Vision Montreal take Rivière-des-Prairies in byelection

MONTREAL – As this was the week when charges of corruption really jolted Montreal civic politics with a rash of resignations, it wasn’t a good time to be running for the Union Montréal in a byelection – so it perhaps wasn’t particularly shocking when the party lost the seat it had held in a Rivière-des-Prairies byelection on Sunday.

But the results seemed to send a strong signal that the Union Montréal could be facing some challenges at the polls.

With the R.D.P. byelection for the district seat on Montreal city council regarded as a test of how much damage testimony at the Charbonneau Commission has had on local politics, the answer seemed clear on Sunday night: change is wanted.

Still, it was a very tight race and people didn’t go to the polls in droves to register their dissatisfaction, considering the voter turnout of about 21 per cent.

The victorious Vision Montréal candidate Cindy Leclerc – who has a degree in business administration and promised to try to reinstate garbage collection twice a week in the summer – said voters in the district sent a strong message to the Union Montréal “that they want a change and they want to clean things up.”

Rivière-des-Prairies-Pointe-aux-Trembles borough mayor Chantal Rouleau agreed the population had “said no to Union Montréal and yes to integrity and transparence.”

Union Montréal candidate Nino Colavecchio, who couldn’t be reached on Sunday night, knew going in that it was going to be a tough race – he announced he was running on the first day it was alleged at the Charbonneau Commission that the party was taking kickbacks on construction contracts.

Then the byelection arrived on the heels of Gérald Tremblay’s resignation as mayor this week as well as Michael Applebaum’s decision to quit the executive committee on Friday, citing its refusal to make public an explosive report showing Montreal contracts were 30- to 40-per-cent higher than similar contracts in other cities and its refusal to reduce the 2013 property tax hike.

Vision Montréal leader Louise Harel had said that there was a strong “wind of change” blowing in the district, and she was right.

Projet Montréal’s Nathalie Pierre-Antoine came in third place, despite campaigning as being the “party of integrity.”

With all votes in, Leclerc had 1,884 votes to Colavecchio’s 1,785, while Pierre-Antoine had 1,467 votes.

The byelection is to fill a seat left vacant by Maria Calderone, who was elected for Tremblay’s Union Montréal in 2005 with almost 60 per cent of the vote.

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