Ensemble names high-profile Plateau candidate
Ensemble has named architect Jean Beaudoin as candidate for the mayoralty of the Plateau, facing off against Cathy Wong for Projet. Ensemble must be very keen to get their man into Projet’s heartland.
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Ian 23:04 on 2025-08-07 Permalink
That’s a pretty good candidate…. Ferrada sounds like a creep but vs Wong this Beaudoin guy might have a fighting chance.
Joey 10:28 on 2025-08-08 Permalink
Not a lot of daylight between Beaudoin and Projet MTL, it seems. Hard to imagine a significant chunk of Projet voters opting for the Ensemble candidate, even if he says all the right things about nightlife and pedestrianization. Maybe Craig Sauve will land a name in the Plateau, but odds are that Projet will sweep again in a rout, no?
DeWolf 11:48 on 2025-08-08 Permalink
He’s certainly a decent candidate but it’s disappointing he’s towing the Ensemble line about “mobility studies” which is just an excuse to not do anything transport-related for 3.5 years.
For an example of how that would play out, see Outremont post-2021. Laurent Desbois has spent nearly his entire term “studying” the transport situation (after initially removing a handful of bike lanes) and now, six months before the election, his office has revealed a half-baked plan to put a 200-metre bike path on Fairmount that doesn’t connect with any other cycling infrastructure. It’s tokenism rather than actual planning. And of course there’s been little to no action on pedestrian safety during his term.
Beaudoin’s biggest asset is that he’s a Plateau lifer who probably has a large network to draw from. And of course he’s also qualified. But he will probably suffer from the problem of Ensemble’s last candidate for Plateau mayor, who was also qualified but simply wasn’t able to distinguish himself enough from Projet to make even the slightest dent in their support.
It’s a quandry for any Plateau opposition party: if you go full Martinez and start dogwhistling to the people who think bike lanes are the devil incarnate, you’ll never win, because there just isn’t much support for that on the Plateau. And if you base your platform on things like administrative delays and borough management, people’s eyes glaze over, even if there are legitimate issues there.
Craig Sauvé’s party is interesting because so far they’re attacking Projet from the left and they have the potential to present a coherent platform rather than the dog’s breakfast of Ensemble. But my instinct is that the most they’ll do is split the vote in some of the swing districts.
Ian 19:55 on 2025-08-08 Permalink
I do think Sauvé has a good chance to win a couple of seats, but it won’t be enough to really shake things up.
I disagree that Beaudoin is too like PM – that he wants to do studies and consultations is very un like their MO. Rabouin and his fanbois openly mocked me on Twitter for ahaving the audacity to ask if any mobility studies had been done for transit users and people with monbility issues before pedestrianizing Mont-Royal… I find it a bit comic how PM likes to position themselves as the party of action for stuff like that but somehow can’t do anything about AirBnb, gentrification, housing, tor he police budget, among other things they promise to get a handle on and then mysteriously their hands are tied.
As far as Outremont is concerned let’s not forget PM blew their chances there by unilaterally bringing in parking stickers.
DeWolf 20:41 on 2025-08-08 Permalink
Yeah absolutely. They lost the election in Outremont because of the vignettes. It was stupid of Tomlinson to be so bull-headed about that.
The thing about mobility studies and consultations is that they are inherently subjective. In the case of a mobility study, you need to define what kind of mobility you prioritize. Is it fluidity for motorized vehicles? Safety and comfort for pedestrians and cyclists? High throughput public transit? You can gather data to support any of those goals (and in fact there is already data being gathered, at least on some streets) but there’s ultimately a political choice to be made as to what outcome you want.
For consultations, we’ve discussed this on here before. What does that mean? A referendum for every bike path or curb extension? More town hall meetings?
I think you’re right that Projet Montreal has historically been quite high-handed in their approach many things. I would argue that in many cases that approach was necessary, given the political and structural context of Montreal at the time and the likelihood that given a more even-handed approach, bold initiatives would have just floundered. But the limits of a high-handed approach are beginning to show — so yes, absolutely, I think we need more of a consultative and collaborative way of doing things. But we also need to define what exactly that would entail, and what the baseline of expectations and goals should be.