities are not part of any MRC, only 45% of Quebec’s population lives in an MRC.

The Nord-du-Québec region has special local government structures – the Kativik Regional Administration, regional government of Eeyou Istchee Baie-James (a municipality), the Cree-administered lands of Eeyou Istchee and Jamésie’s four municipalities which are not part of any MRC.

In addition, there are two metropolitan communities – Greater Montreal and Greater Quebec City (not to be confused with the agglomerations, which are smaller). The metropolitan communities each have a council presided ex oficio by the mayor of the core city. Metropolitan communities are responsible for planning and coordination on shared issues like public transportation, spatial planning, economic development, and cultural development. The two metropolitan communities include a total of 110 municipalities (82 and 28 respectively), some of which are also part of an MRC, and over 57% of Quebec’s population.

The local level of government includes 1,107 local municipalities (municipalités locales) and 14 northern villages (villages nordiques), 8 Cree villages and one Naskapi village.

The 1,110 local municipalities are divided between 883 municipalities governed under the Municipal Code and 227 municipalities governed under the Law on Cities and Towns. Municipalities are designated under different names, but these do not impact their administration and powers: 650 municipalities (municipalités), 229 towns (villes), 141 parishes (paroisses), 43 villages, 42 townships (cantons) and two united townships (cantons unis). Towns are generally more urban (83% of the population lives in a town), while the others are more rural. The 229 towns plus two municipalities and a village are governed under the Law on Cities and Towns, and all others under the Municipal Code. The Municipal Code generally creates a leaner administrative structure but

The powers of municipalities vary, with some – like Montreal and Quebec City – having charters granting them more powers, but in general terms municipalities have exclusive powers over fire safety, water provision and treatment and waste management. They share responsibility with the provincial government over housing, roads, public transportation, policing, recreation and culture, parks and land use/spatial planning.

There are also 11 agglomerations, which include a total of 41 municipalities, some of which are also part of an MRC. They were created following the municipal de-amalgamations of 2006 to administer collective services, and to coordinate and pool services like policing, fire safety, public transit, roads, water supplies and waste managements. The 11 agglomerations are Cookshire-Eaton, La Tuque, Les Îles-de-la-Madeleine, Longueuil, Mont-Laurier, Montreal, Mont-Tremblant, Quebec City, Rivière-Rouge, Sainte-Agathe-des-Monts and Sainte-Marguerite–Estérel. The core municipality of the agglomeration has powers over the entire territory of the agglomeration.

Eight municipalities are further subdivided into boroughs (arrondissements), which have their own borough councils with devolved localized municipal powers. The municipalities of Montreal, Quebec City, Longueuil, Sherbrooke, Saguenay, Lévis, Métis-sur-Mer and Grenville-sur-la-Rouge are subdivided into a total of 41 boroughs.

Naturally, there are substantial population differences among municipalities. 47.6% of the population is concentrated in ten municipalities with over 100,000 inhabitants, while just 7% live in the 711 municipalities with fewer than 2,000 people.

Quebec’s ten largest municipalities are, in order of population in 2020: Montreal (1.8 million), Quebec City (546.9k), Laval (439.7k), Gatineau (286.7k), Longueuil (249.3k), Sherbrooke (169.1k), Lévis (147.4k), Saguenay (146.6k), Trois-Rivières (138.1k) and Terrebonne (117.6k).

In northern Quebec, the 14 northern villages (villages nordiques), 8 Cree villages and one Naskapi village are administered under special laws. The northern villages are the predominantly Inuit settlements in Nunavik, under the Kativik Regional Administration, and hold elections every three years. The Cree villages and the Naskapi village correspond to IB lands under the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement and are uninhabited (the actual population lives in IA lands, under federal jurisdiction).

Not all of the province is divided into municipalities – there are 103 unorganized territories (largely uninhabited, although about 1,700 people are reported as living in them), 30 Indian reserves (under federal jurisdiction), 5 Indian settlements, 9 Cree territories, 13 Inuit reserved lands (uninhabited) and one Naskapi territory. About 0.7% of the population lives outside of a municipality.

Municipal reorganization

A large wave of ‘forced’ municipal amalgamations/mergers took place in most of Quebec’s largest cities between 2000 and 2002, spearheaded by the PQ government with the support of the mayors of the core cities, against the will of suburban municipalities’ mayors and residents. The urban communities of Montreal and Quebec City had been the site of longstanding political and fiscal battles between the core cities and suburban municipalities since the 1970s.

On January 1, 2002, 27 suburban municipalities were merged into the single city of Montreal, which now covered the entire island. ‘Forced’ mergers also took place in 2002 in Quebec City (13 municipalities including Quebec City), Longueuil (8), Lévis (9), Gatineau (5), Saguenay (7), Trois-Rivières (6), Sherbrooke (8) and several smaller municipalities. These ‘forced mergers’ were unpopular in many suburbs which were now amalgamated with their core cities, and in the case of Montreal, traditional linguistic tensions between the predominantly Anglophone suburbs of the West Island and the core city added to the contentiousness of the mergers.

These unpopular mergers hurt the PQ in the suburbs in the 2003 elections. Jean Charest’s Liberals promised to allow municipalities wishing to de-amalgamate (défusions) to do so through citizen-initiated referendums and adopted a law which allowed for old municipalities to be reconstituted following referendums, convened if 10% of voters in an amalgamated municipality signed a petition to demand one. 89 referendums were held in June 2004, and 32 municipalities met both requirements (50%+1 and a turnout quorum of 35%) to de-amalgamate. In Montreal, 15 municipalities voted to de-amalgamate, all but one of them located on the West Island or the western half of the city. In Quebec City, only two municipalities de-amalgamated while in Longueuil, four municipalities de-amalgamated (Brossard, Boucherville, Saint-Bruno-de-Montarville and Saint-Lambert).

However, contrary to what was initially promised, only certain (minor) specific powers were restored to de-amalgamated municipalities, while the bigger expenses like police, fire and public transit remained in the hands of the agglomerations, which are controlled by the larger core cities.

Municipal elections in Quebec

Municipal elections are held everywhere in the province every four years. Each municipality has a directly elected mayor, elected separately from the municipal council. Each municipality has a municipal council which has, in addition to the mayor, at least six municipal councillors.

All municipalities with a population over 20,000 (60) must be divided into at least eight electoral districts while smaller municipalities may also choose to be divided into electoral districts to elect their councillors (207 have). Municipalities which aren't divided into districts elect their municipal councils at-large.

Elections are often uncontested in smaller municipalities. In 2017, nearly half of mayors were acclaimed and over 55% of municipal councillors were elected unopposed.

One peculiarity of Quebec municipal elections is the presence of municipal political parties (no other province besides BC currently has municipal parties). Montreal and Quebec City have had municipal parties since the 1960s, and Laval and Longueuil have had them since around the 1980s. The proliferation of municipal political parties elsewhere, however, is a more recent phenomenon (1990s-2000s), favoured by a 1978 law on municipal democracy which allowed municipal parties to collect funds. They are now legal in all municipalities with over 5,000 inhabitants (it used to be only those with populations over 20,000). There are currently 181 parties, up from 131 in 2016.

Parties remain more common in larger municipalities: all 10 largest municipalities have at least one party. Montreal, Quebec City, Laval and Longueuil seem to have developed into political systems dominated by parties, with few independents, which according to the sparse literature on the topic has created or reinforced ‘government/opposition’ divides within municipal councils (rather than consensus-based governance in councils with independents).

Municipal parties, however, are basically glorified PACs – they are oftentimes personal electoral vehicles, explicitly identified with a candidate/mayor (often with the word 'team' and the candidate’s name) and with rather vague ideological orientations. Party platforms in municipal elections tend to be broad, vague and pragmatic, centred around valence issues. Many of these parties collapse or just die peacefully upon losing an election or their leader retiring/being defeated. Therefore, municipal parties have short lifespans compared to parties at other levels of government and most of them are young: the vast majority of the currently registered parties were created after 2010.

The electoral system in Montreal is somewhat confusing and convoluted, to the point where I doubt most voters actually understand the structure of local government in the city.

