Valérie Plante hopes her legacy will be a greener, safer Montreal

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It’s a rare feat for a mayor in Montreal to leave the job without being pushed out by a disastrous electoral defeat, or major scandal.

It’s also a feat that none of Valérie Plante’s predecessors can claim, dating back to Jean Drapeau in the mid-1980s. But Valérie Plante — who announced last week she won’t seek a third term — is a different kind of mayor.

During her tenure, Plante said she’s proud to have made the city safer for cyclists and pedestrians. She took steps to address systemic racism within the city’s administration and its police force. She increased the number of protected green spaces by creating the Grand Parc de l’Ouest and purchasing land in the Technoparc district near the Trudeau airport.

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While many Montrealers have complained loudly and often about traffic congestion and the mismanagement of construction sites under her watch, as of this week, no credible candidates had yet emerged to challenge Plante.

Plante has always been underestimated, first by her own party and then by the electorate, having trailed Denis Coderre in the polls at the beginning of both her mayoral electoral campaigns. She insists part of the reason is because she’s a woman.

“I’m still a woman who smiles, who laughs, who is happy; oh my God! How can you be intelligent and happy and smiley at the same time?” Plante said during a sit-down interview Tuesday at Café Alphabet in the city’s Mile End district. “If you remember, for almost my entire first mandate, so many articles would talk about my smile and my laugh. Why does it matter? But those are biases that both men and women have.”

Wearing a pink striped button-down shirt, rolled up at the sleeves, Plante, who seemed to be breathing lighter than in recent weeks, said she is at ease with her decision, saying she doesn’t want to be seen as someone who clings to power for power’s sake.

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“I understand why it happens, because when you’re in a position like the mayor, you have to build an ego strong enough to stand the pressure and criticism,” Plante said. “That’s super important, otherwise you’ll just cry all day and be depressed, but at the same time, that ego can sometimes make you decide to stay.”

Plante ran on a pledge to make the city safer and friendlier for families, and in the years to come, she said she hopes to be able to tell her grandchildren that her efforts started a much larger movement.

“I’m hoping they will be able to say ‘those are the first cycling paths that grandma contributed to, but now there are so many everywhere, and now there are sponge sidewalks and parks, and they were created because of grandma, but now there are so many.’ This is why I do this work, so I can mark the territory, so there’s no coming back to having a city where there aren’t enough trees, not enough green spaces, that we’re not ready and resilient enough in terms of flash floods, and intense rainstorms.”

Plante said she has already seen the fruits of her labour in how some streets are safer.

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“This is a good neighbourhood,” she said looking out the window onto Bernard St. “You can see people with strollers, elders and young people, because you feel safe. You feel like the city belongs to you too, and it creates a sense of community, because you can see people walking and talking together. And that brings a sense of security, not just from collisions, but in a greater sense, because we know our neighbours.”

Part of Plante’s legacy is also making the city’s top job more accessible to women as she leaves it. Her advice to women entering politics: have a strong support system and a thick skin.

“I would say it for a guy as well, but for women, you need to surround yourself with a great team that will be able to support you when it’s tough, and even when you feel there are double standards happening.

“I would probably say to women to put yourself above criticism. You need to be able to listen to people, but I think that women feel like we have to be perfect. Many women will say: I’d like to do it, but I don’t think I’m exactly there (in terms of qualifications for the job), where men see themselves acquiring those skills on the job, you know, fake it until you make it. I think women need to think like that too.”

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Also key is support at home, and she had that with husband Pierre-Antoine Harvey and sons Émile, 21 and Gaël, 18. She said they too were surprised by her decision to call it quits, with Gaël miffed not to be able to vote for her at the ballot box next year.

Plante said she has worked to ensure women were represented in all parts of the municipal government. She hired staff comprised of a majority of women, and women make up the lion’s share of her executive committee — the highest elected positions within the city.

She said it’s not enough to pay lip service to equality and diversity, political parties have to put in place tools and take actions. Having being criticized for not having enough visible minorities within the party when elected in 2017, Plante actively recruited women from diverse backgrounds to run as candidates in her Projet Montréal party in the 2021 campaign. The led to six Black women being elected as city councillors. Three of them have leadership roles as part of the executive committee and as the chairperson of city council meetings.

“That never happened before,” Plante said. “We made the conditions favourable for them and now they are thriving. They’re amazing. I’m very proud of that.”

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However, there were also some disappointments over her tenure, chief among them a lack of progress on transit. Plante promised to be the mobility mayor, with a pledge to put forward a new métro line — the Pink Line, her signature colour. She also pledged to drastically improve bus service with the addition of 300 new buses. However, only a portion of Plante’s proposed line is being studied, and may be implemented as part of a tramway to Lachine that is still being planned. Bus service has declined as a result of a decline in ridership since the pandemic, and a plan to bring transit to the east was floated and cancelled when residents opposed a plan to bring a REM-style elevated rail system. Since the province holds the funding key for most transit projects, Plante’s ambitious plans were not in line with the CAQ government’s ideas for mobility in the region.

“The biggest disappointment and most obvious one is around mobility,” Plante said. “Especially because I did raise the bar pretty high, right, in my first mandate? Saying we’re going to solve it, pretty much. We weren’t able to have as many new transit options as I was hoping for.”

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Not having new transit services means Montrealers remain reliant on cars, with the number of motor vehicles now expanding faster than the population. Plante said that too is a disappointment.

“Montrealers are ready; they’re craving for it. I just wish other levels of government would be more in the same (mindset).”

Plante said mobility will continue to be a challenge. And though she served as a scapegoat for many motorists frustrated chronic congestion, her departure won’t eliminate any dreaded orange cones, as the city’s aging infrastructure needs huge amounts of investment.

“Those, those big construction sites needs to continue,” she said. “Of course, it’s gonna be a cause of frustration for a lot of people. And I have to say if during the next campaign, there’s a candidate that says there will be no more construction sites, no more orange cones, they’re lying.”

While mobility has been frustrating, Plante’s greatest heartbreak has been watching the worsening homelessness crisis.

“Now you’re seeing elders (who are homeless),” she said. “It breaks my heart. When I see young people leaving the youth protection system and going directly to tents, sleeping outside and (shooting up), it breaks my heart.”

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She has called on all levels of government to come together and put forth a plan to deal with the sources of the problem, which is caused not just by an affordability crisis, but crises in mental health and opioid addictions — problems that are beyond the city’s scope to respond.

“Knowing it’s going to increase, I’m calling on everybody to work together to establish a plan on how to make sure people don’t sleep in the street.

“As a city, we’ve put a lot of things forward, but it still all amounts to a Band-Aid on a gaping wound. So I’m asking the province to step in, because this this is a society crisis. There has to be a vision on how to end poverty and how to stop young adults from dying in the opioid crisis. That will be a huge challenge for the next mayor, but we need a big mayor and that’s beyond the (competences) of the city.”

Plante still has another year left in her mandate, and will stay on the job until her successor is chosen on Nov. 2, 2025. She has no plans to endorse a particular candidate for leadership of her party, but pledged to campaign for that person, no matter who is chosen.

jmagder@postmedia.com

x.com/jasonmagder

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