Montreal Gazette

Gadoury joins Coderre’s team

- LINDA GYULAI lgyulai@montrealga­zette.com twitter.com/CityHallRe­port

Opposition Projet Montréal councillor Marc-André Gadoury has defected to Mayor Denis Coderre’s party.

The mayor made the announceme­nt with Gadoury, a councillor in the Projet Montréal-dominated borough of Rosemont–La Petite-Patrie and the party’s parliament­ary leader, at his side on Thursday.

“It’s more joining Team Coderre than leaving Projet Montréal,” Gadoury said. “It’s more helping Montrealer­s than opposing ideas.”

Gadoury, who has been a councillor since 2009, will get no committee appointmen­t from Coderre. However, Coderre said his new team member will be able to influence policy in areas where he intervened as an opposition councillor, including cycling, Montreal’s “Smart City” plan and public health.

“Today, it’s good news for Montrealer­s,” Coderre said. “Today, we’re not vindictive, it’s not against anyone. It’s for Montreal.”

Coderre still has a minority on city council with his Équipe Denis Coderre, although members of other opposition parties and independen­ts frequently vote with Coderre’s party.

Members of the city executive committee, including former Projet Montréal leader Richard Bergeron, who now sits as an independen­t, attended the announceme­nt at city hall.

Projet Montréal, meanwhile, called Gadoury’s switch motivated by personal ambition after he learned that Rosemont–La Petite-Patrie borough mayor François Croteau plans to seek re-election to the position in 2017 and after being replaced on a council standing committee by another Projet Montréal member.

“Marc-André was among the most virulent critics of the Coderre administra­tion within Projet Montréal and in council,” Projet Montréal councillor Alexander Norris said. “For him to now turn around and join that administra­tion is a little hard to reconcile with that past record.”

Norris added that Gadoury’s borough is a Projet Montréal stronghold. The party obtained nearly 55 per cent of the vote in Gadoury’s Étienne-Desmarteau district in 2013, Norris said, while Coderre’s team got 16 per cent. “So we’re very confident that Projet Montréal will have no trouble retaking that district in the next general election.”

 ??  ?? Marc-André Gadoury
Marc-André Gadoury

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