Montreal City Weblog

Kate 09:56 on 2024-09-20 Permalink Reply  

• James 10:04 on 2024-09-20 Permalink

  The guy doesn’t even live in Montreal ! Wow!

• su 12:06 on 2024-09-20 Permalink

  He sounds like a perfect fit for Ensemble!
  ” l’un des plus grands développeurs de terrains au Québec”
  “Récemment, l’entrepreneur a fait les manchettes pour la vente à Northvolt de ses terrains en Montérégie.”

• thomas 12:21 on 2024-09-20 Permalink

  Perhaps if he entered the race it might spur some journalists to investigate the financial details of the Northvolt deal.

• Kate 12:43 on 2024-09-20 Permalink

  Northvolt is on the skids. It isn’t a great sign for electric vehicles generally, but it would be good to avoid having a big factory pumping toxins into Quebec’s waterways.

• Ian 15:13 on 2024-09-20 Permalink

  With Duranceau running the provincial side of the grift it seems like a golden opportunity to fleece the population.

• DeWolf 11:00 on 2024-09-21 Permalink

  It’s nice to see that Ensemble is taking steps to becoming a real party. In the long run it will be good for Montreal to have at least two bona fide political parties vying for power, as opposed to makeshift vehicles for their leaders like we’ve always had in the past.

• Kate 12:15 on 2024-09-21 Permalink

  I’d like to see another grassroots party arise more than watching Ensemble edge further to the right.

  The city only started having formalized parties in the late 1950s with Jean Drapeau, and the parties have never had the object permanence that federal or provincial ones do. They’ve tended to fall apart a few years after their leader is defeated or quits.

  The Civic Party faced Drapeau’s defeat in 1984 but dissolved in 1994, the Montreal Citizens’ Movement faced Jean Doré’s defeat in 1994 but dissolved in 2001, Vision Montreal faced Pierre Bourque’s defeat in 2001 and dissolved in 2014 after functioning as city hall opposition to Gérald Tremblay whose Union Montreal dissolved in 2013, only a year after Tremblay stepped down.

  Ensemble was established as Équipe Denis Coderre in 2013 but changed name quickly after Coderre’s defeat in 2017. Depending who becomes their chief, we might expect another name change before the election.

• carswell 12:50 on 2024-09-21 Permalink

  CBC reported this morning that Dominique Anglade is considering a run for Ensemble’s top spot. Apparently, having led a major political party to a near-death experience isn’t an automatic disqualifier for the position.

• jeather 16:43 on 2024-09-21 Permalink

  Well that’s one way to tank a political party. I thought she was a bad leader for the PLQ and then she was a poor loser for dropping out immediately.

• DeWolf 17:12 on 2024-09-21 Permalink

  @Kate Good point. I was thinking more big picture but I agree about Ensemble, it’s a weird coalition of people with varying interests and that doesn’t bode well for any cohesive political vision or agenda.

• Kate 18:36 on 2024-09-21 Permalink

  Équipe Denis Coderre rose from the ashes of Union Montreal. It began, not with an urban vision, but with a group of people who had figured out how to get elected.

  It isn’t surprising that you never hear about Ensemble presenting a platform or proposing concrete solutions to the city’s problems. They know they can get column‑inches simply by carping about troubles Projet has failed to fix – which, in many cases, are the same problems being faced by cities all over the world: too much traffic, environmental change, unaffordable housing and resulting homelessness.

  If I were getting soundbites from an Ensemble rep, I’d want to ask them every time: You say Projet has failed to fix this issue. Do you think you have a better solution that hasn’t yet been tried? What is it, and how would you pay for it?