The two main candidates for mayor of Montreal, Valérie Plante for Projet Montreal and Denis Coderre for Ensemble Montreal, faced each other again in a televised debate Monday evening. The outgoing mayor has notably revealed that she would like to remain leader in the opposition in the event of a defeat.
Hosted by Patrice Roy on Radio-Canada, the debate lasted an hour and addressed several themes ranging from housing to mobility, including security, the environment and the economy. If last week’s debate had been cacophonous and contentious, the exchanges this time around were much more civilized.
The stake of the thousands of people who left Montreal, a phenomenon accentuated during the pandemic, opened the ball. How to keep families in Montreal, and how to increase the housing supply ?, asked the host of the two candidates.
For Denis Coderre, we must “boost” the offer to influence prices, which requires greater density. He then attacked the “20/20/20” regulation put in place by the administration of Valérie Plante and which obliges the builders of residential projects of approximately five dwellings and more to contribute to the supply of social housing. , affordable and family friendly. “We need a new, more pragmatic housing strategy,” he insisted. The majority of developers are against 20/20/20 ”.
The mayoress, for her part, defended her policy. “There are no regulations in Toronto and Vancouver, we see that it does not work,” she replied. She recalled that her party is promising the construction of 60,000 affordable housing units over 10 years and to purchase land to counter the “ flips real estate ”.
Go or stay?
The two candidates went there for revelations when asked whether they intended to stay or not in the event of defeat. “Me, I consider that if the population wants to give me the role of leader of the opposition, which I have already occupied and which is important for democracy, I would be there,” replied Valérie Plante.
Denis Coderre, for his part, replied that he “wanted to stay, that’s for sure”. “But plan A is really about winning,” he added.
Lively discussions have sometimes taken place, particularly on the $ 62 million deficit of the Société de transport de Montréal (STM), whose ridership has been shaken by the pandemic and which anticipates service cuts.
Valérie Plante defended her decision not to cut services during the pandemic despite the low attendance. “I wanted to keep the services because we knew that a lot of nurses and people on the front lines who took the metro, I didn’t want to add a waiting time,” she said.
An error, replied Denis Coderre. “If we had not given full service, but services, during the pandemic, we would not be in this situation today”, he insisted, adding that service cuts in the future will affect a big number of people. What stung the mayoress. “Not everyone has a car, Mr. Coderre,” she replied.
The mayor also reiterated her desire to limit the increase in municipal taxes to 2% in 2022 like Denis Coderre, a promise she unveiled during an interview with The duty last Friday.
A “top of the truck”
Called on to speak out on mobility and the environment, Denis Coderre said he was in favor of banning gasoline vehicles in the city center. “We need to stop with gasoline cars, I think everyone will be okay with that eventually,” he said. Regarding the movement of large delivery trucks in Montreal, he proposed a “truck top” to develop a strategy. “We could say, for example, that between 9 am and 11 am it will be the delivery”, he illustrated.
Valérie Plante, for her part, defended the use of electric trucks and the Colibri initiative, a pilot project which is gradually being implemented in neighborhoods and which aims to replace trucks with electric cargo bikes.