Montreal has a directly elected mayor, a municipal council with 64 seats, not including the mayor, and is subdivided into 19 boroughs. 18 of 19 boroughs (arrondissements) have a directly elected mayor who sits on the city council and their borough council. The downtown borough of Ville-Marie has no directly elected mayor, with the mayor of Montreal serving borough mayor ex oficio. All but two of the 19 boroughs (Outremont and L’Île-Bizard–Sainte-Geneviève) additionally elect one or more city councillors in single-member electoral districts (Anjou and Lachine elect only one, Côte-des-Neiges–Notre-Dame-de-Grâce elects the most, 5), for a total of 46 directly-elected municipal councillors.

The borough councils are made up of the borough mayor, city councillors for that borough and, in 13 boroughs (except Ahuntsic-Cartierville, Côte-des-Neiges–Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, Mercier–Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, Rosemont–La Petite-Patrie, Villeray–Saint-Michel–Parc-Extension and Ville-Marie), additional borough councillors elected in single-member electoral districts (which, in some boroughs, also elect a city councillor; in LaSalle and Verdun, each district elects two borough councillors). Ville-Marie’s borough council has two additional borough councillors, but they are appointed by the mayor. There are a total of 38 additional borough councillors elected.

While ideology and federal/provincial partisan ties do play a role in Quebec local politics, they are not central to local politics: candidate quality and personality, personal ties, local issues and parochialism play larger roles (this is truer the smaller the municipality gets).

In broad, general and simplistic terms, municipal politics in the city of Montreal tend to skew ever so slightly to the centre-left in terms of discourse, policy content and 'policy window'. In the province’s two largest cities, municipal politics post-merger have often featured a sharp urban/suburban or pre-merger city/post-merger city divide, which successful candidates have sometimes managed to bridge. Politics in Laval, Longueuil and most of the North and South Shore suburbs were for years dominated by hegemonic pro-development (and pro-developers) managerial mayors and, in many cases (most notoriously Laval), their corrupt single-party regimes.

Quebec’s mani pulite investigations (the Charbonneau commission of inquiry into corruption in the construction industry in 2011-2015) revealed the sheer extent of institutionalized corruption, collusion and illegal activities in municipal politics in the Greater Montreal region – and the ties between municipal parties and politicians, party fund collectors, construction executives, private engineering firms and the mafia.

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I will post some more detailed posts about each specific race, but here is a brief, tl;dr rundown of the major races.

Montreal: The race which is attracting all the attention is a rematch of the last election, but with incumbent mayor Valérie Plante (centre-left, Projet Montréal) as the vulnerable incumbent facing her predecessor, Denis Coderre (centre, Ensemble Montréal), with a third candidate trying to make his way up, Balarama Holness (left, Mouvement Montréal). Plante defeated Coderre in 2017. Her own term hasn't been all too peaceful either, and she's relatively unpopular (polarizing) for a first-term incumbent, in part for reasons not entirely of her own making and for not living up to expectations/promises but also because some of her policies (mobility, cars/cycling/traffic control, housing/urban planning) have been polarizing and faced some pretty virulent opposition.

Plante is running on her record of "profoundly transforming" the city, with a focus on the environment and housing (perhaps her star promise of 2021 is 60,000 long-term affordable housing units). Coderre is back in politics after bowing out after his stinging defeat in 2017, and says he's a new man - he lost weight, learned from his mistakes and become more amiable/congenial (or so he says). He says that Montreal has lost leadership and influence under Plante and become more divided because she governs for her left-wing militant base, and he comes in as the unideological centrist unifier who'd bring the city together, conciliating suburbs and downtown, cars and bikes, the environment and development. He's cooled on the big projects that kind of hurt him in his term. He wants to make security his big issue, and is promising more cops (but also bodycams), but so is Plante. He's used the right-wing trope of 'war on cars' against Plante and criticized her for 'punitive' (and he claims useless/ineffective) mobility/traffic control policies. The third guy in the race is Balarama Holness, a former CFL player who got his notoriety by leading a non-profit which collected 20,000 signatures to force a public consultation on systemic racism. His campaign has come to be defined by his controversial promise to hold a referendum on making Montreal a bilingual city, exempting it from law 101 and even having it declared a city-state. This promise went down about as well as you'd expect among Francophones (and it cost him several candidates), but might provide him with a sizable base among non-Francophones. On other issues he's quite left-wing - he's the only one who supports defunding the police, and there's a pretty big emphasis on social justice ('woke') issues.

Quebec City: Incumbent mayor Régis Labeaume, in power since 2007, is not retiring. The construction of the tramway, which finally got the province's lukewarm approval in the spring, is among the major issues, as is, to a lesser extent, the controversial 'third link' (now tunnel) with Lévis. Labeaume's heir apparent and continuity candidate, with a narrowing lead in polls, is Marie-Josée Savard (centrist, EMJS). She is challenged on the right by Jean-François Gosselin (QC21), who finished second in 2017 and is the opposition leader, from the centre by political neophyte Bruno Marchand (QFF) and to the left by Jean Rousseau (DQ) and Jackie Smith (TQ). Gosselin has really toned down his ludicrously pro-cars stuff from 2017 but is the only candidate to oppose the tramway, but instead proposes underground light rail (which, despite his claims to the contrary, is more expensive). Marchand is a wishy-washy centrist who campaigns on a 'positive vision' and claims to have the most ambitious ideas, his main one being to impose royalties on new real estate developments near future tramway hubs. He supports the tramway but with the rising price tag is now dithering. The most left-wing candidates are very weak: Rousseau leads Démocratie Québec, which was Labeaume's main opposition in 2013 but has since suffered from internal crises, and is somewhat comparable to PM in Montreal. Jackie Smith is the most left-wing candidate, the only one explicitly opposed to the third link, and has audacious ideas like free public transit and eco-taxation.

Laval: Marc Demers, the first non-corrupt mayor of this boring suburban city in decades, is retiring after two terms. The race is very lowkey and the candidates are not well known, and the number of undecideds is still huge. Stéphane Boyer is the continuity candidate. His main opponents are Michel Trottier, the opposition leader and runner-up in 2017, and Sophie Trottier, who appears slightly more right-leaning as her main promise is to freeze taxes for a full term (and resign if she fails to do so), a promise made unrealistic considering her other big promise is to build a big fairs centre for the region.

Gatineau: Incumbent mayor Maxime Pedneaud-Jobin is not seeking re-election after two terms. His left-leaning party Action Gatineau's candidate is young councillor Maude Marquis-Bissonnette, who has made climate change the centrepiece issue of her campaign. The two strongest opponents, both independents, are France Bélisle (former CEO of the tourism board) and city councillor Jean-François LeBlanc. Both candidates are more pro-real estate developers than the incumbent party, which has repeatedly clashed with them. Bélisle seems to be a moderate centrist running on 'change', but she's been hurt by allegations of maintaining a toxic workplace culture at her old job. LeBlanc's big promise is to freeze taxes for a year and make the city one of the least taxed cities in Quebec.

Longueuil: After a tumultuous term rife with controversies and fights with council, one-term mayor Sylvie Parent is not seeking re-election. Unsurprisingly, all candidates want more transparency and collaboration. The prohibitive favourite is young independent (ex-PQ) MNA for Marie-Victorin, Catherine Fournier, running for the new left-leaning Coalition Longueuil. The ruling party (centre-left) Action Longueuil's candidate is Jacques Létourneau, until recently president of the CSN trade union confederation. Josée Latendresse, the runner-up in 2017 (losing by 110 votes), is running for a new party called Longueuil Ensemble, while her former party (from 2017) Longueuil citoyen is running Jean-Marc Léveillé, a businessman and president of the local symphonic orchestra, who is the most pro-developers candidate.

Sherbrooke: One-term mayor Steve Lussier (ind., centre-right) has not had a very successful term, because of his inexperience and relative incompetence, so he is facing an uphill battle for re-election against two strong opponents. On the one hand, Évelyne Beaudin (Sherbrooke citoyen, left), the most consistent and dedicated opponent of the mayor on the city council since 2017 and undoubtedly the most prepared candidate, with a detailed platform and an impressive essay on municipal governance, but attacked by her opponents for being 'too negative' (a dumb claim to make against an opposition leader, but local politics in councils dominated by independents leads to this sort of mindset). On the other hand is former provincial Liberal cabinet minister Luc Fortin, running despite previously claiming that he had no interest in local politics, painting himself as the unifying candidate after fights between Lussier and Beaudin.

