In free fall in the polls for several months, François Legault and Justin Trudeau will remember 2023 for a long time. For the two prime ministers, it was undoubtedly their annus horribilis.
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We also have to add Valérie Plante to the list. For the mayor of Montreal, in the middle of her second term, the last year has taken on the appearance of the end of the regime. According to the most recent Léger personality barometer, 53% of respondents even said they had a bad opinion of Mme Plant.
All big cities have their problems, but the metropolis of Quebec, let’s say it, seems to suffer severely.
The rise in homelessness there is frightening. Poverty and food insecurity are spreading into the middle class.
The housing crisis, which is not unrelated to that of homelessness, is worse than ever. This week, the mayor swore that she had been concerned about it before anyone else since 2017.
However, even in 2019, just like the CAQ Minister of Municipal Affairs, Valérie Plante still denied the existence of a housing crisis in Montreal. Hence its long period of inaction on this sensitive front.
Then came in 2023 the scandal of unbridled spending at the Office de consultation publique de Montréal. We learned that certain relatives of the mayor were nesting there, including the very influential Dominique Ollivier.
Mme Plante in fact protected her for ten long days while the scandal continued unabated. All this revealed a mayor incapable of distinguishing the preservation of a friendship from sound management of public funds.
Decadence
The city, we see, is dirty. Not everywhere, but more and more. As luck would have it – 2024 being a pre-election year – the mayor has also just realized that the annual saga of uniced sidewalks and hundreds of falls by Montrealers requires her intervention.
The advanced state of disrepair of the Latin Quarter, home to a large French-speaking university, is shameful. The high concentration of human misery, violence and extreme filth that his administration has allowed to take hold there instead of reducing it is downright humanitarian crisis.
Among the traders who are closing up shop there with a broken heart, the owner of the restaurant Le Passé Composé has put his finger on the problem. Its conclusion is scathing: the neighborhood is crumbling under “unprecedented decadence”. I repeat: “unprecedented decadence”.
To which saint should we devote ourselves?
No longer knowing which way to turn to try to regain momentum, Mayor Plante is launching poorly constructed projects. While the Latin Quarter is dying, she announces a billion dollars over ten years to “revitalize” downtown Montreal.
The devil is in the details, however. In a so-called French-speaking city, the idea of renaming the Latin Quarter, in tatters moreover, the “Francophonie Quarter” is preposterous.
Ditto for the mind-blowing project to create an area open 24 hours a day. As if violence and filth did not already reign there enough day and night.
In short, the entire work of Valérie Plante and her administration is increasingly disappointing. Why should we be surprised, then, to hear some possible names floating around for the mayoral election in 2025?
For the moment, we mainly hear that of Dominique Anglade, former leader of the Liberal Party of Quebec. To oppose a business-driven vision to that of a mayor whose progressivism is too often a facade would perhaps not be the idea of the century either.
One thing is certain. If, within the next few months, Mme Plante fails to regain the trust of more and more disappointed Montrealers, other names will eventually emerge in time for 2025.