Councillor Craig Sauvé enters mayoral race with new Transition Montréal party

Independent councillor Craig Sauvé is throwing his name in the hat to be Montreal mayor with his new party, Transition Montréal.

Independent councillor Craig Sauvé is throwing his name in the hat to be Montreal mayor in the fall election.

Sauvé made the announcement Thursday with his new party Transition Montréal.

The party is running on a progressive platform, which includes taxing the ultra-rich and putting an end to outsourcing for municipal projects.

“There is a huge appetite for a different way of doing municipal politics, a politics of solidarity, courage, and concrete action,” Sauvé said in a news release.

The candidate said he plans on taxing single-family homes worth at least $3.5 million to fund initiatives dedicated to fighting homelessness. The party said it would invoke new special powers Quebec granted municipalities back in 2023 to do so.

“There’s no shortage of money. It’s just concentrated in too few hands while people are sleeping on the streets,” said Sauvé. “This tax will help fund shelters and the organizations doing work on the ground.”

Transition Montréal also plans on creating a municipal task force -- Infra-MTL -- to handle public works like sidewalks, speed bumps, curb extensions, paving, and bike lanes instead of outsourcing to private contractors.

The party says having in-house workers handle these files will improve planning, speed up execution, and follow the Charbonneau Commission’s recommendations.

While Sauvé was surrounded by Transition Montréal’s founding members and some supporters at a news conference Thursday morning, the party is still seeking candidates to fill its roster. It plans on running candidates in each of the city’s boroughs.

At City Hall, Sauvé has been outspoken on homelessness issues and the housing crisis, bringing forward motions to adopt emergency measures and increase funding for community organizations.

As a representative of the Sud-Ouest borough, he supported the Maison Benoît-Labre’s supervised consumption site, which may have to move locations following provincial intervention requiring such sites sites to be at least 150 metres away from schools and daycares.

Sauvé was first ran with Valérie Plante’s Projet Montreal and was re-elected in his Sud-Ouest riding as an independent in the 2021 municipal election. He left the party following a sexual assault allegation, which the party deemed to be unfounded.

He will be running against Plateau-Mont-Royal Mayor Luc Rabouin, head of Projet Montréal, former Liberal MP Soraya Martinez Ferrada of Ensemble Montréal and independent anti-racism activist Joel De Bellefeuille.

The electoral campaign is set to begin in two months.