The mayoress of Montreal Valérie Plante was accused of breaking a first election promise on Monday, saying that the police would not finally get 250 police reinforcements.
In early November, in the midst of the election campaign, Valérie Plante had promised to hire 250 new police officers, before clearly confirming to the media that it was a net addition to the troops of the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM) . The engagement followed by a few days the promise of Denis Coderre to open 250 new positions at the SPVM.
The media that covered this press conference, including The Press, reported that Project Montreal wanted to open 250 police stations. At the time, Projet Montréal had provided little clarification, seeming to leave a blur around the nature of these additions.
Monday, after a report from Radio-Canada on the subject, Valérie Plante argued that it was more of a gross addition: the vast majority of the 250 hires will ultimately be used to replace retirements, which affect more 150 positions per year.
“It is important for me to clarify, because I do not want to leave any vagueness around these figures,” she said on the sidelines of a press conference. “For me, it has always been clear that between now and December 2022, there would be 250 police officers who would be hired, and that would include retirements. She didn’t want to say whether the vagueness created during the campaign was intentional or unintentional.
Valérie Plante also did not want to put forward a figure for the net increase in the number of police officers in Montreal at the end of 2022.
Aref Salem, the new Leader of the Official Opposition at Montreal City Hall, argued that this was the first broken promise in the Plante administration’s second term.
“We all know that 250 police officers are missing. They were promised in the election campaign, whether it be Ensemble Montréal or Projet Montréal, ”said Mr. Salem. “It took 22 days for the mayor to break her first promise. […] I think it is worrying. ”
He added: “in politics, when you promise, you do. Otherwise, we don’t promise. ”
The SPVM currently has around 4,500 police officers.