Saguenay: Josée Néron, who succeeded the colourful racist/traditionalist Catholic four-term mayor Jean Tremblay in 2017, has had a pretty rocky first term and faces a tough re-election fight. Even if re-elected, it will still be difficult as her party is only running candidates in 4 out of 15 districts. Her main opponent is Julie Dufour, borough president of Jonquière, who has a pretty right-wing platform and is critical of the legacy of the forced mergers and wants to decentralize powers to the boroughs. Néron, on the other hand, decries that sort of thinking and wants the city to be more cohesive. The other candidates include former provincial Liberal MNA Serge Simard, from La Baie, who has a pretty traditional natural resources-focused economic vision, and Claude Côté (Unissons Saguenay, left), who opposed the LNG Quebec project and has the most left-wing platform.

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I have written a Political history of Montreal (covering from the 1910s until today) that's about 15 pages long, I won't post it here but I can send it to anyone who's interested.

Valérie Plante (Projet Montréal): Plante’s approval ratings were mediocre, particularly for a first-term mayor, but every mayor since 1960, except for Coderre, has won a second term (and most mayors in Quebec and Canada do win second terms). In 2020, before Coderre officially announced his candidacy, polls had Plante trailing him by double-digits and with approval ratings underwater. During the actual campaign, the gap has significantly narrowed and the polls are now statistically tied.

If reelected, Plante intends to choose Dominique Ollivier as president of the executive committee. She was the president of the Office de consultation publique de Montréal (OCPM) until September and is now running for city council in the Vieux-Rosemont. Ollivier, who was born in Haiti, moved to Amos when she was two and to Montreal in 1968. Her pick is part of an effort to diversify PM, which received lots of criticisms in 2017 for having so few visible minority members and representatives. The party is also promising to hire more visible minorities in the local civil service, with a 35% target.

Plante argues that over the past four years, they have embarked on a profound transformation of the city to keep it affordable and make it a leader in the ecological transition, and she essentially is campaigning on a continuation of that. The five themes of Plante’s campaign are empowering the population and a responsive administration, carbon neutrality by 2050, an affordable and safe city to attract and retain people, quality of life and unlocking the city’s potential (green and inclusive recovery).

The city’s climate plan, which aims to reduce GHG emissions by 55% by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, is a cornerstone of Plante’s reelection campaign – and for good reason, because PM is still popular and judged most credible on environmental issues. Plante is betting on the ecological transition to make Montreal more attractive to investors. Public transit, cycling, shared mobility (carsharing), electric transportation and green spaces are still major priorities for PM. However, the ambitious pink line promise of 2017 is now reduced to a mere mention among other transit expansion projects. Other pledges include more reserved bus lanes, deploying the 300 new buses, a BRT line in northern Montreal, creating a zero-carbon emission zone downtown by 2030, incentives for electric cars and carsharing (including through parking rules and restrictions), developing and enhancing the cycling culture, continuing the development of the REV (Réseau express vélo, a popular bike lane network opened in 2020), planting 500,000 trees to achieve 25% canopy cover by 2030 and further expanding green spaces. PM wants free transit for seniors and a 50% reduction in fares for children under 17.

PM promises more public engagement and participation, notably to co-create and update the city’s urban development and mobility plan (which dates back to 2004) and an expansion of participatory budgeting. Cognizant of concerns over construction hassles, it devotes a whole section of its platform to limiting the negative impacts of ongoing construction work.

In addition to defending her new housing regulations (requiring all new developments to include 20% affordable housing, 20% social housing and 20% family housing, with dispensations and other exceptions), one of Plante’s biggest promises this year is for 60,000 long-term affordable housing units, as quickly as possible, using land already owned by the city and new land to be acquired. PM also wants to build at least 2,000 social housing units per year and seek funding for the renovation of social housing. It has promised to limit property tax increases to inflation (she got a lot of flack for breaking a similar promise in her first budget, in 2018). Although it’s out of the city’s power, it wants to ask the province to obtain the right to tax foreign real estate investments, adjust the property transfer tax according to the duration of ownership (to discourage house flipping) and establish progressive residential property tax rates (as is permitted for non-residential buildings).

There’s little mention of police reform besides bodycams by 2022 and expansion of a pilot program which sends social workers to respond to some 911 calls, but there’s a pledge to support the police in its fight against organized crime and gun violence. Plante has said she wants to hire 250 more cops.

To kickstart the economic recovery and help local businesses, Plante is promising solutions like innovation hubs, regulatory relief, continuing summer pedestrianization of streets, extending opening hours for downtown restaurants and entertainment, investments in downtown revitalization, working with the province to force owners of vacant premises to contribute to commercial development corporations, promoting start-ups and supporting business incubators and accelerators. Addressing criticisms from some sectors that she didn’t do enough for French since 2017, Plante’s platform promises an action plan for the promotion of French and the creation of a French language commissioner.

Denis Coderre (Ensemble Montréal): Rattled by his defeat in 2017, Coderre immediately announced his retirement from local politics. He’s since been open about how personally difficult the defeat was, describing it as a low point in his life. His party, renamed Ensemble Montréal (EM), appointed Lionel Perez, city councillor for Darlington since 2009, as interim leader and leader of the official opposition. Now, Coderre is trying to make a comeback – perhaps bit like Jean Drapeau in 1960, three years after his first defeat. Coderre took up boxing, lost over 100 pounds and claims he’s a new man who’s learned from his past mistakes and changed his style to be more amiable. Under Plante, Coderre says Montreal has lost leadership and international influence, and become more divided because an administration which governs for its ‘militant base’. He poses as an unideological centrist leader who would bring the city together, with an inclusive administration making room for bikes and cars, the environment and development and for downtown and the suburbs.

Coderre published a book about his ‘vision’ for the city, a sort of early manifesto, in March, and shortly thereafter announced his candidacy. If elected, his president of the executive committee would be Nadine Gelly, a businesswoman running for city council in the Verdun district of Champlain—L’Île-des-Soeurs.

In opposition, EM has attacked Plante from the left and the right – for not doing more on police reform, for spending too much and indebting the city, for dogmatic decisions on mobility issues and so forth. Coderre has often claimed that she lacks leadership and has neglected the importance of international relations or the mayor’s role as an ambassador (even though she spoke to the UN General Assembly in 2019 on climate change). Coderre says he would restore leadership and assert the metropolis shines in Quebec and internationally and promises that he’d use metropolitan institutions to push for solutions on issues like climate change and economic growth and attract more international events and foreign investments.

However, he’s been coyer about any immediate big projects, like those that marked his first term (like the Formula E fiasco of 2017). He’s opposed to the idea of a joint Olympic bid with Toronto and is much cooler than in 2017 to the idea of a new baseball stadium in downtown Montreal to attract the return of the Expos. He’s said that baseball is not a priority during the pandemic but has been ambiguous as to whether he would support public funding for this project. The big projects he now promotes are long-term ideas like the redevelopment of the Cité du Havre, covering the Décarie expressway, completing the covering of the Ville-Marie expressway and creating an elevated linear park from the Notre-Dame viaduct.

Coderre has said that security would be the main issue of the election (and polls show that he’s kind of right), claiming that Montreal is not safe and accusing the outgoing administration of lacking a clear strategy and of supporting ‘defunding and disarming’ the police (which is false). In reality, it’s unclear if Montreal is less safe than a few years ago: Montreal CMA still has one of the lowest homicide rates among major Canadian cities (0.97 in 2020), and while criminality did increase in 2019 for the first time in several years (by 5%) it dropped by 10% in 2020. However, the media does devote lots of time to covering various crimes, gun violence, gunshots, and the like, which fuels perceptions of insecurity. Coderre wants to hire 250 more cops and promises bodycams for cops and an increased police presence.

Coderre has been particularly critical of Plante for ‘punitive and regressive’ mobility and traffic control policies and alleged ‘war on cars’ and says that he wouldn’t favour any mode of transportation over another to enable ‘true harmony’ between modes of transportation. His book detailed his dreams for public transit by 2040 with subway expansions, suburban trains, other forms of rapid transit and the possibility of nationalizing parts of rail tracks – but these ideas aren’t part of his platform. He promises to accelerate timelines for current public transit projects, improve the quality of public transit, offer alternatives to single-occupancy vehicles (most notably carsharing, carpooling and bike rentals), prioritize pedestrian safety, increase the snow removal budget and make sidewalks safer (prioritizing them, rather than streets and bike lanes, for snow and ice removal). Coderre backtracked on an earlier idea to dismantle part of the very popular REV on Saint-Denis Street, and now says he’d improve it to make it safer, but he opposes a proposed REV axis on another main street (but keep a reduced bike lane). He would prioritize improving the safety of existing bike lanes and only expand the network after consultations with stakeholders.

