City opposition party lays complaint with Elections Québec over road paving

The opposition party at city hall claims the Valérie Plante administration has used city resources to promote two Projet Montréal candidates in the Dec. 16 byelections. On Saturday, Mayor Plante visited the Rivière-des-Prairies— Pointe-aux-Trembles borough, where she announced that a seven-kilometre stretch of Gouin Blvd. E. — which CAA Quebec has called the worst road in the province — will be repaved next spring. A second, four-kilometre section will be repaved the following year, she announced. Projet Montréal tweeted Monday that Plante had “taken advantage of her visit to RDP-PAT with our mayoral candidate @C_Bourgeois to make this eagerly awaited announcement!” On Wednesday, Lionel Perez, leader of the Ensemble Montréal Party, said he has laid a complaint with Elections Québec, saying Plante used the road-paving project to win votes for candidate Chantal Bourgeois. Two seats in city council are up for grabs since Chantal Rouleau, borough mayor of Rivière-des-Prairies—Pointe-aux-Trembles, and Frantz Benjamin, city councillor in St-Michel, were elected to the Quebec National Assembly on Oct. 1. Bourgeois, Rouleau’s former chief of staff, is running against Ensemble Montréal’s Manuel Guedes, borough councillor for the Pointe-aux-Prairies District between 2013 and 2017. On Wednesday, Plante unveiled the city’s new plan on immigration and the integration of newcomers in a community centre in St-Michel. Perez said the choice was no coincidence. “Last week in Rivière-des-Prairies, today in St-Michel,” he said. Nadine Raymond, a former director of innovation and development for the provincial YMCA and vice-president of Quebec’s Conseil du statut de la femme, is running for Projet Montréal, while librarian and archivist Josué Corvil is representing Ensemble Montréal. Speaking to reporters after Wednesday’s news conference, Plante said neither of her two appearances had anything to do with the byelections.