Bourgeois, Raymond pursuing council seats

Mayor Valérie Plante’s Projet Montréal party is hoping to extend its reach in the north and east of the island in the Dec. 16 byelection.

Two seats in city council are up for grabs since Chantal Rouleau, borough mayor of Rivière-desPrairies — Pointe-aux-Trembles, and Frantz Benjamin, city councillor in St-Michel, were elected to the Quebec National Assembly on Oct. 1. Rouleau is the new minister for Montreal and junior transportation minister in the Coalition Avenir Québec government, while Benjamin is a Liberal MNA.

On Wednesday, Chantal Bourgeois, Rouleau’s chief of staff as borough mayor, announced she is running as the Projet Montréal candidate for her former boss’s job.

If she wins, it would mark a political coup for the ruling party at city hall, since Rouleau represented previous Montreal mayor Denis Coderre’s party, now called Ensemble Montréal, and before that the Vision Montréal party, led by former Parti Québécois cabinet minister Louise Harel.

Bourgeois herself was a Vision Montréal councillor from 2009 to 2013 and sat on the executive committee during part of that last turbulent year, when Michael Applebaum was interim mayor until his arrest for fraud, conspiracy and breach of trust.

Introduced by Plante at Projet Montréal headquarters in StHenri, Bourgeois denied that her decision to run for the ruling party was a switch of political allegiance.

“Personally, I’ve always worked for individuals,” said Bourgeois, adding that her progressive views on issues like the quality of life in local neighbourhoods are a natural fit with Projet Montréal.

Both Plante and Bourgeois said they had informed Rouleau of Bourgeois’s candidacy.

In St-Michel, 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, will seek the seat previously held by Benjamin.

A former speaker of city council, Benjamin had joined Coderre’s party in 2013 after quitting former mayor Gérald Tremblay’s Union Montreal in 2012 in the wake of corruption allegations.

Brigitte Roussy, a spokesperson for the opposition Ensemble Montréal party, said it would announce its candidates in the near future.

Plante also said she will be meeting with Premier François Legault Friday to put forward the city ’s position on issues including the proposed Pink Line métro extension, for which she announced the creation of a project office on Monday.