EM would repeal the new housing regulation, which it has criticized for reasons I’ve previously discussed. He would set a less ambitious requirement of 15% of social housing in new developments of over 25 units, but at the metropolitan community level. His own big housing promise is for 50,000 new housing units (social, family, affordable and student housing) in 4 years. Coderre also supports creating a rent registry and requiring landlords to conduct an independent inspection of any unit that is more than 20 years old.

On environmental issues, Coderre is broadly similar to Plante: he’d maintain the goals in terms of GHG emissions reduction and even pledges to achieve carbon neutrality by 2045. He proposes to adopt a carbon budget, promote green construction and renovation, ban oil heating in all buildings by 2025, tax all large outdoor parking lots and to eventually plant trees on every street. He has also said that the city is dirtier now (in classic Coderre style, adding that he doesn’t want it to end up looking like Beirut), and promises to have more trash cans in public spaces and deploy full-time cleanup brigades.

Coderre has made the revitalization of eastern Montreal, a neglected part of the city, a priority. He says he’d make it a green Silicon Valley, a hub for green industries, to replace old polluting industries and attract more residents with denser transit-oriented development.

Coderre has had troubles with some of his candidates. He stood by his candidate in Côte-des-Neiges who was involved in a 2003 financial scandal, and his candidate for Verdun borough mayor, accused of flipping houses, and he initially gave a second chance to a candidate for borough councillor in Outremont after some controversial social media posts (ultimately the guy was too much and he was dropped). On the other hand, he quickly dropped Joe Ortona, the chair of the English Montreal School Board, for his strong opposition to the Legault government’s bill 96 on French language. EM will have no candidates in the borough of Anjou, where it will be supporting the Équipe Anjou of incumbent borough mayor Luis Miranda – who has been in office since 1997. Miranda, an ardent supporter of decentralization, has often been at odds with Plante, even though he had ended up supporting her in 2017.

Some of Coderre’s staff have also worried that, in spite of his claims that he’s a new man who is less autocratic, his natural self is coming back. He has been recently seen as being grumpier and they’re worried about some missteps – most notably abortively proposing to reinstall the statue of Sir John A. Macdonald that was toppled during protests last summer, or coming up with ideas without consultation like banning alcohol in parks after 8pm (and quickly backtracking with his own party opposed).

The last week of campaining has been rough for Coderre: the main story has been about Coderre initially refusing to disclose his income from consulting work for private sector clients in 2017-2021, and then relenting after being bombarded with questions. At first he said that many of his clients were confidential (shades of Trump's taxes being 'under audit' for years), and then that he'd reveal his list of clients to the ethics commissionner once elected. Finally, after La Presse revealed one of his clients (real estate property management giant Cogir), Coderre needed to reveal his list, with the exception of one client who remained secret. The secret client was later revealed to be Transcontinental, a big printing and packaging company, and his work was linked to that company's efforts to ensure that the city doesn't limit the circulation of its Publisac, a plastic bag full of flyers and other trash. Coderre earned $458,000 in 2020. All this is a pretty bad look for Coderre in the final week of a tied race.

Balarama Holness (Mouvement Montréal): Balarama Holness, trying to be a third way alternative to Plante and Coderre, is an activist and former CFL (Montreal Alouettes) player. Holness ran for borough mayor of Montréal-Nord for PM in 2017, but later strongly criticized PM, saying that he had been ‘used’ as a minority. He gained notoriety in 2018, as the founder of Montreal in Action, a social justice organization, which collected 20,000 signatures to force a public consultation on systemic racism. He was the subject of flattering media profiles describing him as an inspirational changemaker confronting racism.

One of Holness’ most controversial promises is to hold a referendum on recognizing Montreal as a bilingual city, exempting it from the Charter of the French language and even having it declared as a city-state with more powers devolved from the provincial and federal governments. He says that all services and documents from the city should be in both languages, and also wants Anglophones with functional level, but not high-level, French to apply for government jobs.

Mouvement Montréal positions itself as a left-leaning, progressive party which both has very clear stances on certain issues but falls short on others. Most notably, it wants to ‘defund’ the police by reallocating up to $100 million towards housing, social services and leisure, as well as a complete ban on police street checks, facial recognition software and police presence in schools. Social justice issues are also emphasized in the party’s platform, particularly Indigenous rights and reconciliation (even with a proposal to introduce an Indigenous reconciliation and solidarity tax). The party wants to increase the housing budget, build 30,000 affordable rental homes near transportation hubs, establish a rent registry to serve as a rent control system and create a landlord licensing system to require annual inspections.

Holness promises to accelerate climate action but is short on ideas, besides creating some independent advisory council on climate justice and ‘robust collection of data’. He would make public transit free for seniors (65+) and youth (under 25) and hold consultations to identify gaps in transit service.

He also wants to increase direct democracy and has some populist promises – promising, for example, to require online referendums on all major municipal projects and decisions, impose term limits on elected officials (4 terms) and freeze their salaries for one term.

One day before the close of nominations, Holness’ Mouvement Montréal merged with the Ralliement pour Montréal, led by Marc-Antoine Desjardins. The merger was intended to make Holness the third way alternative, but instead quickly led to confusing and discontent. The idea of a referendum on the city’s linguistic status was very poorly received in the Francophone media and heightened tensions within the new alliance. On October 19, Desjardins, who was running for borough mayor in Outremont, dropped out and dissociated himself from his ephemeral ally, notably because of the linguistic issue, on which they disagreed. Since the campaign began, Mouvement Montréal lost 6 candidates, reducing it to 68 candidates.

To make matters worse, in October, CBC reported that his non-profit faced a wave of resignations. Former members blamed Holness’ leadership, saying that he was making unilateral decisions and that the organization didn’t even have bylaws. Holness later threatened legal action against former members ‘spreading lies and rumours’, and he’s also accused of using the mailing list for Montreal in Action for his new party.

Mouvement Montréal has two incumbents – Robert Samoszewski, an ex-PM borough councillor in L'Île-Bizard–Sainte-Geneviève, and Lili-Anne Tremblay, an ex-EM borough councillor in Saint-Léonard sidelined by Coderre. Former NDP MP Paulina Ayala is also running for the party in Saint-Léonard.

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Quebec City

Régis Labeaume is calling it quits after 14 years. The famously frank and outspoken mayor, who never shied away from confrontations and speaking his mind, was first elected in 2007 and re-elected easily in 2009, 2013 and 2017. While he's faced several controversies during his time in power, his contributions and years of public service were quasi-universally praised, from the left to the right, when he announced his retirement a few months ago. He is credited with modernizing the city and propelling it to greater recognition. His final project is the construction of a tramway (LRT), officially announced in 2017 a bit after his last victory, and formalized in 2018. In 2020, exploding costs and Legault's obvious lukewarm attitude towards it all forced the city to scale back its project to stick to a $3.3 billion budget. After blowing hot and cold air on the project, Legault's government finally gave its approval in April 2021.

The other regional issue is the 'third link' with Lévis, something which the CAQ government has been much, much more enthusiastic about (and which the left and environmentalists hate with a passion -- QS MNA Catherine Dorion, from downtown Quebec City, who really annoys conservatives, famously compared it to 'sniffing a line of coke'). The government unveiled its final plan for a tunnel between downtown Quebec City and Lévis in 2020, which would be 8.3 km long with six lanes (one in each direction reserved for buses) on two levels. It will cost between $7 and $10 billion.

The end of the Labeaume era means that this election is much more heated and competitive than any local election in recent memory in Quebec City. Marie-Josée Savard, the former vice-president of the executive committee in Labeaume’s last term, is the retiring mayor’s heir apparent and the continuity candidate – with EL now renamed Équipe Marie-Josée Savard (EMJS). She is challenged to the right by the leader of the official opposition Jean-François Gosselin (QC21), to the centre by political newcomer Bruno Marchand (Québec forte et fière, QFF) and to the left by Jean Rousseau (DQ) and Jackie Smith (Transition Québec, TQ). EMJS, QFF and DQ are all rather similar on most issues, offering a broadly centrist/liberal policy agenda – making it difficult for DQ, the weakest of the three, to stand out.

