“I had never heard Valérie say a single interesting thing. We are in 2016. Valérie Plante has just announced her candidacy for the management of Projet Montréal. In the troops of the Progressive Party, disbelief is general, as evidenced by this quote from then councilor Christine Gosselin.
Plante was “the girl who went out with us,” says Daniel Sanger in the brick he devotes to the history of Projet Montréal. Ex-journalist, Plateau advisor under Luc Ferrandez – clearly, his hero -, Sanger tells in particular in Save the city. Projet Montréal and the challenge of transforming a modern metropolis the combination of circumstances that made Valérie Plante the first mayoress of Montreal.
Plante had never dreamed of a political career. But in 2013, the small party is in lack of candidates. The energy and the joviality of the then union advisor destined her to a “take-away” position: advisor in Sainte-Marie. But as soon as Plante’s candidacy was announced, Louise Harel chose this same district as a landing ground. Sainte-Marie is a sector of her former constituency where, as a member of Parliament, she never won less than 50% of the votes. The then Project Manager, Richard Bergeron, summed up the situation of his recruit Plante as follows: “During this entire campaign, I never took care of her. For me, it was the girl who was going to break the pipe. “
But the success of his door-to-door, the division of the vote and the decline in Harel’s popularity caused the surprise: Plante capped the ex-minister by 3.5 percentage points at the finish line. Then, the newly elected one blends into the background. From 2013 to 2016, writes Sanger, “Plante didn’t do much to distinguish himself.” Hence the silence that welcomes his intention to lead the party. Asked about her ideas, her projects, she has little to say. Her candidacy stems from a feminist reflex: she considers it inconceivable that no woman should run for the leadership of the party. Luc Ferrandez, who has assumed the interim since the departure of Bergeron, even tries to convince her to withdraw her candidacy to make way for another woman.
The Red line
City councilor Sylvain Ouellet believes he has a good idea for the campaign. A new metro line that would cross Montreal diagonally. A red line, he thinks. A flagship promise for the candidate he fully supports as the new Project Manager: Guillaume Lavoie. But Lavoie is more interested in carsharing and Uber than in a new metro. When Ouellet then discovers that Plante has appropriated the concept and repainted it pink, he is scarlet himself.
Many Project officials believe that Lavoie’s centrism will broaden the party’s footprint and – who knows? – to bring him to power. But Project’s left sees Lavoie as the libertarian wolf in the neo-democratic-united fold. With the late but visible support of Ferrandez, the entire left falls back on the only other candidate available: Valérie Plante. On the night of her victory, she obtained 1.9 points of majority. Several members of the caucus refuse to take the stage. At least one, Sanger writes, “had to be restrained and driven outside after losing his temper.” Lavoie, who could have been number two in the future Plante administration, turns his back on him. This year, he is one of Denis Coderre’s star candidates.
Plante first maneuvered with skill to bring his caucus together. For the 2017 election campaign, the poster “The man for the job” is a home run. The pink line is a dream. The quality of Plante’s interventions is improving. His opponent Coderre is doing it his own: bad campaign, grumpy candidate, denial of responsibility in the case of the Electric Formula. Plante is 6 points ahead of him at the finish line.
The election of Plante, more than an accident, is the result of a pile-up. And it is because Plante was an unknown quantity that her bossy behavior in the caucus, once elected, amazes. “Suddenly, in power, she feels insecure and sees any questioning from within as a challenge to her authority,” Sanger writes. Majority in the municipal council, Plante lost a good number of councilors along the way and ended his mandate with a single majority seat.
Once this story is established, we must with hindsight conclude that this woman so little prepared for her role as mayor has done a considerable amount of work. The objective pursued by the pink line will be accomplished with the Eastern REM. An aerial scenario that was imposed on her, but that she continues to try to influence to bury as much of it as possible. She had promised 12,000 social or affordable housing: about 7,000 have already been delivered, the others approved. The express bicycle network is a major achievement. Even Coderre no longer promises to return to his controversial portion of rue Saint-Denis. Plante had promised to keep the tax hikes below inflation. For the first year of his term, this was not true. But over the four years, on average, it does. She presided over the creation of a large park in the West and brought together the pieces of its equivalent in the East. The mayor also knew how to manage a pandemic, which cannot be learned anywhere. Her presence alongside Greta Thunberg, before the virus, for one of the biggest global protests against global warming was a key moment. The speech she delivered to the UN on this essential subject, on behalf of other metropolises, must have made Denis Coderre die of jealousy.
It is too early for the balance sheets. Valérie Plante has never been so well prepared as she is today to manage the city. This time, if she wins, it will not be an accident, but a consecration. Does she deserve it? Or is Denis Coderre, overall, “less worse”? My response shortly.
[email protected]; blog: jflisee.org