Plante interviewed halfway through her term
At the halfway point in her term, Valérie Plante is doing interviews. La Presse has an in-depth piece in which Plante confirms what I’ve been noticing around social and regular media for the last two years – as a woman in the role of mayor, she’s expected to be perfect. There’s a sneering tone in criticism of Plante on Twitter and elsewhere that I never saw even during the depths of Tremblay’s shame or the height of Coderre’s misplaced grandiosity.
Notably, Plante is stuck with the stigma that her administration is “anti-car” and is forced to wave that off at every turn. Given how much the city spends on its roads (see item below) it’s a ridiculous accusation, but some folks seem determined to pin any traffic jam or trouble on Projet. But as Plante says, she’s not a wizard – she can’t magic up new roadways. Her administration is stuck with doing a lot of necessary housecleaning that was neglected for years – a woman’s work, you might say.
QMI’s interview is more point-by-point, but both these pieces are worth a read. The Gazette also has a look at Plante’s record and François Cardinal also gives his assessment of Plante’s strengths and weaknesses, and sees her as chiefly a strong voice for sane urban development, and about time too.
walkerp 11:42 on 2019-11-02 Permalink
The anti-car stuff would have been in play whatever the mayor’s gender (though I agree it gets nastier because she is a woman). This is what the car lobbyists and suburban developers do as soon as they get a whiff that a politician may be looking at policies to reduce traffic, pollution and start working on alternative forms of transit. They are basically the gun lobby of Canada with much of the corporate media behind them.
Chris 12:56 on 2019-11-02 Permalink
Not just “would have been in play” it *was* in play. Projet was branded anti-car since the start. I just wish they *actually were* more anti-car. They should have owned it like how Bernie Sanders owns being “socialist”.
Michael Black 13:05 on 2019-11-02 Permalink
But Bernie’s been in politics a long time, starting small and rising up.
He greeted ys at Burlington city hall in early April 1982, when he’d been the socialist mayor for about six months.
Besides, Vermont is a different place, fairly rural but maybe all the back to the landers in the seventues helped.
Michael
Blork 18:11 on 2019-11-02 Permalink
“…as a woman in the role of mayor, she’s expected to be perfect.” My inclination is to think that it’s more a matter of her being “progressive” (as a label). We saw the same when Obama was elected in the US; the progressives saw him as this great hope for change and they cast an unrealistic burden upon him for how much he could actually do. And the response, predictably, was a lot of “progressives” losing their minds when the entire world didn’t become all rainbows and unicorns overnight. (Sorry, but there is a significant contingency of unrealistic thinkers among the “progressive” set and they tend to be very vocal.) And of course the regressives took every opportunity to blame every hiccup on Obama.
It’s the exact same pattern with Plante.
(For the record, I consider myself to lean towards “progressive” but I try to be realistic and to accept the ambiguities of the real world and to set my expectations accordingly. The above should not be seen as a shot against progressives; it’s a shot against unrealistic thinkers, which are found among both progressives and regressives.)
Kate 22:04 on 2019-11-10 Permalink
Blork, I doubt you’ll see this, but thanks for this comment, it was wise.