Marie-Josée Savard, a businesswoman, city councillor (2009-2013, 2017-2021) and vice-president of the executive committee (in charge of land use), was chosen by Labeaume as his successor. According to Labeaume, she has qualities that he doesn’t have: she is patient, conciliatory and a good listener. Only five incumbent EL city councillors are seeking reelection.

Savard mostly commits to continue the policies and projects initiated by the outgoing administration, most notably the tramway. She pledges to limit tax increases to inflation, up to a ceiling of 2.5% and with the possibility of paying them in interest-free monthly installments. In urban planning matters, she supports converting the Laurentian highway (connecting downtown to highway 40) into an urban boulevard, converting the Dufferin-Montmorency highway into a safer waterfront boulevard, developing a park around the city’s major rivers, creating permanent public places in neighbourhoods, and planting 100,000 more trees by 2027. Savard also promises to increase the number of social and affordable housing units, favour transit-oriented development.

Polls have shown that she is the favourite, but her lead is now down to single-digits. She has avoided doing anything that would threaten her advantage, but as the frontrunner she has come under fire from all her opponents. Savard performed poorly in the debate, struggling to defend her record, and significantly underestimating the size of the city’s debt. Most recently, she’s been criticized – along with the city – for not being upfront about how many trees would be felled along the future path of the tramway.

Jean-François Gosselin, the runner-up in the last election and current leader of the opposition, is running again for his party, Québec 21. In 2017, Gosselin ran as a right-wing ‘pro-cars’ candidate who claimed to represent the interests of suburbanites and motorists opposed to Labeaume’s public transit vision, at one point saying that what he really wanted on commercial streets was more parking space rather than trees. This year, Gosselin has changed his strategy and wants to improve his party’s reputation and depth of ideas. On public transit, he’s toned down the pro-cars rhetoric and now boasts an ambitious public transit plan of his own.

He is the only candidate opposed to the tramway and has instead proposed underground light rail – the VALSE (acronym for ‘light automatic underground electric vehicle’) – which would be 13.5 km long with 17 stations, plus an additional 4.5 km trambus line. Gosselin wants to make the VALSE the key issue in the election. He argues that his idea is better adapted to the climate, would be faster than the tramway and have the advantage of not removing any parking spaces or ‘gutting’ any street. Gosselin says that his idea would still respect the tramway’s $3.3 billion budget, but it’s obvious that a fully underground metro system would be significantly more expensive. The VALSE has been criticized by all other candidates and Labeaume (who urged citizens not to be fooled), and Gosselin has been unconvincing (and short on details) in defence of his idea, which really seems to just be a bunch of snazzy renders. On top of that, he was hit with the revelation that one of his candidates and ‘scientific advisers’ on the VALSE is a climate-skeptic who denies that humans are responsible for climate change.

Gosselin remains a strong supporter of the third link. Recently, however, he’s been a bit more ambiguous about what he wants: he implied that he wanted to reserve the future tunnel to public transit, and perhaps have a ‘fourth link’ further east for cars, but he later clarified that he doesn’t want to see cars coming out of the tunnel into Saint-Roch/downtown (a concern shared with other candidates and which the government has just changed its mind about).

Still short of clear stances on several other issues, Gosselin has promised to freeze taxation for two years and pledges a rigorous management of public finances ‘inspired by Andrée Boucher’ (very colourful conservative former mayor of Sainte-Foy between 1985 and 2001, anti-merger crusader and mayor of Quebec City elected in 2005, who died in 2007).

Bruno Marchand, the former president of United Way in the region (2014-2021), is a newcomer with no political experience and who has never sought elected office before. He’s the candidate of the new centrist party Québec forte et fière (QFF), which wants to offer a ‘positive vision’ – a thinly veiled criticism of the Labeaume era’s rambunctiousness. QFF has one incumbent councillor, an EL dissident. Marchand claims that he has the most ambitious ideas of any candidate. His most notable one is a proposal to impose royalties on new real estate developments near future tramway hubs, which Labeaume and Savard have criticized as a disguised tax. Initially his idea was a special tax on residents and businesses along the route of the tramway, but this was a bad misstep (quickly corrected) which his rivals jumped on – calling it the ‘Marchand tax’ or calling him the ‘tax merchant’ (a play on his last name in French). Another of his bold ideas is to eliminate homelessness by 2025, something criticized by his rivals as utopian and unrealistic.

Some of his other proposals include a single access card for all mobility options (public transit as well as carsharing, bike share, taxis etc.), differentiated transit fares for lower-income individuals, promoting local services/businesses and cultural activities in all neighbourhoods, protecting all wooded areas, lowering commercial property taxes, and developing more housing. He also has much vaguer, aspirational proposals like making Quebec City the ‘most entrepreneurial city in Canada’, ‘clear solutions on labour shortages’, clear performance targets, greater transparency, more citizen participation in decision-making, simple and efficient administration and valuing municipal employees (but at the same time he’s vaguely talked about ‘eliminating whatever has no added value’). Marchand supports the tramway but with his list of 10 improvements (which would increase the price) and has taken no position on the third link, considering the details on the project is still too rudimentary.

Jean Rousseau is the sole city councillor for Démocratie Québec, elected in 2017 as Anne Guérette’s co-candidate. The party has gone through internal tensions and has been a bit marginalized since its disappointing results in 2017. Rousseau, a chemist, wants to make climate change his main issue. DQ supports the tramway but has been particularly critical of the administration’s plan which would cut down trees along the route. Rousseau wants the third link tunnel to be reserved to public transit (perhaps a subway) and supports merging the transit agencies of Quebec and Lévis, potentially as the first step towards the merger of the two cities. More broadly, DQ’s vision of mobility also includes the development of a cycling network like Montreal’s REV. Rousseau supports ‘human scale’ urban densification, the revitalization of urban cores and commercial streets and an increase in social and affordable housing. He has been very critical of the Labeaume administration for imposing policies and not listening to people, and calls for greater concertation, public consultation, and the development of participatory budgeting.

Jacquelyn ‘Jackie’ Smith is the candidate of left-wing Transition Québec, formerly known as Option Capitale-Nationale, founded in 2017. Just as Option Capitale-Nationale was a sort of municipal counterpart to the left-wing sovereigntist party Option nationale, which merged with QS in 2017, TQ appears as a local version of QS, although the parties have no formal ties. The party’s candidate and leader (since 2019), Jackie Smith, ran for DQ in the last election. Originally from Ontario, she moved to Quebec in 2006. Smith has the most audacious (and costly) ideas of any candidate: free public transit, a bigger public transit network with a second tramway line and the trambus, a 3 cents/litre gas tax, taxing large parking lots, highway tolls for regular non-resident commuters, 5,000 social housing units in a first term, carbon-neutrality in municipal infrastructures by 2030, a police disarmament pilot project, electoral reform (IRV) and more. She is also the only candidate clearly opposed to a third link, which she says has no scientific basis, and she also wants to ban car traffic on the Pont de Québec (one of the two existing bridges) to limit it only to public transit. Smith surprised observers with her strong performance in the debate.

[MaxQue]

There is been 2 new Montreal polls, the one by Mainstreet has Plante leading by 6, and the one by Léger (usually the best pollster in Québec) has her leading by 5.

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Laval

Laval, the suburban insular municipality located north of Montreal, is Quebec’s third largest city with a population of over 420,000. Unlike the other large cities in Quebec, Laval was not affected by the municipal reorganization in the early 2000s because fourteen municipalities on the island had already been amalgamated to form a single municipality back in 1965. Since then, Laval has been a rapidly growing suburban city which has attracted new industries and residents. Even though the city’s economy has diversified and there are continuing efforts to bring more services and cultural infrastructures and events, Laval remains very much a suburban community which lacks any kind of true downtown and has a very weak civic identity (overshadowed by Montreal).

For decade, its local politics were long dominated by powerful and corrupt pro-business politicians keen on rapid development. For 23 years, the city was governed by the infamously corrupt Gilles Vaillancourt (1989-2012) and his Parti du ralliement officiel des Lavallois (PRO) party (which was as corrupt as the similar-sounding PRI), which governed without any opposition between 2001 and 2012. His authoritarian and kleptocratic rule collapsed in 2012 with the Charbonneau commission, which exposed the corrupt system of kickbacks, bribes, collusion at the very top, all controlled by Vaillancourt. The mayor resigned in November 2012, after police had raided his homes and offices. He was arrested in 2013, sentenced to 6 years in prison in 2016 and granted full parole in 2018.

