There's an effort underway to unite two opposition parties at City Hall under a single banner, with the aim of presenting a stronger opposition against Denis Coderre in next year's mayoralty election.
The Projet Montreal party and Vrai Changement Pour Montreal — Melanie Joly's old party — are both confirming a story which was broken on Tuesday by the web site Ricochet, that a merger deal is in the works.
Ricochet's co-founder and CJAD contributor Ethan Cox says the idea is to create a united front to keep Coderre from being re-elected in November 2017.
"This is a tentative deal, and I'm sure there are still details to be worked out, but what we're going to end up seeing is a larger version of Projet Montreal," Cox says. "Coderre is an extremely popular mayor, and I think both these parties realized that they didn't have a very good chance of defeating him in the next election alone, so they decided their best chance to beat Coderre was to unite."
The deal, which the report suggests could be finalized this week, would bring Vrai Changement's four councillors into the Projet Montreal fold, allow its members to vote in that party's upcoming leadership vote, and allow its leader, Justine McIntyre, to run in that leadership contest.