Four seek seat in Vieux Rosemont
RESULTS OF SUNDAY BY-ELECTION, called because Vision Montreal councillor left politics, could cast doubts on Harel’s leadership
Hélène Dagenais acknowledges she knows the system. As director for nearly seven years of the Carrefour Communautaire RosemontL’entre Gens, a local community centre that aids families and young people, she’s dealt with politicians and bureaucrats at the provincial and municipal level and has plenty of experience negotiating for what her centre needs and defending what it has.
But Dagenais also knows that it’s one thing to deal with the system from the outside and another to work within it. If Dagenais is elected city councillor in a by-election this Sunday in the Vieux Rosemont district of the borough of Rosemont–la Petite Patrie, she knows she’ll have to adapt.
“Of course I know I’ll have less room to manoeuvre,” she told The Gazette this week. “But I can tell you that I can look at the work that’s been done by Vision Montreal’s four other borough mayors … It’s a good team. We can get things done.”
Some of the things Dagenais would like to get done as a city councillor include an overhaul of crumbling streets and sidewalks in the borough, improved snow removal – particularly in a district with a large population of seniors – and bringing more jobs to the borough.
But Dagenais’s challenges go beyond those usually faced by a first-time political candidate. If she wins on Sunday, she will become part of the official opposition at city hall, a job that usually involves finding fault with the ruling administration of Mayor Gérald Tremblay and his Union Montreal party.
But she will also be in opposition on the local borough council as well. There, thanks to the defection last year of then Vision Montreal borough mayor François Croteau to Projet Montréal, the city’s second opposition party, Projet Montréal holds a majority on the five-seat council no matter what the outcome of Sunday’s vote.
The fact the by-election is being held at all is due to the abrupt departure from politics last January by Vision Montreal councillor Pierre Lampron. He was once perceived as Vision Montreal leader Louise Harel’s righthand man, and his leaving three months after Croteau’s defection left some wondering whether Harel’s grip on her party was as firm as it seemed when she entered city politics in time for the 2009 election.
A defeat of Vision Montreal on Sunday may also spawn doubts over Harel’s hold on voters. And if it happens that defeat comes at the hands of Union Montreal candidate Denise Larouche, those doubts will be particularly acute. Larouche was the borough mayor of Rosemont–la Petite Patrie until 2005, when she was defeated by Union Montreal candidate André Lavallée. She was a member of Vision Montreal when she held that office, only leaving the party after the arrival of Harel, a former Parti Québécois cabinet minister, on the municipal scene.
“(The party) no longer reflected my values or my expectations,” Larouche said of her decision to quit Vision Montreal. “So I decided to take a step back.”
Larouche doubts her decision to return to politics as a member of an administration she ran against seven years earlier will matter much to the voters of Vieux Rosemont. “I think people look more at the person (than the party). This is a very local election, one where people are looking for someone to serve them properly. People know me, they’re happy to see me back and that I can serve them again.”
Larouche said that, should she be elected, being part of the administration at city hall, rather than with the majority on the borough council, would give voters the best of both worlds. Thus far, Projet Montréal’s fortunes in Rosemont–la Petite Patrie have been bolstered by the borough mayor’s defection to its ranks, a move that gave the party three of the five seats on the borough council.
If Érika Duchesne manages to bring Projet Montreal’s seat count to four, that victory would indicate the party may have set down roots beyond the Plateau Mont Royal, where it swept all of the borough council seats in 2009.
A member of the party’s executive but a first-time candidate, Duchesne said that Projet Montréal has emerged from being the “unknown” quantity that won two seats in the borough in 2009 to a party that’s on the local radar.
“People (here) know (party leader) Richard Bergeron,” she said. “And even if they don’t agree with our ideas, they say they respect them because we represent integrity and that’s pretty rare.”
Duchesne acknowledged feeling under pressure to provide the party with a win, but added that residents are “very happy with the (borough) mayor, no matter what their party, people are happy with what’s being done here and that’s an advantage for me.”
The three mainstream parties are joined in the by-election by independent candidate Michel Benoit. A retired accountant, Benoit regularly attends city council meetings and grills the administration on the state of Montreal’s evaluation rolls. Benoit has repeatedly maintained the rolls are skewed in favour of large businesses and that most of the taxpaying burden is falling upon homeowners.
Polls open on Sunday at 10 a.m. and close at 8 p.m.