The 2013 election, the beginning of a new era, was won by Marc Demers of the Mouvement lavallois (ML), a retired police officer and former PQ candidate. He campaigned mostly on integrity, ethics, and transparency. He was re-elected in 2017. The city is clearly doing much better now than in 2013, and Demers has had a relatively good record and managed the city well.

This election has flown very much under the radar: the candidates are not very famous or well-known, the stakes are low, there are no major issues and media coverage of local politics is very limited (there’s only one local, weekly Francophone newspaper). The one poll showed that nearly 60% were undecided. According to that same poll, the main contenders are Stéphane Boyer (ML), the continuity candidate, opposition leader Michel Trottier (Parti Laval) and Sophie Trottier (Action Laval). All candidates more or less talk about the same issues: the environment, quality of life in neighbourhoods, parks, infrastructure, and security. All more or less have similar inoffensive ideas.

Boyer, a two-term city councillor and vice-president of the executive committee since 2018, is Demers’ heir and the continuity candidate. After controversy in 2019 when it was revealed that Demers’ salary had increased by 28% in two years, making him the second highest paid mayor in Quebec (more than the mayor of Montreal) at $220,000/year, Boyer has said that he would reduce his salary to $110k-$130k. Among various ideas, Boyer proposes to ban new gas stations in Laval, set a 17% land protection target and to invest $100 million to acquire more natural areas. The ruling party is currently under investigation for allegedly having used public funds to publish two partisan ads in a local paper during a 2019 local by-election.

Michel Trottier, a city councillor (2013-2017 and since 2019) and leader of the opposition finished second in 2017 with 20.4%. Broadly similar to other candidates, he wants to prioritize local neighbourhoods and improve public transit and cycling (promising a major east-west transit network). Trottier also promises to freeze residential taxation for a year and limit growth to 1.33% over the next 3 years.

Sophie Trottier is the leader of Action Laval since June, replacing Sonia Baudelot (2019 Conservative candidate), who had previously been leader of Avenir Laval in 2017 and became leader of Action Laval in 2020. Action Laval’s candidate, former PLQ MNA Jean-Claude Gobé, finished second in 2013 with 24% and third in 2017 with 16%. The party appears to be slightly more right leaning than the others. Sophie Trottier has promised to freeze residential taxes for four years if elected, and to resign if she breaks that promise. She also says that she wants to curb spending growth, but at the same time her main landmark promise is to build an international fairs centre for the greater Montreal.

Michel Poissant (Laval citoyens) is a dissident ex-ML/ex-Action Laval city councillor. He wants to freeze all taxes for two years, plant more trees, loop the orange line of the Montreal metro, and build a second hospital and Cégep. He also talks about limiting the number of condo towers. Pierre Anthian (Ma ville maintenant) is a former ML city councillor (who quit the party in 2014 and lost reelection in 2017) who was considered the black sheep of the city council. Anthian founded the choir of a homeless shelter, which he claims sold over 110,000 CDs and performed with Céline Dion and at the UN in New York. The homeless shelter has since told him to stop using their name. As a councillor, he hired homeless people to remove snow in areas neglected by the city. His new eccentric idea seems to be giving everyone 100m² plots of land to grow their own crops.

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Gatineau

The new city of Gatineau has had three mayors since amalgamation: Yves Ducharme (2002-2005), previously mayor of Hull (1991-2001), Marc Bureau (2005-2013) and Maxime Pedneaud-Jobin (2013-2021). Unlike the three largest cities, Gatineau has only one local party (the ruling Action Gatineau) and a majority of councillors are independents.

Maxime Pedneaud-Jobin unexpectedly defeated incumbent mayor Marc Bureau by a wide margin (53% to 36%) in 2013. Pedneaud-Jobin criticized the incumbent for focusing too much on big projects catering too much to tourists and developers (like Destination Gatineau, a costly tourism project which was later shelved) and for the botched initial launch of a BRT network shortly before the 2013 election. Pedneaud-Jobin was reelected in 2017 with 45%. He announced in January that he would not be running for reelection.

Pedneaud-Jobin had a complicated term, dealing with important floods in 2017 and 2019 and a tornado in 2018. His party, Action Gatineau, has also lacked a majority on the city council, leading to several tense clashes on council. The incumbent mayor has been critical of the influence of real estate developers and has repeatedly butted heads with them. For example, he opposed a huge real estate development by Brigil near the Canadian Museum of History in downtown Gatineau, which would have built 55 and 35-storey towers. The project was opposed by local residents and decried by opponents as an urban disaster, and it was halted in 2018 when the city council gave the area heritage designation. Most recently, the outgoing mayor has accused some independent councillors of being a ‘hidden party’ whose real objective is to let developers do whatever they want in the city.

There are three major candidates vying to be the next mayor: city councillor Maude Marquis-Bissonnette, the continuity candidate for the ruling centre-left Action Gatineau (AG), independent city councillor Jean-François LeBlanc and the former CEO of Tourisme Outaouais France Bélisle.

Maude Marquis-Bissonnette is a city councillor and doctoral student at Carleton University. AG is a centre-left party, comparable to PM, with a strong focus on environmental issues. While the independents have complained that a political party has created unnecessary divisions and partisanship in local politics, AG asserts that their ideas have driven political debate in Gatineau in recent years.

Marquis-Bissonnette was behind the recent adoption of Gatineau’s climate plan in early October, which includes some 200 measures to reduce GHG emissions by 35% from 2015 levels by 2030 and reach carbon-neutrality by 2050. The climate plan was criticized by many, with climate activists saying it was incomplete and lacked more severe measures. Her platform promises to implement the climate plan and wants to make the city an ‘innovation laboratory’ for renewable energies and the circular economy. She supports major investments in road repairs, greening and reforesting the city, implementing an extension of the bike network, ‘human-scale’ urban planning, banning certain pesticides, revitalizing downtown, and adopting a bylaw requiring affordable housing in new private real estate developments. AG supports the LRT (tramway) project in the west and has a cautious non-committal stance on a possible ‘sixth link’ (bridge) with Ottawa in the east. Marquis-Bissonnette would increase taxes the most, by 2.9%, including an existing 1% infrastructure tax, and has attacked her opponents’ tax plans by warning that reducing revenues would necessarily mean cuts to services.

France Bélisle is a former journalist and served six years as CEO of Tourisme Outaouais. She is running on a platform of ‘change’, although a lot of her actual proposals are not too dissimilar from that of the incumbent party. She supported the adoption of the climate plan but called it incomplete and wants a more plan with clearer targets. She also wants a revitalized dynamic downtown, notably by building a convention centre. Bélisle has promised ‘reasonable taxes’, with a 1.9% increase in 2022 but getting rid of the infrastructure tax, possibly borrowing money to cover this revenue shortfall. Her position on the proposed LRT is unclear, but she is more supportive of a sixth link. She has spoken about the need for a more harmonious and conciliatory relationship with developers.

Bélisle’s campaign has been hit by allegations from former employees on social media that she maintained a toxic work environment at her old job. She has denied all allegations, noting that no formal complaints had been made against her, and believes that she is the target of a smear campaign.

Jean-François LeBlanc, city councillor for the Lac-Beauchamp district since 2016, has been an opponent of the outgoing mayor. His top promise is to freeze taxes in 2022, limit tax increases to 1.7% for 2023-2025 and make Gatineau one of the cities with the lowest taxes in Quebec – all while also promising to improve services to citizens and invest even more in road repairs. He claims that he can make up for lost revenue by authorizing construction projects quicker and diversifying sources of revenue, being open to sponsorship deals for “park benches and trash cans”. LeBlanc ambiguously supports the LRT idea and clearly supports a sixth link.

LeBlanc felt targeted when Pedneaud-Jobin said that some independent councillors were part of a pro-developers ‘hidden party’, because he voted in favour of building a car dealership in a flood zone in 2017, a few months after a major flood.

There are three other independent candidates. Two of them – Jacques Lemay (former fire chief, ran in 2013) and Rémi Bergeron (former civil servant, ran in 2017) – are more right-wing.

Longueuil

Longueuil is the largest South Shore suburb. In 2001, seven municipalities were amalgamated with the old city of Longueuil, but four of them voted to de-amalgamate in 2004 (Boucherville, Brossard, Saint-Bruno-de-Montarville, and Saint-Lambert).

