HANES: WE HAVE HIGH HOPES
Plante may lack experience but she has shown she should not be underestimated
It finally happened.
Valérie Plante made history Sunday night, becoming the first woman to be elected mayor of Montreal in the city’s 375-year history. She beat out incumbent Denis Coderre and continued her streak of unseating veteran front-runners, as she did in 2013 when she won her council seat, and last year when she clinched the Projet Montréal leadership.
Plante may lack experience. But clearly she should not be underestimated. And as such, Montrealers should have high hopes for the next four years under her leadership.
It’s about time Montreal put a woman in charge at city hall. Studies have shown companies that have women on their corporate boards outperform those that don’t financially; and women directors seem to translate into higher productivity and more creative problem-solving. Other recent research has shown that the patients of female surgeons also have slightly better outcomes. When he visited Montreal last June, former U.S. president Barack Obama quipped that if all the countries of the globe put women in charge, the world would be a better, more peaceful place. So Montreal should be in good hands by those measures.
A female mayor isn’t the end all and be all, of course. Plante certainly never strived to win on the basis of her gender. Sure, she joked in an early campaign add about being “l’homme de la situation” and being a woman may have given her an edge — something hopeful and positive to vote for.
After all, Montrealers and Quebecers have a history of being swept away by new or inspiring political movements. From the waves that brought the Parti Québécois to power in 1976, to the blue juggernaut that put the federal Conservatives in power in the 1980s, to the New Democratic Party’s Orange Crush in Quebec in 2011, we have a history of going all in embracing change.
Plante was also the right woman at the right time.
Things are going well in Montreal, thanks to the turnaround Coderre mounted over the last four years. He helped root out festering corruption and reestablished the city’s international credibility. He made Montreal a player again and he made us proud to be Montrealers. For that we owe him our thanks. Politics is a cruel sport.
But the departing mayor had certain traits that rubbed citizens the wrong way. He was perceived as arrogant, impervious to criticism, peevishly partisan and prone to improvisation. He favoured flashy projects and making a big splash on the world stage. And he was his own worst enemy on transparency, insisting the ticket sales on the ePrix electric car race were unavailable until the dying days of the campaign. It was his style Montrealers objected to and in Plante they chose his opposite.
Coderre’s hyper-partisanship during the last mandate — and indeed in his attacks on Plateau-Mont-Royal borough mayor Luc Ferrandez, his favourite foil, during the campaign — may have dissuaded people from voting for him as mayor of Montreal if they were thinking of supporting Projet Montréal or another party locally. His inability to work with opponents proved to be a big disincentive to splitting allegiances between the borough and central city. Otherwise nothing would get done.
Voters decided that no matter how well things are going in Montreal, Plante can do better by bringing the focus back to citizens.
She was able to unite Montrealers over their common frustration — traffic congestion — with a plan for improving mobility. Even some voters from Montreal North, Coderre’s turf, and Lachine, hardly Projet territory previously, were tempted by this plan. Now the pressure will be on her to deliver.
She will now have to deploy her considerable persuasive skills to ensure her promise of a new Pink Line of the métro is more than a pipe dream. Her new status as the person who upset Coderre will give her a certain amount of credibility and clout. But it will take a lot of negotiating to convince the federal and provincial authorities to bankroll such a massive project.
Plante will also have to reach out to the business community who expressed some reservation about a change of course when Montreal is on such a roll economically. There is no indication Plante has any plans to kill the momentum. Making the city more livable and improving mobility is hardly incompatible with attracting investment. But she will have to allay their concerns.
Plante must also make good on her pledge to preside over a more collegial city council. While Projet has made gains, Montreal council remains divided among different parties, priorities and interests. She must govern for all Montrealers — with a particular recognition of the city’s cultural and linguistic diversity.
It’s the dawn of a new era. Expectations are high for our first female mayor. But what we’ve seen from Plante so far suggests she’s up to the challenge.
She will now have to deploy her considerable persuasive skills to ensure her promise of a new Pink Line of the métro is more than a pipe dream.