Has Projet Montréal strayed from its progressive roots under Valérie Plante?

In late 2002, a small group of residents in Montreal's Plateau neighbourhood got together to push for the transformation of Mont-Royal Avenue. They wanted more room for pedestrians, more cycling and fewer cars.

The growing progressive movement became a political party two years later under Richard Bergeron, a transportation bureaucrat who called for the return of streetcars and a radical shift toward "sustainable urbanism."

In 2017, Valérie Plante finally got Projet Montréal into the mayor's office. But some members of the party feel she hasn't done enough to push forward their progressive agenda.

Jonathan Durand Folco, an expert in participatory democracy and professor at Saint Paul University in Ottawa, supported Plante during her successful bid to become leader of Projet Montréal in 2016, arguing she was truer to the party's roots than her rivals.

Durand Folco has since become more critical. He published an op-ed in Le Devoir saying she could go further and urging the party's base to push her in that direction if she wins a second mandate.

In an interview, Durand Folco praised the Plante administration for its investments in public transit and bike lanes.

But he said the Plante administration hasn't done enough to ensure Montreal remains an affordable place to live. In his view, the city's new housing bylaw didn't go far enough.

"They have a kind of centrist approach to municipal politics and try to have a compromise between the developers, the economic elites and at the same time, having some measures to help the poorest people in neighbourhoods and try to change things," he said.

That type of compromise — or concessions, in the eyes of critics — are documented in a new book, Saving the City: The Challenge of Transforming a Modern Metropolis, by Daniel Sanger.

Sanger, a former journalist and a staffer with Projet Montréal for nearly a decade, chronicles the rise of the party from its early days to its electoral victory in 2017 and the ensuing growing pains during Plante's term in office.

Part of the challenge, he writes, was transferring the ideals of party supporters in denser, more urban areas such as the Plateau to the more car-reliant boroughs on the outskirts of the city.

He points out, as well, that municipal parties in Montreal have traditionally served mainly as vehicles for their leaders rather than full-fledged organizations with strong membership. 

Projet — along with Jean Doré's Montreal Citizens' Movement before it — is an exception to that trend, and in Sanger's view that has made things more challenging for Plante.

Last April, for instance, members of the party adopted a proposal to cut the police budget and move toward disarming officers. Plante was quick to reject the idea in her closing remarks, and has maintained throughout the election she wouldn't take resources away from the SPVM.