For 27 years between 1982 and 2009, Longueuil local politics were dominated by the Parti municipal de Longueuil (PML), a quintessentially suburban political machine – corrupt and pro-developers. In 2009, the PML’s candidate was defeated by former Bloc MP (1997-2008) Caroline St-Hilaire, who won 53%. The PML later imploded, when the Charbonneau Commission revealed the existence of a system of corruption and collusion similar to that in Montreal and Laval. In the absence of any organized opposition, St-Hilaire was reelected virtually unopposed in 2013, with 87.3%, and her party Action Longueuil (AL) won all but two seats (out of 15).

St-Hilaire’s retirement in 2017 led to a nasty succession crisis which ended with a split in the ruling party. The leadership of AL was won by Sylvie Parent, a two-term city councillor considered the right-hand woman of St-Hilaire, with 53%, defeating Josée Latendresse, a city councillor since 2016 who was supported by a majority of the caucus. The internal contest was marred by mutual accusations of dirty tricks and intimidation, and Latendresse and 7 councillors (out of 13) – quit the party a day later. Latendresse and the other dissidents formed their own party to face Parent in the fall. The new party criticized the outgoing administration’s centralization of powers and tax increases.

Parent defeated Latendresse by just 110 votes following a judicial recount. However, Latendresse’s party Longueuil citoyen won 9 out of 15 seats on city council, against only five for AL. With the council controlled by the opposition, Parent had an extremely difficult term. Not only was she unable to convince any opposition members to sit on the executive committee, but she also ended up losing two members of her executive committee (one quit politics, the other crossed the floor). Faced with constant tensions with the council, Parent unilaterally suspended the city council’s commissions for being too costly, until the opposition obtained their reactivation a few months later. Although relations with the opposition later improved and the mayor did score some successes (like recovering $6 million from collusion), she continued to face more problems.

Her salary has remained a constant subject of controversy since 2019 – Parent is the highest-paid mayor in the province, earning more than the mayor of Montreal and the Premier of Quebec. She earned nearly $250,000 in 2020, which is $20,000 more than two years ago. Since 2018, a law removed the cap on the remuneration of local elected officials, and now allows municipalities to fix their own salary caps (as Montreal has done, but not Longueuil). Even her political mentor, St-Hilaire (now a political commentator), criticized her high salary, saying it didn’t make sense. In 2020, she offered to reduce her own basic salary by $40,000 but the opposition rejected it, judging it to be insufficient because even with this pay cut, she’d have remained the highest-paid mayor in Quebec. Perhaps for good reason, Parent denounced this as shameless partisan maneuvering.

In late 2020, the city’s decision to capture and slaughter about 15 white-tailed deer in a large park (whose overpopulation threatens the ecosystem and flora) generated a wave of anger and protest. Over 27,000 people signed a petition asking for the deer to the spared, claiming that the city had not sufficiently studied alternative options (like relocation) – but several experts and the wildlife ministry supported the city’s decision as the correct one. Parent even received death threats. The city relented and did not proceed, setting up a dialogue table which is tasked with formulating recommendations.

Although she initially announced that she would seek a second term, Parent changed her mind a month later and announced her retirement.

There are four candidates for mayor: Catherine Fournier (Coalition Longueuil), Jacques Létourneau (AL), Jean-Marc Léveillé (Longueuil citoyen) and Josée Latendresse (Longueuil ensemble). Catherine Fournier, the independent (ex-PQ) MNA for Marie-Victorin, is the clear favourite with a very large lead in all polls.

The candidates agree on a lot of issues. All of them agree the mayor’s salary is too high. All talk about the environment and climate change. Of course, all want more citizen participation and less infighting. Amidst tensions within the agglomeration (with the mayors of the de-amalgamated municipalities), all promise to fight for more powers and a stronger leadership role, and to demand the city’s fair share of money from the province.

Fournier, Létourneau and Latendresse theoretically support the LÉEO, an east-west electric tramway proposed by the outgoing mayor that’d connect downtown Longueuil and its lone metro station with the new REM in Brossard. Only Létourneau, however, is actively pushing for it as the two women say that it is a long-term project and more short-term transit solutions are needed in the meantime. Léveillé is opposed to the idea and wants more buses instead.

Catherine Fournier has been the MNA for the Longueuil area riding of Marie-Victorin since a 2016 by-election. She was narrowly reelected in 2018, with a majority of just 705 votes, and was the only PQ candidate to be elected in the greater Montreal area with the party reduced to just 10 members. She was the youngest candidate elected to the National Assembly (she is 29). Considered a rising star of the party, Fournier quit the PQ in March 2019, arguing that the party had lost much of its relevance and that it was no longer was the appropriate vehicle for sovereignty. She said that the sovereigntist movement needed an electroshock. She announced her mayoral candidacy in April, calling for more transparency and collaboration after years of bickering and controversial decisions.

Coalition Longueuil wants to rebuild citizens’ confidence by creating an office of public consultation, creating a ‘culture of transparency and citizen participation’. To tackle the housing crisis, she promises to adopt a housing regulation forcing developers to contribute to the supply of social, affordable, and family housing, limit the conversion of rental units into condos, facilitate the conversion of commercial buildings into housing and control the demolition of old single-family homes (often demolished to make way for condos or triplexes). She notably formed a common ‘team’ with Laval mayoral candidate Stéphane Boyer to act together on housing affordability in the Montreal metropolitan community. Fournier wants to protect 1,500 ha. (12% of the territory) of natural spaces, create two new nature parks, implement a climate action policy aiming towards carbon-neutrality, launch massive greening operations, improve bus services, and encourage cycling.

Fournier supports the government’s French language bill (bill 96) and the re-evaluation of the bilingual status of the borough of Greenfield Park, which has a (declining) Anglophone minority. However, Greenfield Park is unlikely to lose its status regardless of what happens. In Greenfield Park, Coalition Longueuil supports the local group ‘Option Greenfield Park’ which supports the current bilingual status.

The ruling party Action Longueuil’s candidate is Jacques Létourneau, the president of the Confédération des syndicats nationaux (CSN) – Quebec’s second largest trade union confederation – between 2012 and June 2021. Létourneau is on the centre-left but says he’s not a very ideological person. While he also supports public transit expansion and cycling, he rejects comparisons with Valérie Plante, because “everyone is hyper-dependent” on cars in the city.

His main priority is housing, and his top promise is to build 2,000 affordable housing units in a first term and hold a housing summit. He pledges to keep tax increases steady and predictable at the rate of inflation, and to redistribute budget surpluses in the form of more services and doubling the road repair budget. He wants to create a technological R&D hub on electric aircrafts at the Saint-Hubert airport.

The opposition has seen lots of tumultuous changes since 2017. Between 2017 and 2019, Longueuil citoyen lost 6 of its 9 councillors, but it absorbed Option Longueuil – whose candidate in 2017, former NDP MP Sadia Groguhé won 14.7%, and had one city councillor (Robert Myles, Greenfield Park borough mayor first elected in 1998). The rudderless Longueuil citoyen picked Jean-Marc Léveillé, a businessman and president of the local symphonic orchestra, as its candidate. Although his campaign is focused mostly on mundane local services and infrastructure, he is the most pro-developers candidate. He says so himself: while he wants to reserve 10% of city land to social housing, he wants to attract big real estate projects and says he’d offer “a big playground” to developers). He also wants to reduce obstances to investment and entrepreneurship. He does, however, support carbon-neutrality by 2050.

Josée Latendresse, the runner-up in 2017, left Longueuil citoyen some years ago already and is now the candidate of a new party, Longueuil Ensemble, itself formed by the merger of two new parties. As in 2017, she’s critical of the densification/downtown strategies of the outgoing administration and wants to promote the identities of the city’s different neighbourhoods, imagined as ‘15-minute neighbourhoods’ with greater powers. Her main promise is to freeze taxes for the full four-year term. Like Fournier, she wants to develop a large park along the banks of the St. Lawrence (currently quite isolated from the actual city by a highway) and is hostile to the outgoing administration’s ideas for luxury condos there.

[Hash]

Sherbrooke

In 2017, Steve Lussier, a mortgage advisor and real estate developer, unexpectedly defeated two-term incumbent mayor Bernard Sévigny (the partner of federal Liberal cabinet minister Marie-Claude Bibeau). Lussier promised to make Sherbrooke the most prosperous city in Quebec. However, after a rough first term, Lussier faces a tough re-election fight - which is unusual for a first-term mayor.

