Wanted: potential leaders for Projet Montréal party
Everyone within Projet Montréal is well aware that defeating Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre in next year’s municipal election won’t be an easy task.
But as he launched the party’s official leadership race on Monday, interim leader Luc Ferrandez said the party needs someone who will look at the big picture and be interested in the specific issues that concern all Montrealers — something he said he feels Coderre has failed to do since being elected.
“Coderre is a mayor who’s known as a colossus, but who is actually a colossus with feet of clay,” Ferrandez said at a news conference outside city hall.
“The next mayor of Montreal needs to be profound, in control of the issues, and willing to reach out to people.”
Mayor of the Plateau-Mont-Royal borough, Ferrandez has served as interim leader of the official opposition party since its founder and long-time leader Richard Bergeron left the party to join the city’s executive committee in 2014.
But Ferrandez has repeatedly said he won’t run for the leadership, and confirmed his stance again on Monday.
“There’s still an enormous amount of work to be done in the Plateau, and I’m still the father of a young child,” he said. “My intentions haven’t changed.”
As of Monday, only Rosemont– La Petite-Patrie city councillor François Limoges — the party’s public safety, human rights and legal affairs critic — has announced that he plans on running in the race.
Party president Nathalie Goulet said Projet Montréal is expecting more candidates to come forward within the next few days, from both within and outside the party. A public debate between candidates is planned for late October and the leadership race will end with a vote on Dec. 4.
Asked if Projet Montréal needs a star candidate to face off with Coderre, Goulet said she doesn’t think so.
“Our party, and our ideas are the star,” Goulet said, adding that Coderre only received 32 per cent of the vote when elected in 2013. “Our candidates are on the ground, hardworking and known in their boroughs. We’re confident it will be a good race.”
“It’s true, Mr. Coderre is a star,” Ferrandez added. But Coderre isn’t a star with the people living beside where he wants to build 5,000 housing units in Pierrefonds, he said, or when he talks about managing dogs in Montreal.
“He’s not a star among the cyclists and pedestrians who get crushed every day. He’s not a star among people living in social housing or among the people who are interested in the city’s economic development,” he said.
“In any area where you have to dig a little, Mr. Coderre is not a star. He’s a star among people who aren’t interested in municipal politics, among those who vote based on image alone.”
Projet Montréal boasts nearly 1,200 members and 25 elected officials — including 17 who sit on Montreal’s city council — but has been without a permanent leader since 2014 and has lost two councillors since then.
Rosemont-La-Petite-Patrie councillor Érika Duchesne left the party last summer to sit as an independent in her borough, saying that her decision was in part due to changes within the party throughout the previous year.
Another Projet Montréal councillor from the same borough, party parliamentary leader Marc-André Gadoury, had jumped ship to Team Coderre a month before Duchesne left.
On Monday, Ferrandez described the party as one that’s transitioning and evolving.
“We started with a man who was remarkable in his defence of one great idea: public transportation by tramway,” he said, alluding to Bergeron. “We’ve evolved into a party that wants to tackle each opportunity we have to change this city when it comes to all kinds of different issues: heritage, the environment, urban planning or transportation.”
Ferrandez said he’ll be leaving the interim position satisfied with what the party accomplished under his leadership, and that he feels he delivered on his early promise of leading a strong opposition at city hall.
“Coderre was untouchable at the time, but we brought up issue after issue on which he proposed things and ended up being wrong, and on which we were right,” he said. “And people started to notice it. We did this for two years. I’m pretty proud of what we did.”
As for Coderre’s popularity among Montrealers, he agreed the approach Projet Montréal used during Bergeron’s leadership might not work anymore with typical voters come next year’s election.
“But I’m not sure being controversial about issue after issue the way Mr. Coderre is works either,” he said. “And when this trend tips downward, Projet Montréal will be there.”