What the mayor-elect’s inner circle might look like
Valérie Plante’s first task as mayor of Montreal will be to present a city budget for 2018 that is imbued with the pink hue of the promises she made during the municipal election campaign.
But to get there, she will first need to form her inner circle. That involves appointing up to 11 city councillors to the top decisionmaking body at city hall, the executive committee.
The mission was already being addressed on her first day as mayor-elect on Monday, insiders assured.
Plante, who defeated incumbent Denis Coderre on Sunday to make history as the first woman mayor of Montreal, announced late in the mayoralty campaign that she would tap Benoit Dorais, the mayor of Sud-Ouest borough, for chairman of the executive committee.
That leaves up to 10 other seats on the executive committee, and up to eight associate executive committee member positions, to distribute among the 33 city councillors who were elected under the Projet Montréal banner on Sunday.
But the pool of potential candidates is bigger than that because Plante pledged during the campaign that she would also open seats on the executive committee to councillors from other political formations.
Four other parties won the remaining 31 seats on city council on Sunday, including Coderre’s Équipe Denis Coderre pour Montréal. While the defeated party’s leader announced in his concession speech on Sunday that he’ll immediately quit municipal politics, Équipe Denis Coderre nonetheless has 25 seats on the new city council.
One insider said it’s possible that Plante will appoint a member of Équipe Denis Coderre to the executive committee.
She’ll also have to decide what portfolios to give each member of the new inner circle.
Finance and transportation, as always, are key responsibilities, particularly as one of her key campaign planks was construction of a métro Pink Line.
It is often the chairman of the executive committee who handles finance.
However, Dorais’s financial background is limited to managing his borough’s budget.
A school board commissioner before entering municipal politics, his biography says he holds a university degree in philosophy and social ethics.
Balancing borough representation will be another factor in determining the composition of the executive committee, as will Plante’s pledge to strive for gender parity. For example, she’ll have to weigh whom and how many to appoint to the executive committee from Plateau Mont-Royal and Rosemont–La Petite-Patrie borough, both traditional Projet Montréal bastions, while leaving room for representatives from the western and the eastern ends of the island.
Some names that have been floated as possible executive committee appointees:
Émilie Thuillier: First elected as a Projet Montréal city councillor in 2009, Thuillier was re-elected to a third term on Sunday. She beat out a rising star of Coderre’s administration, Harout Chitilian, for borough mayor of Ahuntsic-Cartierville. Thuillier is respected on both sides of council chambers and served on the executive committee under an interim mayor four years ago.
Rosannie Filato: A newcomer who defeated Elsie Lefebvre, the incumbent city councillor who ran with Coderre’s team in Villeray district in the borough of Villeray–Saint-Michel–Parc Extension. Filato is a labour lawyer and former New Democratic Party candidate.
Manon Barbe: One of the few non-Projet Montréal council members whom Plante may reward with a seat on the executive committee. Barbe, who was reelected mayor of LaSalle borough with her borough party slate on Sunday, tacitly endorsed Plante for mayor of Montreal during the campaign because of Plante’s support for decentralizing powers to boroughs.
Maja Vodanovic: Elected as a borough councillor with the borough party in Lachine in 2013, Vodanovic challenged the party founder, Claude Dauphin, on such issues as the rezoning and planning for the redevelopment of Lachine-Est. She joined Projet Montréal before the campaign, and dethroned Dauphin as borough mayor in Sunday’s vote.