It’s kind of nice that, at least officially, party politics is not a lynchpin of Canadian municipal elections. Watching the post-Katrina terror unfold down south, and the way things seemed to somehow follow party lines — in the feds-vs-local-vs-state level he-said-she-said stuff that went on — it might be a very good thing.
But in Montreal a party called “ProJet Montréal” might change that. They’re a “municipal political party” — which could be an altogether different thing.
Projet Montréal proposes that Montrealers who deeply love their city rally around an energetic project of equitable and durable urban development aiming at building the future of Montreal.
Check out their platform — it calls for reduction of traffic in the city, giving more room to pedestrians and cyclists and broader ideas like making Montreal more liveable. In Toronto, we’ve always had “fringe” candidates like Tooker Gomberg who stood for many of these things, but they could never bust into the mainstream for a variety of reasons (media coverage, lack of $, etc.). I wonder if an organized party would be more successful.