Lussier’s first years in office were difficult because of his inexperience and unpreparedness. Just months into his term, he fired his chief of staff, who had sent a text message to a former candidate asking him to ask “embarrassing questions” to an opposition councillor. While he kept a promise to freeze taxes in his first year, this was followed by bigger tax hikes of 3% in 2019 and 6% in 2020. In 2019, he was accused of lack of leadership for not fighting harder to host the 2022 Jeux de la Francophonie after Moncton-Dieppe withdrew, but Lussier insisted the funding from the province would have been insufficient. He has been the butt of jokes because of his difficulties expressing himself properly. He’s had a few run-ins with some councillors, and two councillors have accused him of intimidating them.

Sherbrooke’s economy is doing well, and the mayor boasts of his plan to create a provincially recognized innovation zone to attract and retain high-tech industries. There is a real estate boom in Sherbrooke, but also a housing crisis, with a shortage of affordable and social housing for low-income households. Lussier is pro-developers, and this has sometimes been quite controversial: in one case, the city council called on the anti-corruption unit UPAC to investigate the zoning change in a new development (to build a supermarket) that they say they never consented to.

Steve Lussier is running for a second term (his last term, he says). He defends his record and reiterates his goal to make Sherbrooke the most prosperous city in Quebec and a model for innovation. On environmental issues, he talks about a nature conservation plan and tree policy that will be implemented, reducing GHG emissions by electrifying public transit and supporting local businesses. He promises to support the construction of at least 125 affordable housing units per year and offer incentives to building owners to include affordable housing.

The only partisan candidate is Évelyne Beaudin for the left-wing Sherbrooke Citoyen (SC), a party comparable to PM or QS. Beaudin has been the party’s only councillor since 2017 and has been the most consistent and dedicated opponent of the mayor (and often at odds with other councillors, who are all independents now). Beaudin was an Option nationale candidate in the 2012 and 2014 provincial elections. Beaudin has been critical of Lussier on urban planning issues like Well Sud (the revitalization of the downtown core with two 6 and 10-storey buildings and 720 parking spaces, Beaudin argued that this was too many parking spaces) and Chemin Rhéaume (construction of 50 single-family houses outside of the urban perimeter, Beaudin supported local citizens opposed to the project, who won a challenge to the municipal commission).

Her head-on, ‘acerbic’ opposition to the mayor has rattled her opponents who feel she is too negative, and the legal opinion of the city on her alleged (unproven) conflict of interest in the Chemin Rhéaume dispute said she lacked loyalty by supporting citizens against a decision of the city council. Beaudin claimed that she was intimidated by Lussier on this issue and decried the increasing judicialization of local politics. Lussier said he would never ‘gag’ a councillor. At another time, Lussier was also criticized for commenting that Beaudin’s resignation from a council committee was a “gift from heaven”.

Beaudin is undoubtedly the most prepared candidate, with a detailed platform accompanied by an essay on municipal governance. The party wants to increase transparency and citizen participation, increase the role and powers of the boroughs (notably with participatory budgets), diversify revenue sources with development fees for developers and fee changes, review the city’s governance structure, and transform advisory bodies into independent citizen councils.

The party promises to increase the target for the protection of natural environments from 12% to 17%, adopt a climate change plan, adopt a tree and canopy policy, review urban planning bylaws (to promote mixed usage and densification, review parking standards and focus on long-term quality of life) and adopt policies to reduce car dependency (public transit development, sidewalks, subsidies for electric bicycles, an interconnected bike path network and road safety). Beaudin has been critical of tax credits granted to corporations and pledges to review all business incentive programs as well as incentive programs for home construction and renovation. She promises about 200 new affordable housing units per year, and the creation of a housing policy that would include a strategy to increase social and affordable housing.

The star candidate, who joined the race late after previously claiming little interest in municipal politics, is former Liberal cabinet minister and MNA Luc Fortin. Fortin was the PLQ MNA for Sherbrooke between 2014 and 2018, when he was defeated by QS, and held different portfolios in Philippe Couillard’s cabinet as regional minister – junior minister for sports (2016), Culture and Communications (2016-2016) and Family (2017-2018). He pledges a ‘unifying leadership’ after ‘four years of fights between Lussier and Beaudin’. Ultimately, with Lussier’s weakness, Fortin is also the continuity candidate – particularly for those who feel that Beaudin is too radical or polarizing. Fortin’s policy ideas are not too different from the outgoing administration’s general direction and the general promises are similar – protecting natural environments, supporting local businesses in neighbourhoods, expanding public transit, electrification of transportation, offering a competitive economic environment and good quality of life to attract investments. His big idea is to use the profits made by Hydro-Sherbrooke with cryptocurrency mining to address the housing crisis and for environmental initiatives.

Fortin is supported by some people who had been behind Lussier in 2017, at least three incumbent city councillors as well as former mayors Jean Perrault (1994-2009) and Bernard Sévigny (2009-2017). Sévigny attacked Lussier’s incompetence and lack of knowledge as well as a term filled with fights and controversies. He also criticized Beaudin as polarizing and acerbic.

A poll released in early October showed Fortin leading Beaudin by 3 points (28% to 25%) with Lussier in third, not far behind (21%).

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

I have written a Political history of Montreal (covering from the 1910s until today) that's about 15 pages long, I won't post it here but I can send it to anyone who's interested.

I would be interested.

[MaxQue]

Radio-Canada already called Quebec City for Marie-Josée Savard (incumbent endorsed) and Stéphane Boyer in Laval (incumbent endorsed).

[Hash]

Plante's lead seems to be growing nicely now: 324/3930, Plante leads 48.7% to 41.4% and it's been steady there for a while.

Savard has been declared elected in Quebec City, where she has around 38% against 26% each for Gosselin and Marchand

In Laval, Boyer (mayor's heir) has won with a large majority. In Longueuil, it's a Fournier landslide.

In Gatineau, Bélisle has a steady and comfortable lead over Marquis-Bissonnette (mayor's heir). In Sherbrooke, Fortin leads Beaudin and the incumbent Lussier is way behind in third.

Incumbent mayors have also been re-elected in Trois-Rivières and Lévis.

[RogueBeaver]

Networks just called Montreal for Plante, council still uncertain.

[Hash]

Plante has been re-elected (or called as such): her lead is holding steady, now at 50-40. You love to see it.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

lol Sherbrooke

Also Létourneau is just fully and completely eating sh!t in Longueuil.

[Hash]

Unfortunately, it seems as if France Bélisle has defeated Maude Marquis-Bissonnette in Gatineau.

Fortin's lead in Sherbrooke is unsteady and narrowing. Fingers crossed...

[Hash]

The incumbent mayor of Saguenay, Josée Néron, is defeated by Julie Dufour. In Rimouski, former NDP MP Guy Caron is elected in a landslide.

In Sherbrooke, Beaudin is now narrowly ahead.

[Hash]

In a defeat for PM, Lionel Perez (EM) has been elected borough mayor of CDN-NDG. It may be the only borough to change hands. The embattled incumbent, Sue Montgomery, is fourth. On the other hand, the other borough where the ex-PM incumbent (Fumagalli) ran for her own tinpot party, Villeray-St Michel-Parc Ex, PM's new candidate is ahead.

[Hash]

You heard it here first, so mock me or praise me later, but I'm getting a little feeling that the networks might have been a bit too quick to declare Savard's victory in Quebec City: with a quarter left to count, her lead is now dropping and is less than 2,300 (over Marchand)

edit: the media is now waking up, and Marchand is not conceding.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

Plante now ahead by 53-38 lol

[Hash]

Beaudin has won in Sherbrooke!

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

Beaudin has won in Sherbrooke!

[Hash]

Savard's lead in Quebec City is now just 297 votes -- despite the trend here, Radio-Canada is being weird about this call, although I think Marchand will take the lead and ultimately win (you heard it here first).

[Hash]

Savard's lead is now just 42 votes. Increasingly clear that the media here made a wrong call, but they're still refusing to admit it besides acknowledging the "uh, it's narrow now" reality.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

So what are the ramifications of the (likely) Marchand win in Ville de Quebec?

[Benjamin Frank]

Guy Caron is a good guy, hopefully he can get Rimouski past their council wars.  Then NDP MLA Len Krog was pushed to run for mayor of Nanaimo as their council had similar problems, and he seems to be doing a good job.