The leader of Ensemble Montréal, Denis Coderre, promises to reveal the mandates he has exercised for the private sector over the past four years as a consultant to a lawyer of the City, if he is elected on Sunday, so that he identifies potential conflicts of interest with his role as mayor.
Since his defeat in the last municipal elections in November 2017, Mr. Coderre has worked as a consultant for several private companies, which has earned him several hundred thousand dollars. He notably worked for the International Automobile Federation and the Stingray company in addition to founding a consulting company.
A few days before the elections, the mayoral candidate, however, continues to refuse to reveal the full list of the mandates he held for the private sector in 2017 and 2021 and the income he drew from them. This earned him sharp criticism on Tuesday from the head of Projet Montreal, Valérie Plante, who compared this affair to the saga of the Electric Formula, in 2017. For weeks, Denis Coderre, then mayor of Montreal, had kept the silence on the number of tickets actually sold in anticipation of this event. “We are in 2021 and it’s the same thing, Denis Coderre refuses to reveal his income and who his employers were,” lamented Ms. Plante Tuesday afternoon, during a press conference in the city center.
“It is a flagrant lack of transparency and Montrealers would have the right to answers before going to vote,” she continued. Ms. Plante has also unveiled in her last days her tax returns for the past four years. She thus earned employment income of just over $ 180,000 annually, as well as $ 35,000 per year in rental income.
“I think that this administration is doing everything not to talk about its record because it would be even more disastrous in terms of what it cost the population. And I, once again, I am not desperate, I do not make personal attacks, ”replied Mr. Coderre to his main opponent, Tuesday afternoon, on the sidelines of a separate press conference.
For his part, the leader of Ensemble Montreal, who promised Monday that he will unveil his list of clients if he is elected mayor of Montreal next Sunday, defended himself again in this matter on Tuesday. “There will be no hiding places,” insisted the aspiring mayor when hounded by the media on this issue. Mr. Coderre thus promised Tuesday to turn to the ethics counselor of the City, “who is a lawyer”, to “guide him in the way of doing things”, if he is elected mayor of Montreal.
“I will be able to take out all the pedigree and we will be able to answer his questions,” said Mr. Coderre, referring to the city’s ethics consultant. The mayoral candidate has also argued that he must act “with integrity” towards the companies for which he has worked in recent years. “There are things I cannot say because I have to respect confidentiality agreements,” he insisted on several occasions.
Since Denis Coderre is not currently an elected official, he is not obliged to make his sources of revenue public. However, he had agreed to open his books during the 2013 election campaign, when he was running for mayor of Montreal.
Relax Bill 96
Denis Coderre also announced Tuesday his intention to appeal to the Quebec government for changes to Bill 96 on the protection of the French language in order to ensure better protection of the rights of Anglophones, especially in Montreal.
“It must be remembered that they [les Québécois anglophones] also pay taxes. And when you pay taxes, you have the right to services, ”said the mayoral candidate, who particularly wants to ensure that the 311 service remains bilingual in Montreal.