Has Valérie Plante kept her promises?
Radio-Canada asks and answers: Has Valérie Plante kept her promises? and goes through them one by one. Short take: many have been kept, or kept in some modified form. Out of 64 promises made, only 11 have definitely not been kept.
Meezly 12:44 on 2020-10-25 Permalink
Don’t know how that compares to her predecessors, or other mayors, but that sounds pretty damn good for an elected leader and she has been in term for how long…?
Chris 13:01 on 2020-10-25 Permalink
First elected to council November 2013; party leader since December 2016; mayor since November 2017.
Kate 13:01 on 2020-10-25 Permalink
Plante is reaching the end of her third year of a four-year term. The next municipal election is a little more than a year away.
I think she’s done well, given that she was handed the completely unexpected shock of a worldwide pandemic during her third year.
Some of the unkept promises were blue-skying, like the pink line and the bain portuaire idea: sketches of ideas rather than necessarily achievable plans.
Once the city faced the expenses involved in realizing the bain portuaire I think it was far more responsible to spike it, than to stick to a project that would bleed money and possibly collapse anyway. Compare to Denis Coderre’s forging ahead with Formula E, even after he must have known it was going to be both expensive and unpopular, and not something either residents or tourists wanted.
As for the pink line, it was a statement of an intention to improve transit, and – once again – a plan that may yet be achieved in some form. It’s when you look back at the maps from the prehistory of the Metro, you realize that the original idea had to evolve and adapt until the plans, the political will and the money were all harmonizing for the project to go ahead.
Maxim Baru 13:16 on 2020-10-25 Permalink
This piece strikes me as the publication equivalent of a clip show. Without including feedback about whether a particular promise was kept – in what quality and measure – as well as feedback about the overall balance of promises kept / delayed / broken with respect to what matters more and what matters less from the civil society organizations that are best equipped to do so, this assessment list is at most of very limit value. And at worst quite misleading.
Kate 14:36 on 2020-10-25 Permalink
Maxim, Radio-Canada wasn’t writing a book so you can’t criticize them for not producing a lengthy, researched piece about how different segments of society rate Projet’s success.
The article is a good rundown of what the party intended vs. what it’s been able to do. It’s more than simply a checklist. I’ll be referring back to it, come the election campaign next year.
Meezly 15:51 on 2020-10-25 Permalink
Thanks for the data, Kate and Chris. Feeling lazy on Sunday 😉