The title of Mayor Denis Coderre's 2017 election platform, "Continuing Progress Together", says it all: Denis Coderre wants Montrealers to vote for him based on his record over the last four years.
There are few major surprises in Équipe Denis Coderre pour Montréal's campaign document. The promises within the 25-page document will not be new to you if you have paid much attention to City Hall since 2013. Coderre's platform focusses on building out transit to the downtown core (the platform says that "100,000 trips" will be added to the downtown core under the Mayor's plan), as well as building a "sustainable city" that can continue to attract tourists and businesses to Montreal.
In a sign of how much the Mayor's re-election campaign is running on what he has already done, his party's platform contains no actual costing figures, since most of the campaign promises set out in the document are already accounted for in the city's current budget. Tax changes, too, are not laid out at all in the document; the Mayor says that's because they will stay the same if he is re-elected.
The Mayor's platform makes mention of promoting indigenous culture in Montreal. The document also aims for "positive feminist outcomes" by ensuring more women are appointed to the executive committee and encouraged to enter politics in general -- though no specific numbers are laid out. Plans are laid out in the document, as well, to create an office to liaise between City Hall and universities in Montreal, perhaps a sign that Équipe Coderre is trying to close the gap his party faces among young voters against Valérie Plante's Projet Montréal (a poll last week conducted by Qc-125 showed Projet leading the Mayor's party by sixteen points among voters 34 years old and younger).
Coderre also added that he'll want to quickly take advantage of the new powers granted to the city government by the province last month, and says that he wants the credit for gaining them in the first place.
"Do you believe that the government of Quebec, after what we'd been living [through] before 2013, would say 'I'm going to give you a law'?" the Mayor asked when speaking to reporters. He says that it was his team who worked to rebuild trust in the way the city is governed since taking power at the 2013 election.
That increased confidence in City Hall politicians rests at the centre of the Mayor's re-election campaign, and he says the work is "not yet done". His platform is asking Montreal voters to give him a mandate to continue that work.
Election day in Montreal and other Quebec municipalities is on the 5th of November.