Project: Plateau

A newly feisty and confident Projet Montréal
hopes to seize its stomping grounds and
extend its reach city-wide this November

SUSTAINABLE THE KEY WORD:
Projet Montréal’s Alex Norris (L) and Richard Bergeron

by PATRICK LEJTENYI

Helen Fotopulos will be keeping her scalp. The veteran municipal politician, Plateau borough mayor and executive council member announced her intention not to run for re-election in November’s city elections on Monday, sparing her the headache of the endless rounds of handshakes, rubber chickens and sniping from the press and electoral foes—in particular, the upstart Projet Montréal (PM), who had clearly made unseating her a top priority. That’s a gutsy move for a party that is only five years old, and has exactly one sitting councillor in its founder, Richard Bergeron.

While some observers and Fotopulos supporters are grumbling that she was forced out by Mayor Gérald Tremblay to make room for well-known greenie and Montreal Transit Corp. chairman Michel Labrecque, others—in particular Luc Ferrandez, Projet Montréal’s candidate for borough mayor—are calling the move cynical and evidence of a lack of leadership.

It’s becoming increasingly clear that PM has its dander up. Fresh from a successful party convention two weeks ago, where it unrolled its so-called “dream team” taking to the field this fall, the party has come a long way from the fringe on the left, where the Mirror first discovered it five years ago. Focusing now as then on sustainability in transportation, economics and housing, PM had a slew of grand ideas—including a massive 250-kilometre, $20- billion tramway system that would cover the island—that, by his own admission, were pipe dreams. During the convention, attended by over 200 people, “We made 113 modifications to our program,” he says. “There was a lot of very intelligent discussion, lots of rigour and understanding of the issues.”

BIG IDEAS FROM SMALL DONATIONS

“In the last election, our ideas were audacious, while the other parties were talking about potholes,” he says. “We were trying to find a richer political discourse.”

But PM’s evolution has been curious. In an era of big-money politics, where both the mayor’s Union Montréal and rival Benoît Labonté’s Vision Montréal parties can and do rely heavily on corporate donations, PM was built up piecemeal, largely, Bergeron says, through a grassroots network of supporters heavily concentrated on the Plateau. Elected in 2005 as the party’s sole representative as a city councillor for the Plateau’s de Lorimier district, Bergeron says the past four years have been eyeopening. Better schooled in the wiles and wherefores of the city’s political system, he says he is confident he can run the city from the big chair in City Hall with class and efficiency. Unlike, he snipes, the current occupant, currently beset with ethical and loyalty problems. From the water-meter scandal to Plateau councillor Josée Duplessis’s recent defection to Bergeron’s party, 2009 has not been kind to the mayor or his party. The PM leader says he planned to run a respectful campaign based on credibility and good governance, but with his recent woes, Tremblay “has handed us [ammunition] on a silver platter.”

In his eyes, integrity now matters as well. “We wouldn’t be talking about integrity if he hadn’t managed things the way he did,” Bergeron says.

ON TO NDG

If convincing the generally welleducated, artsy and left-leaning Plateau voters to support him hasn’t been exactly easy, getting the word out to the farther-flung reaches of the city will be tough. Helping him out in NDG-Côte-des-Neiges is perennial Green Party candidate Peter McQueen, a fairly recognizable face in eastern NDG.

“It’s important to work other districts too,” McQueen says. “We have a good chance, but the key is to move forward in other districts to lay the groundwork for 2013”— the next municipal election. McQueen says PM has to concentrate on the urban core, including the Rosemont and Hochelaga- Maisonneuve boroughs, to achieve a real, substantial breakthrough. In his borough, McQueen plans to focus on the area around Vendôme metro and Girouard park, including the old, empty Empress theatre on Sherbrooke W. McQueen isn’t oozing confidence this year, saying there is “maybe a little less awareness in many parts of the city, including NDG… but we are working to increase our visibility.”

According to Alex Norris, a former Gazette investigative reporter hoping to capture the Mile-End city council seat for PM, the entire Plateau is ripe for the plucking. “I think we’ll sweep the Plateau,” he says. “We were outspent 20 to one in the last election, and we won one district and came in second in the other two.”

Bergeron says the party will unveil its full program this week, and spend the rest of the pre-electoral season organizing and getting its finances in order. He promises some surprises over the summer, culminating with a big kick-off in mid-September.