During the last municipal elections in Montreal, the issue of public safety occupied an important place. Of the two major parties, it was clearly Ensemble Montréal that set the agenda, positioning itself as the party for restoring the city’s supposedly lost security and forcing Projet Montréal to react.
With Projet Montréal’s victory on November 7, it is important to consider what the major parties proposed and what Montrealers ultimately voted for in terms of safety.
Denis Coderre and Ensemble Montréal have placed public safety at the heart of their campaign. This position was already mentioned in Coderre’s pre-campaign book, Find Montreal, who argued that the police should be better funded and proposed adding the director of the Montreal Police Department (SPVM) to the city’s executive committee. This position was reinforced by data from internal party polls, which showed that public safety was at the top of voters’ concerns.
Throughout the campaign, Mr. Coderre adopted a policy of fear, claiming that Montreal was no longer safe and (falsely) criticizing Project Montreal for wanting to define and disarm the police.
When the president of the Fraternité des policières et policières, Yves Francœur, affirmed that there was a shortage of 250 police officers in Montreal, Mr. Coderre and Ensemble Montreal found a new battle horse and finally published a public safety plan that promised 250 new hires – and not much else.
Project Montreal’s response was often confused and gave the impression of a party that wanted to move on to another topic. Valérie Plante has at times disputed her opponent’s position, claiming that the city was indeed safe, but never put together the crime data that shows this to be true. Plante and Projet Montréal have also failed to present a more comprehensive and effective crime prevention strategy focused less on the police than on community programs. Without an alternative vision, yet sought after by Montrealers according to several polls, the party risked being perceived as “soft” with regard to crime and indifferent to security.
Projet Montreal’s public safety plan failed to resolve this dilemma. The plan was almost entirely police-focused, committing $ 96 million in new police funding over four years. That same plan made no new money for community crime prevention, no new vision for crime prevention, and no effective action to tackle racism and police violence – issues that spawned record protests in 2020.
Worse, in the last days of the campaign, when Mr. Coderre got bogged down over his consulting contracts with private companies, Mr.me Plante suddenly announced that she would adopt her rival’s pledge to hire 250 police officers. She also confusedly claimed that most of those hires were already promised in her party’s public safety plan. Mr. Coderre’s policy of fear and overinvestment in police repression were now the policy of Projet Montreal as well.
PHOTO DAVID BOILY, THE PRESS
Projet Montréal “did he win despite his right-wing position on public security or because of it?” Asks the author.
A winning security plan?
With Projet Montréal’s victory on November 7, an important question arises: did the party win despite its right-wing position on public safety or because of it? Three observations can help answer this question. First, the party won essentially the same seats as in the 2017 election. The party has always been strongest in the inner city neighborhoods, and it remains the case. The inverted “L” which goes from Villeray and Rosemont in the northeast to Saint-Henri and Verdun in the southwest remains the territory of Projet Montréal.
Was the party’s victory in these constituencies the result of its public safety plan? The answer is no.
Polls show that public safety occupies a low place among voters’ concerns in these neighborhoods, where there have been few incidents of armed violence, and Mouvement Montreal, which campaigned for the definition of the police, obtained some of his best results in these neighborhoods.
Second, Projet Montréal won seven new municipal councilor positions in these elections. Three of them were in Rivière-des-Prairies – Pointe-aux-Trembles, where guns were a concern this year. While Projet Montreal might have won voters here with a more community-focused violence prevention strategy, its reluctance or inability to develop such a strategy left it with only the promise of more police officers – a promise that has won. probably helped Projet Montreal to defeat Ensemble Montreal in these ridings. The other four new city councilor positions were in neighborhoods where public safety was a minor concern.
Third, third party candidates pledging to define policing and invest in community programs did well in these elections, winning over 20% of the vote in 5 constituencies and over 10% in 17 constituencies. There are six ridings where Projet Montreal lost and the “definancing” candidates won the number of votes the party needed to win. Project Montreal would have done better with a more progressive public safety plan and would probably have won three or four of those seats.
Overall, it appears that Projet Montreal’s safety plan had little to do with its victory. It probably won a few seats for the party, while losing others. In other words, Montrealers did not vote for his security plan. With the elections over, it is time for the party to reconnect with communities, open a dialogue on security issues and the best ways to resolve them, and develop a security approach that reflects the needs of the most vulnerable populations. more affected by the failures of the status quo centered on police repression.
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