Weird mayoral candidate #1

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by Patrick Lejtenyi

It's early in the megacity election campaign, but the smaller and weirder contenders are already crawling out of the woodwork. In a sparsely attended press conference last week, Laurent Alie of the Ralliement Élan Montréal announced he was throwing down the gauntlet and running against incumbent Mayor Pierre Bourque and front-running challenger Gérald Tremblay.

From his home riding in Rosemont/Petit-Patrie, Alie already has big plans in mind for his Montreal. "The first thing I'm going to do is scrap Éco-quartier," says the squat, pipe-smoking 49-year-old Franco-Ontarian mason. "I want to turn Montreal into a real recycling city, and not give Domtar free money to recycle our paper."

Also on his to-do list: close down all pawn shops; scrap the Salvation Army; dry up all city funding for the summer festivals while subsidizing independent artists and clubs; improve computer literacy, especially among the elderly; and build an all-stainless-steel cablecar system circling the island to replace the metro, which he calls an outdated firetrap.

Bringing together notions that are vaguely Marxist, green, federalist and partitionist, Alie vows to fight against all monopolies, including the municipal government and the "dumb, stupid unilinguist Quebec City bastards."

With only four candidates declared for the city's 108 seats, Alie is recruiting. "We're looking for labourers, taxi drivers, artisans--people with no diplomas," he says. "Pimps are not welcome, and by pimps I mean lawyers, judges, notaries, merchants--those travelling salesmen for the Shylocks and welfare bums like Bombardier and all the other CEOs."