Welcome to another issue of #munipoli Matters, discussing all about municipal elections and the usually unreported stuff in between when it comes to the wild and wacky world of local government.
Today, we dive into the recent Quebec municipal election that took place over the weekend of November 6-7, which yielded some startling results in some areas but the same in others. Results for Montreal and the rest of Quebec’s municipalities can be found in the following:
All Quebec municipal results (Elections Quebec)
City of Montreal results (city’s official website)
I’m not going to get into all the results, but I’m going to highlight certain notable results.
A feminist breakthrough?
The election resulted in somewhat of a breakthrough for female leadership at the municipal level, as five women were elected mayors in major cities across the province: Gatineau (France Belisle), Sherbrooke (Evelyne Beaudin), Longueuil (Catherine Fournier), the Saguenay (Julie Dufour) and in Montreal, where incumbent Valerie Plante secured a second term in office.
In Longueuil, the mayor’s seat was open as incumbent Sylvie Parent opted to retire after serving one term. Fournier, a former Parti Quebecois turned Independent MNA, won in a landslide with 61% of the vote. She, alongside newly elected Laval Mayor Stephane Boyer, also hold the distinction of being from the millennial generation to be elected to head their cities; Fournier is 29 while Boyer is 33.
Up in the Saguenay, Dufour won as an Independent by defeating incumbent Josee Neron. As in British Columbia, Quebec allows municipal political parties to form and run candidates for municipal elections, although sometimes they seem solely built around a singular candidate for the purpose of advancing that one person’s political aspirations.
There was one snafu in terms of the surge of female leadership taking over Quebec city halls. For most of election night, Quebec City mayoral candidate Marie-Josee Savard led the polls in the open contest to take over for outgoing mayor Regis Labeaume. But when the final results poured in, political newcomer Bruno Marchand managed to squeak a win by just 739 votes.
What resulted was an embarrassing backtrack and apology to the Savard campaign from two of Quebec’s major news networks, who declared her the winner earlier that night. Even Quebec Premier Francois Legault had to delete a previous tweet of congratulations.
I think this Twitter user encapsulated my feelings towards how these results showed the clear need for electoral reform at the municipal level, as ‘First Past the Post’ clearly shows that it does not reflect voters’ true intentions and ranked ballots or ranked choice voting is a better option.
Valerie Plante solidifies her vision of Montreal
The bulk of the media attention seemed to be on Montreal, because not only Plante was seeking a second term, but she was running against former mayor Denis Coderre, the man she defeated in 2017 for the top job by a vote of 51% to 46%.
A political animal whose career stretched back almost 30 years ago, since leaving office Coderre had written a book and seemed like a new man, launching another campaign under his party Ensemble Montreal, which formed when Coderre began focusing on civic politics.
But in 2021, a third option presented itself in the form of former CFL football player Balarama Holness, who also ran for mayor under a new party named Mouvement Montreal. The party proposed ideas such as reallocating money for police to affordable housing and social services, giving Montrealers 25 and under free public transit and proposed making Montreal an officially bilingual city.
Holness previously ran under the banner of Plante’s Projet Montreal. Even though he ended up with only 30,000 votes in his run for mayor, at 38 Holness and his Mouvement Montreal organization certainly has much more staying power in the long run than Coderre, who lost to the incumbent mayor by 52% to 38%, an even worse result than in 2017.
Founded in 2004, Projet Montreal advocates the ideas of sustainable urbanism, reversing urban sprawl, reducing car traffic while increasing pedestrian and cycle infrastructure. The party went from having one city council seat under former leader Richard Bergeron, 10 seats in 2009, 20 in 2013 and finally winning a governing majority in 2017. The party won 36 seats in 2021 out of the 64 available council seats.
There is a book written about the rise to prominence of Projet Montrel by Daniel Sanger, which highlights its beginnings from it being a vehicle for an idealistic founder wanting to push for increased public transportation, to it being a credible governing coalition of progressive-minded politicians. Projet is one of the municipal parties in Quebec that is a rare outlier in that it outlasted the leader that founded it and that exists to win elections and govern, something that is typical of the standard political party.
Other interesting results across Quebec
Here’s what else I noticed when the municipal results rolled out:
As mentioned, Stephane Boyer took over as Laval mayor from outgoing incumbent Marc Demers, who was first elected in 2013. Boyer led the same Mouvement lavallois party that Demers had, securing a majority of council seats. But voter turnout was well below 30%, a legacy of the past decade of public disdain over the corruption scandals that took place under former mayor Gilles Vaillancourt.
Former NDP MP Guy Caron was elected the new mayor of Rimouski with over 80% of the vote. Caron served in the House of Commons from 2011 to 2019 who also ran for the federal NDP leadership, which was ultimately won by Jagmeet Singh.
In Pointe-Claire, on the south shore of Montreal island, incumbent mayor John Belvedere lost to antique shop owner Tim Thomas by 61 votes. While Thomas will be sworn in as mayor, Belvedere is seeking a recount.
When this campaign started, I read that Thomas said Pointe-Claire residents will have to choose between a “garden city...or Mississauga. That’s the contrast. We can have a garden city or a cement city full of glass, metal and steel. It’s a green city vs. grey,” according to the Montreal Gazette.
Former Bloc MP Nicolas Dufour, who served from 2008 to 2011, is the newly elected mayor of Repentigny, a city north of Montreal. Still, another former MP, Jamie Nicholls, who became mayor of Hudson in 2017, lost his reelection bid and ended up in third place.
In the small northern town of Chapais, 21 year old Isabelle Lessard was elected by acclamation as mayor after her only opponent dropped out of the race. She is reportedly the youngest person elected mayor in Quebec history.
Black female representation increased as a number of candidates secured positions as city councillors and even borough mayor in Montreal, specifically for one of the city’s largest boroughs in Côte-des-Neiges–Notre-Dame-de-Grâce where Gracia Kasoki Katahwa squeaked out a win to become the first black woman elected borough mayor in the city’s history.
Update on council appointments
Finally, in a follow up from last week’s newsletter, Hamilton and Ottawa picked completely different people than I anticipated to fill vacated city council seats in light of the incumbents becoming MPs during the federal election.
In Ottawa, councillors picked a former school board trustee Cathy Curry over former councillor Marianne Wilkinson in one round of voting, with 12 councillors favouring Curry, 8 for Wilkinson and 3 votes went to two other candidates.
And over in Hamilton, councillors had over 20 candidates give 5 minute presentations on why they should be appointed the Ward 5 councillor. But in the end, Hamilton City Council selected former councillor Russ Powers over former mayor Larry Di Ianni by a vote of 8-6.
Powers’ municipal career dates back to 1982 until 2004, when he became a Liberal MP for a brief two years. After he lost his Ottawa seat, he returned to council in 2006 and served until his retirement in 2014.
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